Education enhancing region's fishery health

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

SANDPOINT — In many ways, the current status of the Waterlife Discovery Center mirrors the fishery right outside its doors — good and getting better by the day.

The center is the latest incarnation of what once was a rundown fish hatchery on the southern shore of the Pend Oreille River.

Thanks to a cooperative venture that included, among others, Idaho Fish & Game, the Bonner County Sportsmen’s Association, Trout Unlimited, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and Avista Corp., the facility now provides a combination of education and entertainment to every single fifth-grade student in Bonner County.

Today, those kids — along with countless families that stop by to roam the grounds and learn from the various displays and “education stations” on site — are treated to an interactive field trip that includes a journey back in time to the origins of the hatchery, as well as fun-filled activities such as seeing a pond from above and below, thanks to a series of fishery windows that take the viewer underwater, so to speak.

The center also is graced by a colorful entry sign and other fanciful artwork compliments of local artist Maria Larson, and oodles of interpretive trails that can be explored on your own.

As recently as about 12 years ago, however, the location that now provides this ever-expanding list of goings-on was at risk of going away.

“This whole place wasn’t even supposed to exist,” said Tom Whalen, conservation officer for Idaho Fish & Game. “It would be somebody’s trophy home on the water right now.”

Thanks to the intercession of the Bonner County Sportsmen’s Association, plans to sell off the property were blocked and a whole, new conversation began.

“Suddenly, we were saying, ‘Hey, let’s turn this into an education center,’” said Whalen.

With financial support from the Idaho Fish & Wildlife Fund and the help of a small army of volunteers, the former hatchery manager’s home was remodeled to accommodate indoor learning, while the viewing pond and trails came together around it.

But one can’t really tell this tale without also sharing another success story that took place in the waters just a stone’s throw away.

The star of that story happens to be the bull trout — once the king of Lake Pend Oreille, a body of water that still claims the world record for the largest “bullie” ever caught, at 32 pounds, back in 1949.

There are now more than 20 species of game fish in the big lake, according to Whalen.

“But originally, there were only three — the bull trout, west-slope cutthroat and mountain whitefish,” he listed. “Of all those species, the bull trout are hands-down the most sensitive.”

The fish is the waterbound equivalent of the canary in the coal mine, pointing directly to the health of, not only the lake and its namesake river, but also the tributaries and spawning grounds attached to them. To remain healthy, bull trout require what Whalen calls “The Four C’s” — cold, clean, connected and complex waterways.

Cold and clean are self-explanatory. Connectivity refers to their ability to reach spawning tributaries — something that development and waterway diversion can easily disrupt — and complexity in the form of rocks, tree falls and underwater roots systems where they can hide from predators.

There is good reason to believe that this indigenous fish — currently listed on the Endangered Species List — can make a hearty resurgence. For one thing, the fishery has a strong precedent in the form of a Kokanee comeback.

“We almost lost the Kokanee,” said Clem Yonker, a master naturalist who volunteers at the center. “In the mid-‘90s, they were almost extinct.”

“It was really dire,” agreed Whalen, adding that “introduction fish” such as rainbow trout and Kamloops were killing off the Kokanee population.

A subsequent Anglers Incentive Program put a bounty on some predatory fish and placed the at-risk Kokanee into the “no harvest” mode. And though long-time fishermen didn’t much care for the idea, the predictions of fisheries biologists played out in uncanny fashion.

“It was an incredible success story,” said Whalen. “They predicted a 6-year turnaround and it was almost like clockwork — about six years on the nose.”

These days, education is moving the dial in favor of a bull trout resurgence, as kids learn about proper identification of the fish and correct catch-and-release protocol for keeping them alive. Both of those skills are passed along as part of a fun visit to the center.

On any given field trip — which takes in all public schools in the county’s two districts, along with Christian schools, private academies and home-schooled students — volunteers such as Yonker will introduce the fifth-graders to the property’s rich history, before launching into a hands-on education about the fish that are such a big part of that story.

Kids learn that our local hatchery is the second oldest in Idaho, dating back to 1908. To get a feel for that era, the center includes a reconstructed interior of the first manager’s cabin, complete with displays of the wooden pipes that once supplied water from three springs feeding the hatchery and the metal milk jugs once used for transporting hatchlings to new homes.

Everything in the space is touchable, Yonker pointed out, and kids are encouraged to rummage around and explore. To keep them on their toes, a few modern-day items are strewn about the “cabin” — part of the scavenger hunt nature of the visit — that students are asked to find and list. (I’m no detective, but it seems like the pad of sticky notes on the desk might be one of them.)

From there, the youngsters take part in catch-and-release training, learn how to identify a bull trout compared with other fish and then move on to four stations that have them creating fish art, writing a fish-related haiku, testing for water quality and learning to find and identify macro-invertebrates in the water.

“It’s very much science-based,” said Whalen. “It’s definitely not a ‘show-me’ field trip.”

With the help of organizations such as Trout Unlimited and Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper, the number of field trips “has increased exponentially,” Whalen noted.

A similar occurrence is taking place in another setting, where education is gaining a foothold along Trestle Creek as people gather to view spawning Kokanee on their way from the big lake to their habitat upstream. The size of the spawning population has been matched only by the number of folks who now turn out to see them fight their way home.

Those viewing areas, too, were close to being put at risk, according to Whalen, who said the former campground area was headed for sale and private development before Avista Corp. stepped in to buy the land and protect the site.

In response, there are now plans to make Trestle Creek an additional educational facility, where the health of the fishery is on display as the rebound of the Kokanee can be watched up close.

“You’d have to go all the way up to Alaska to see fish running up streams like that,” said Yonker. “We have a lot of adults stopping by and bringing their kids or grandkids with them to see it.”

“That’s a real sea change,” added Whalen. “We’re hearing people say, ‘I’ve lived here all my life and I didn’t even know about this.’”

One of Whalen’s favorite metrics is the shift in the misidentification rate for bull trout by fishers on local waterways. Once as high as 1.25 percent, the emphasis on education has driven the rate down to approximately .01 percent.

The conservation officer shared the story of pulling up to a father and son to ask how the fishing was going.

“The dad said it was pretty good, but that they had one big Dolly Varden they had to let go,” Whalen said. “His son told him, ‘That was a bull trout, dad, not a Dolly Varden.’

“I thought it was a good thing that he knew,” he continued. “Not to mention being a pretty good slap-down coming from a kid.”

The Waterlife Discovery Center is staffed by volunteers on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays from noon-4 p.m.

The grounds, located on Lakeshore Drive in Sagle, are open to the public at any time during the day.

For more information on identifying and protecting bull trout — including an online quiz that comes with a chance to win a free cooler — visit: www.takenobull.org.