BILLINGS -- Plans to poison and electrofish trout streams in the Billings area to preserve habitat for native Yellowstone cutthroat trout are being proposed by the state.

The Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks has released two environmental assessments -- one for a fish-poisoning project on Crooked Creek in the Pryor Mountains, 40 miles south of Billings, and the other for an electrofishing project on Upper and Lower Deer Creek and Thiel Creek in Sweet Grass and Carbon counties. Comments are being taken until Oct. 9 and 10, respectively. Electrofishing involves using an electric current to stun fish before they're captured.

Non-native fish such as brook, brown and rainbow trout outcompete natives for food and sometimes interbreed. Protection of the native species is considered important to avoid the fish's habitat being reduced to the point where it requires more extensive protection.

Crooked Creek has been the site of extensive work by FWP, the Forest Service and volunteers to preserve a tiny stretch of the stream for what is believed to be a pure strain of Yellowstone cutthroat trout. For years the upper reaches of the creek were protected from hybridization by a natural dam. When that dam was washed out in 2002, the agencies moved to build a fish barrier to protect the trout.

But the new fish barrier wasn't installed until last year, allowing brown trout to migrate upstream. After attempts to remove the brown trout by electrofishing proved ineffective, the decision was made to poison five of the upper seven miles of the stream with rotenone, a piscicide. Cutthroat in the five-mile stretch proposed for poisoning would be removed beforehand. A detoxification station would be set up at the fish barrier to ensure that fatal doses of rotenone would not continue downstream.

The Upper and Lower Deer Creek restoration projects would use electrofishing to remove non-native brook, rainbow and brown trout from parts of Upper Deer Creek and Lower Deer Creek, which flow northward into the Yellowstone River east of Big Timber. FWP also would transplant young Yellowstone cutthroat trout from Lower Deer Creek into Thiel Creek, a tributary of Rock Creek northwest of Red Lodge.

Both projects could start in October.

Copies of the draft environmental assessments on the projects are available at FWP's Region 5 headquarters, 2300 Lake Elmo Drive, Billings MT 59105 or online at: Crooked Creek:

Click here.

or Upper and Lower Deer Creek:

Click here.

Public comment

• To comment on the Crooked Creek project, write to Ken Frazer, Area Fisheries Biologist; Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; 2300 Lake Elmo Drive; Billings MT 59105, phone 406-247-2963 or e-mail kfrazer@mt.gov

• To comment on the Deer Creek projects write to Jim Darling; Regional Fisheries Manager; Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; 2300 Lake Elmo Drive; Billings MT 59105, phone 406-247-2961 or e-mail jdarling@mt.gov