Intricate Web: How “Managers” Changed Flathead Lake

Brendon Bosworth’s article in New West follows the long history of human intervention in the fish population of Montana’s Flathead Lake, where mysis shrimp were introduced to help one non-native species, causing the population of a second non-native species to explode — all to the detriment of native bull trout.

“They assumed the shrimp would provide food for kokanee salmon, which had been planted in the lake system, along with other nonnative species, in the 1920s, according to the study. Instead, it turned out the mysis were hungry for the kokanee’s food: large types of zooplankton called cladocerans, also known as water fleas.”