Along the banks of Hunt Lake in the south of Whiteshell Provincial Park, the largemouth bass stalks in the water, threatening the survival of other fish in the ecosystem.
But this competitive, aggressive predator wasn’t always part of Hunt Lake. Anglers first spotted the freshwater fish there in 2023 — and unlike other species, the largemouth bass was neither native to the ecosystem nor brought to the lake through provincial fish farming programs.
Instead, it’s there because people have put it into the lake illegally, said Eric Mullen, a provincial regional fisheries manager responsible for eastern Manitoba.
Those kinds of illegally introduced species have had what Mullen calls an “adverse impact” on native fish populations, which have since declined in numbers and become less healthy.
I wonder if letting anglers target and kill invasive species on invaded water bodies would be helpful. I could see some difficulty in ensuring they only kill on the specific water bodies. Im sure there are a few anglers out there who would spend some time fishing for and killing the invasive species if they thought it would help preserve their favourite lakes. Plenty of people eat bass too so the fish wouldn’t even have to go to waste.
This is a common fisheries management practice, as well as other types of conservation.
