The Republican-owned South Dakota Game, Fish and Plunder wants more water to keep its stock of non-native fish alive in Rapid Creek.
Finescale dace was the only fish identified in Black Hills streams by the Custer Expedition in 1874 but the creek chub and white sucker are also native.
There is no evidence of native trout in the Little Missouri flowing north out of the Wyoming sage steppe, either. As the Black Hills have never been glaciated the continual use of fire by human inhabitants to maintain bison habitat for the last ten thousand years may have rendered ancient fisheries unable to sustain salmonids.
The fisheries program administrator said some of his staff have been talking with counterparts for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Rapid City municipal government. The topic: winter releases — specifically, the lack of them — from Pactola Reservoir upstream in the Black Hills.Read the rest here.
Finescale dace was the only fish identified in Black Hills streams by the Custer Expedition in 1874 but the creek chub and white sucker are also native.
There is no evidence of native trout in the Little Missouri flowing north out of the Wyoming sage steppe, either. As the Black Hills have never been glaciated the continual use of fire by human inhabitants to maintain bison habitat for the last ten thousand years may have rendered ancient fisheries unable to sustain salmonids.
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