Like In Wyoming, Pelicans Gobble Down Prized Yellowstone Trout In Idaho

Idaho and Wyoming share numerous wildlife species, such as elk, wolves, grizzlies and pelicans.

Those pelicans have been raising a ruckus on both sides of the state line.

The Alco Rod and Gun Club, which owns premier trout fishing lakes west of Laramie, had hundreds of pelicans gobbling up its coveted trout. So, the club got a special permit through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to haze the birds, and even shoot some of them.

Club President Mark Rozman told Cowboy State Daily he was inspired to reach out to the USFWS about pelican control in part by what’s been going on at Blackfoot Reservoir in Idaho.

There, packs of hungry pelicans have been eating prized Yellowstone cutthroat trout, said Zack Lockyer, an Idaho Fish and Game regional wildlife manager.

The pelicans themselves remain a federally protected species. Like the Wyoming rod and gun club, Fish and Game in Idaho got permission from the USFWS to haze pelicans, and even kill a few.

But wiping pelicans out isn’t the goal, Lockyer told Cowboy State Daily. “They should be conserved as well.”

“The fish and wildlife service has to balance the need for hazing and lethal take of pelicans to protect fisheries with the need to maintain a viable population of pelicans,” he said. “Trying to help one species at the cost of the other is tough balancing act.”

Crossing Between Idaho And Wyoming

Pelicans were struggling not all that long ago. In the 1960s and 1970s, their numbers were in severe decline.

The fish they prey upon had been contaminated by pesticides, which in turn weakened the pelicans’ eggs and caused their reproductive rates to plummet, according to Fish and Game.

When some dangerous pesticides were banned, such as DDT, pelicans began to rebound.

They also started to spread farther north than they had before, possibly driven by drought, Lockyer said. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have all seen increasing numbers of them.

Reservoirs, many of them built in the mid-20th century, also created habitat for pelicans that hadn’t existed before.

“Before the dam and the reservoir, Blackfoot was just a river,” Lockyer said. “We made a reservoir that has a bunch of islands in it, and it’s brought in a predator that these fish weren’t used to.”

Game and Fish has been monitoring the pelicans at Blackfoot and the surrounding watershed. In 2017-2018, they outfitted some of the birds with “telemetry backpacks” to track their movements, Lockyer said.

They discovered some of the flocks were passing back and forth between Wyoming in Idaho. They might travel 100 miles in a day “just to forage,” he said.

Pelicans were also going into Montana and other neighboring states, and some were wintering in California and Mexico.

Saving Cutthroats

Research revealed that the pelicans were gobbling enough fish to put a huge dent in the Yellowstone cutthroat trout population.

That prized trout species has had its own struggles to thrive, and Blackfoot Reservoir and the river are a vital spawning ground and habitat for them.

Game and Fish tried a variety of hazing methods that included using green lasers at night to harass the birds.

“We’ve also used some pyrotechnic ropes that you can light, and a ‘boom’ goes off every so often, so over the course of the day there’s that noise every so often to scare the birds away,” he said.

Wildlife agents also fired “cracker shells” from shotguns, or nonlethal rounds that explode in mid-air. On occasion, they’d also use lethal birdshot.

They focused mostly on the nesting colonies on the reservoir’s islands. Pelicans prefer to nest on islands where four-legged predators and scavengers can’t get to their eggs.

But then some of the pelicans started nesting on peninsulas, apparently figuring that being surrounded by water on at least three sides was enough.

“It’s kind of this arms race. They’re constantly changing,” Lockyer said. “They’re finding a different place to nest, they’re foraging in different places. One year you think you’ve figured it out, and the next year they do something different.”

Tide Turning?

The hazing finally may be yielding some results, he said. There seem to be somewhat fewer pelicans setting up shop at Blackfoot, he said.

At our highest point, we probably had 3,000 breeding pairs of pelicans in the Blackfoot Reservoir and river system,” Lockyer said.

But whether Game and Fish is truly getting ahead of the problem remains to be seen, Lockyer added.

“Has it been effective? We’re sorting that out,” he said. “We’ve been effective at reducing predation rates on the spawning adult fish in the river system,” but the pelicans still seem to be hammering the younger fish that head out into the reservoir to grow.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.