America's fishing paradox

0:00 Heads up.

0:01 This is Andrew.

0:02 He's responsible for releasing fish into this river.

0:05 But there's a catch.

0:06 These fish aren't from here.

0:08 They're not native to this river.

0:09 And until the late 1800s, they never would have been found here at all.

0:13 So why are they being released here by state officials?

0:16 Well,

0:16 it turns out there's a very real but kind of counterintuitive reason for this.

0:20 There aren't a lot of fish thriving in ecosystems like this one.

0:23 So in order for people

0:25 to enjoy the sport of fishing, they need to put fish into the water.

0:28 It's a process called fish stocking, where fish are bred and released

0:32 into the wild, often for the specific purpose of being fished out.

0:36 It's done all over the country using trucks, hoses and even planes.

0:43 For our trout stocking program

0:44 the goal is for 100% of the fish to be caught.

0:48 So they're being bred in hatcheries to be caught?

0:50 That's right.

0:50 Which does raise a big question for me.

0:53 Is it reasonable to raise fish for the sake of sport?

0:56 And what's the effect on the ecosystem that these fish are dropped into?

1:00 So I came up here to Connecticut to see some fish stocking in action

1:04 and find out more about why this is such a common practice.

1:08 And so there's a little ball at the bottom of the net.

1:10 You can grab that, get close to the water's edge.

1:13 You just kind of toss them out.

1:14 Does that make sense?

1:16 And then we want to keep them out of the air, too.

1:18 Which is why we're running right?

1:20 When I started learning about fish stocking, I was like, wait a second.

1:23 Are states actually just putting invasive species into the environment,

1:27 while at the same time they have programs to fight different invasive species?

1:31 Fishing is very important to conservation funding

1:33 in Connecticut.

1:34 About 170,000 people participate in fishing each year

1:38 in the state of Connecticut.

1:39 When they buy their fishing license, all of those funds go back to fisheries

1:43 to fund conservation efforts, to fund stocking, to fund fish habitat.

1:47 Nationally, fishing licenses and taxes on fishing equipment like rods, tackle,

1:52 and even boats combined for well over

1:55 $1 billion in conservation revenue in 2024.

1:59 Ironically, to support all this recreational fishing,

2:02 the state has to manually put fish back into these waters,

2:05 because, well, there's just not enough fish there anymore.

2:09 So non-native fish are bred in hatcheries like this one.

2:13 Connecticut has three hatcheries, but there are hundreds in the U.S.,

2:18 So what kind of fish are we stocking today?

2:20 A few different trout species.

2:22 There's going to be rainbow trout.

2:23 Brown trout as well.

2:25 And that's where this gets tricky,

2:26 because rainbow trout come from the west coast

2:29 of the US and brown trout actually come from Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa.

2:34 We have been stocking fish in the US for more than 100 years.

2:38 It dates back to the 1800s.

2:40 In the late 1800s as the US built dams and polluted waterways

2:45 native fish disappeared from lakes and streams all over the country.

2:48 So the federal government

2:50 began raising fish in hatcheries and shipping them across the US.

2:53 And they did this using fish cars,

2:55 which is yeah, literally just trains full of live fish.

2:59 And they used horses or mules

3:01 carrying the fish in buckets to get them to the water.

3:04 The term "invasive species" hadn't even entered into like the,

3:07 the conversation whatsoever.

3:09 I'm not even sure there was invasion biology as a science,

3:12 but we were bringing fish both to the west coast,

3:15 from the east coast and vice versa.

3:17 But today, we have a much better

3:19 understanding of the havoc that some non-native species can wreak.

3:23 And we're still stocking fish.

3:25 Just using trucks and planes instead of horses.

3:28 And humans also play a role in disturbing their natural ecosystems.

3:32 Streams are getting hotter.

3:33 So warmer temperatures, it's not great for a cold,

3:37 a cold loving fish like trout or salmon.

3:39 Dams have been maybe the number one habitat problem

3:44 for these different species, especially migratory species like salmon and trout.

3:47 And here on the Mianus River

3:49 in Connecticut, there are several dams that affect the native fish population.

3:53 And of course, it's important to clarify

3:54 that Connecticut isn't just throwing fish into its water at random.

3:57 If you go back to say the 1870s when the Connecticut Fish and Game

4:02 Commission was first established, and you see those early years of stocking

4:07 there, introducing all sorts of fish into all sorts of places,

4:10 and some of those have had really deleterious negative effects.

4:13 And so there are these potential negative effects,

4:16 but that's why we do monitoring, right?

4:19 That's why we it's an adaptive management process where we're out collecting

4:23 data,

4:23 following up and doing evaluations to make sure we're not having those issues.

4:28 But even with the most careful approach, things can go wrong.

4:31 When you have a foreign fish that

4:33 you're putting into the environment that doesn't

4:34 belong there or didn't evolve there, it can displace the native species.

4:39 Non-native stocked fish are raised in hatchery conditions and in a hatchery

4:43 they learn to become aggressive.

4:44 And then when you put those stocked fish into the environment,

4:47 they might be better at finding food or outcompeting the native fish.

4:51 And there are some more complicated consequences,

4:53 like the phenomenon known as hybridization,

4:56 which is when non-native fish breed with the fish that evolved to live there.

4:59 They start breeding with a different species that evolved elsewhere,

5:03 they might lose some of those genetic traits that help them survive,

5:06 and that can actually lead to the declines of those native species.

5:09 And of course, there's a very real welfare concern

5:12 of what it means to be breeding these fish in hatcheries, to then be caught.

5:17 Is this good for the life of a fish?

5:18 Like, definitely, definitely not.

5:21 Like, I think that's pretty clear.

5:23 I know it looks like it's

5:23 just me out here, but reporting stories like this one takes a whole team.

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5:55 Now back to the video.

5:56 Beyond the potential ecological impacts,

5:58 fish stocking points to a larger problem.

6:01 We're in a moment of compounding climate and biodiversity crises.

6:05 And how we protect wildlife matters more than ever.

6:08 So practices that may have seemed okay historically, like stocking fish

6:12 for recreation, can now critically undermine ecosystem resilience.

6:17 This is really about

6:18 whether our public institutions are set up

6:20 to protect wildlife for the long term.

6:22 States prioritize non-native fish because fishing is such a big part

6:26 of their revenue.

6:27 It comes down to funding.

6:28 The perception that hunters and anglers are the sole bread and butter creates

6:32 this built in incentive prioritize a few game species and,

6:37 you know, stocked fish species.

6:39 The resources currently dedicated to raising

6:41 hatchery fish and stocking our lakes

6:43 and rivers with them could be better spent on those other sources.

6:47 It's this strange paradox at the heart of this.

6:50 In order to fund conservation, states end up having to do something that,

6:54 at least in some cases, hurts the very ecosystem

6:58 they're trying to conserve.

6:59 This is ultimately a systems problem.

7:01 How we fund and define conservation.

7:03 And that's what needs to evolve.

7:05 So diversified funding streams are really important.

7:08 In Oregon, they just passed legislation,

7:11 to increase a lodging tax, and that money would go towards

7:17 their state wildlife action plan and their list of species

7:20 of greatest conservation need.

7:22 And other lawmakers have floated the idea of a backpack tax,

7:26 which would tax outdoor equipment the way fishing is.

7:29 We would support diversified funding streams.

7:32 Absolutely.

7:33 Anything that's going to increase our capacity

7:35 to conserve fisheries would be awesome.

7:38 I do think that states

7:39 are in a tricky position.

7:41 They have constituents who want to fish,

7:44 and they also have constituents who want to conserve nature,

7:47 which is also part of their mandate.

7:48 I think that there's, a false tension that you can envision there

7:53 where it's as if we are stocking fish and managing sport fish

7:57 instead of conserving species.

7:59 When we stock fish,

8:01 that gets people to go out fishing to engage with the resource, build political

8:05 will and build the economic capacity to support non-game fish too.

8:09 The point that I think should be emphasized is that getting people

8:14 out into the environment might build an environmental ethic

8:17 or a conservation ethic that ends up providing a net good.

8:21 Ultimately restoring native systems and the fish that live in them

8:25 would be a clear win for everyone.