Description:
A maligned predator's past reveals how colonialism and conservation reshaped western waterways
Framed by the towering Bitterroot Mountains and the scenic Sapphire Range, the Bitterroot River is home to iconic cutthroat, rainbow, and other trout prized by fly-fishing enthusiasts worldwide. One fish stands apart from the rest: the river's apex predator, the bull trout. In this compelling biography of a species, Adam R. Hodge traces the bull trout's history in the Bitterroot watershed, from its valued role in Salish culture to its tarnished image as hated pest to its place today as a threatened species.
Given the moniker of "cannibal" in 1929 because it eats other fish, the bull trout was vilified by Montanans, who even blasted bulls with dynamite in attempts to protect fisheries and nonnative gamefish. These actions, along with proliferating nonnative fish and the effects of climate change, contributed to the species' decline and plummeting population.
With the rise of environmental protection in Montana--especially after the fly-fishing boom caused by the 1992 film A River Runs Through It--residents and scientists eventually came to the defense of this indicator species. The fish was added to the Endangered Species List in 1998, and since then, the state of Montana has spent millions on habitat restoration. Whether the bull will survive for future generations is in question, but its transformation from cannibal to canary offers a powerful story of redemption after devastation in Montana's waters.
Brief description: Adam Hodge is Head of Reference at the Kansas State Archives and author of Ecology and Ethnogenesis: An Environmental History of the Wind River Shoshones, 1000-1868 (Nebraska, 2019).