By 2080, there could be as much as 58 percent less cutthroat trout habitat than there is today.
Researchers from Trout Unlimited, The U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, Colorado State University and the University of Washington got together and published a study predicting the future of our Western trout habitat if we keep going at this pace in dealing with the climate change finding.
Their findings were not what you'd call optimistic. In the coming decades, according to New West, the study also predicts that rainbow trout habitat will be reduced by as much as 35 percent, brown trout 48 percent and brook trout 77 percent.
The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was based on more than 10,000 fish surveys. It mainly focused on Colorado, Wyoming, northern and eastern Idaho, western Montana and Utah. It focused on the potential impacts of global warming, and the main concern of the researchers was the fragile future of cutthroat trout.
There was some optimism, they did write that restoration measures could potentially offset some of their predicted numbers. – Rick Bach
What's more dangerous to fish stocks than global warming? Murderous catfish vandals, for one.
(Via: Midcurrent)
