By 1900, lake trout had completely disappeared from Lake Champlain, decimated by pollution, overfishing, and the invasive sea lamprey. Biologists set the groundwork for a comeback in the 1970s by stocking the fish in the lake. And now today, something remarkable has happened. Lake trout are reproducing on their own. Rob Fiorentino is the DEC's Regional Fisheries Manager for Northeastern New York. It's not something that happens regularly.
A lot of the Great Lakes and other water bodies have been trying to restore native species for quite a long time with some successes here and there. The Lake Champlain lake trout comeback on today's story of the day. Support for Story of the Day comes from Clarkson University, offering over 95 programs of study with campuses in the Hudson Valley, Central and Northern New York.
Hey, I'm David Summerstein. It's Friday, May 2nd. First up, the Fort Rhum Army Base near Watertown generates almost $2 billion for the North Country economy. That's according to the base's annual economic impact statement. It's an increase of 1.3 percent over last year. The home to the 10th Mountain Division supports 38,000 active duty soldiers, their families and civilian employees. That makes it the largest single site employer in northern New York.
The state is trying to keep more of those people in the region after their tour of duty is complete. A $10 million investment in a project called Next Move NY is attempting to build a workforce pipeline for soldiers and their spouses who are transitioning out of the military. The project opened its first office in downtown Watertown yesterday. Fort Drum is celebrating its 40th anniversary since it converted from Camp Drum and became the home of the 10th Mountain Division.
R&B singer Kehlani is speaking out against the cancellation of her scheduled concert at Cornell University. Aurora Berry reports for the New York Public News Network. Kehlani was booked to perform at Cornell's Slope Day concert. In a statement announcing the cancellation last week, Cornell's president Michael Kotlikoff said Kehlani espoused what he called anti-Semitic, anti-Israel sentiment.
Kalani responded to the claims on social media. I am being asked and called to clarify and make a statement yet again for the millionth time. that I am not anti-Semitic nor anti-Jew. I am anti-genocide. I am anti the actions of the Israeli government. The artist has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli military and the war in Gaza.
The cancellation comes after the Trump administration froze a billion dollars in federal funding for Cornell over open civil rights investigations, including allegations of anti-Semitism. The university has yet to announce a new Slope Day performer. In Ithaca, I'm Aurora Berry for the New York Public News Network. The news that lake trout have been restored to Lake Champlain and are surviving on their own without restocking is a big, big deal.
The DEC and its partners in Vermont and at the federal level looked at a variety of factors when they decided to end the stocking program after this spring. The DEC's Rob Fiorentino told Champlain Valley reporter Kara Chapman there really wasn't a playbook. One benchmark is they needed to see an increased prevalence of wild trout in the lake. The wild population just kept increasing.
You know, one of the other things that we started to see was the overall fitness of the lake trout just started to slide. targets so those are real key indicators getting a little bit too high. And fortunately for us, it's getting too high because of all the wild fish. And, you know, we did still have a management lever that we could pull, which was to stop stocking. Are there any theories yet or any studies going on to figure out why trout have rebounded so well in the lake? The lake is clean.
There's more control of sediments going into the water bodies these days than there was back in the 50s and 60s. Pesticides impacted populations. what happened to the bald eagle will also happen to the lake trout so those What we think probably also happened is nutrient loading also decreased because there's less phosphorus within our system. So they're getting into the lake less. This all kind of culminated to improve the habitat. trout to spawn and to spawn success
A big part of trout restoration was managing sea lamprey. Can you talk about what's happening with the management side of things with that? Are any changes being made or are you just going to keep on doing what you've been doing with that? I would say changes are always kind of being made. We're always trying to think about how. Some of the small streams, instead of doing a sea lampry application with a lampricide, we put up seasonal barriers to that.
intercept the spawning adults and that seems to be the least impactful management practice for those. We have other dams that are lamprey barriers. And again, those allow us to control the population. of spawning habitat available to this The U.S. Fish and Wally Service now has a boat that they use that is GPS guided and is... Basically, it's an agricultural fertilizer application technology.
integrated into a boat so that we know the area that we're trying to target is in the computer on the boat and that allows us to really refine how much lampricide that we're using in that area to get more targeted better concentrate in a quicker amount of time. Aside from sea lamprey, what other kind of ongoing threats to the native trout population are you keeping an eye on? And is climate change's effect on the lake a concern?
Yeah, definitely with a cold water fish, like a lake trout, which is a char. cold loving species that's you know intolerant of warmer water so it has to be have that cold water to survive you know it's it's physiological and capable of surviving So that's definitely something that we think. One of the other biggest issues is invasive species. They can definitely have a significant negative impact on our native populations. You know, something like a round goat.
which is a threat, could potentially have an impact on lake trout, and that's just one example. Something like a quagga mussel could also, you know, zebra mussel relative could also impact it. We just don't know. keep those invasives. out of the system. Can you talk a bit more? I think you touched on this.
DEC and your partner agencies are going to continue monitoring the trout population, and do you have any stopgaps in place for possible re-implementation of the program, if necessary, of the stocking program? We will continue. sampling for sea lamp wounding great we do that every year and we're also looking at other methodologies to s So that's one aspect of this. We will continue to do the surveys where we document wild reproduction. UVM and Vermont and us, the DC.
We'll be looking into other different new spawning locations, trying to document those so we have a knowledge where those are at. We'll also do the survey work to look at the wild reproduction. and how those age classes are moving through the population. So lake trout being a long-lived species, the next 10 to 15 years... lake trout that were just stocked. You know, the last stocking did occur this year.
stock for the last 15 years as they the population and get replaced with the wild fish will be collecting information on that looking at the different age classes and ensuring that those there's sufficient numbers to maintain the population. ride a fishery. That was Rob Fiorentino with the DEC. He spoke with Kara Chapman about the successful decades-long effort to restore lake trout to Lake Champlain.
We have more news all the time and through the weekend on our website, ncpr.org. Music today by Eric Pasternak of Bloomingdale and Patricia Julian of Burlington. Have a great weekend. I'm David Summerstein, North Country Public.