Brown trout stocking ideology

[Andrews]

I think this opens a good discussion about our stocking practices.

General info directly pulled from Vic Fisheries:

The brown trout fishery in Victoria is roughly divided into two parts. The eastern half of Victoria has mainly self-supporting populations which exist where suitable habitat is available, whilst most suitable waters in the western half of the State depend on stocking with hatchery-produced fish.

I have a little bit of experience in this space and if you want to know more about what research has been done towards brown trout management, a few good connections to reach out to would be:

Vic Fisheries
DELWP Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research
Australian Freshwater Sciences Society (I attended the 2019 AFSS/NZFSS and there was a discussion about this in NZ creeks).
Australian Trout Foundation
Native Fish Australia

I'm sure between them all they'll be able to put you in contact with a researcher in that space. haha!
Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Andrew

[Longbombs]

Trout are to water as foxes and cats are to land.

There are several fish and amphibian species which are close to being wiped out almost directly because of trout.

Of course, there are other factors which have likely affected these species' abundance (i.e. construction of dams and overall water quality).

Yet, there are enough academic studies that support trout being the main cause of these species' decline.

Pat Tomkins (correct me if I'm wrong) who also frequents this forum is super onto this stuff so I recommend reaching out to him for your uni work.

Perhaps he can share some of his favourite journal articles.

PS. Well put. Trout stocking is an ideology.