Alaska eliminates invasive pike and restocks lake with 6,836 Arctic char

Representative imageIn a remote corner of Southcentral Alaska, state biologists carried out a dramatic restoration: they treated an entire lake with rotenone, a plant-derived piscicide, to wipe out an invasive population of northern pike. After the treatment, post-surveys confirmed the pike were gone. The next step was rebuilding what had been lost. In June 2013, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) stocked 6,836 hatchery-reared Arctic char fingerlings into the now pike-free lake, jump-starting the recovery of a native fishery that had been pushed out by the predator. This account draws on ADF&G’s technical reports and project summaries documenting the rotenone treatment and restocking. Read on to know more:Why northern pike are a problem in AlaskaNorthern pike are not native to