Glacier NP

While in Glacier National Park, we were able to see some of the amazing Glaciers that give the park it’s name.. At the end of the Glacier is a clear lake with a rock bottom. The temperatures stay very cold and the lake doesn’t have many living organisms. Few cold water zooplankton or phytoplankton. There is some and this presents fod for the native fish. Sometime around the 1920’s someone decided that intro introducing other species of fish, like Salmon, would increase the fishing tourism and the lake could support this. What did happen was predictable given what we know about ecosystems. Only one species can inhabit a niche at a time. The new species were better capable of competing for the food because they were continuously stocked. The natives showed low numbers by the 1970s when the stocking was ended. The native species are slow to return. This is a harsh environment and the reproduction rate under good times would be low. Almost 40 years later, the scientists are still finding that the damage to the ecosystem won’t be a simple repair that involves more inaction than action.