New insights into the ecology of adfluvial Bull Trout and the population response to the Endangered Species Act in the North Fork Lewis River, Washington

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
By: , and 

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Abstract

Like many other salmonids, Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus migratory life-history expressions are becoming increasingly rare. A critical step in effectively refining management and conservation strategies is a robust assessment of the effectiveness of such strategies and key biological information used in monitoring and recovery planning. To address this need, we integrated a variety of methods to evaluate the population demographics (abundance), vital rates (survival), and life-history characteristics (ageing, growth, spawning migrations and iteroparity) of an adfluvial Bull Trout population. We also employed our mark-recapture data to quantify if recruitment or adult survival had a greater contribution to population trends from year to year. Our results indicated Bull Trout spawning migrations vary with body size, as a considerable portion of smaller adults (<650 mm) did not spawn each year. Additionally, most spawning individuals made only one spawning migration, while <13% made three or more spawning migrations. Our abundance and survival data, which extends to the early 1990s, illustrated positive responses in survival and abundance following the protection of Bull Trout under the Endangered Species Act (1998). Over this period, we found high interannual variability in both survival and abundance, and adult survival (average = 0.45, SE = 0.04) was surprisingly lower than subadult individuals (average = 0.66, SE = 0.04), suggesting limitations at this important life stage. Our mark-recapture data also suggested the attributes driving the Bull Trout population trend (i.e., recruitment to the adult stage or adult survival) has varied through time, with declining trends in the relative contribution of recruitment. Our results provide new insights into the life-history patterns of adfluvial Bull Trout and can serve as a template to consider factors potentially limiting this and other native trout populations.

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Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title New insights into the ecology of adfluvial Bull Trout and the population response to the Endangered Species Act in the North Fork Lewis River, Washington
Series title Transactions of the American Fisheries Society
DOI 10.1002/tafs.10201
Volume 148
Issue 6
Year Published 2019
Language English
Publisher American Fisheries Society
Contributing office(s) Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center
Description 15 p.
First page 1102
Last page 1116
Country United States
State Washington
Other Geospatial North Fork Lewis River
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