| Wild fish spring to life in Lake Ontario, despite dams, pollution and hatchery competitors | |
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It’s springtime, which means migration and spawning for many Lake Ontario fish — and a good time to share the fascinating story of how many salmon and trout came to live in this Great Lake in the first place. Brook trout and Atlantic salmon are native to the lake, but in 1873, the federal government began stocking it with non-native salmonids — a large family of ray-finned, carnivorous fish — starting with chinook salmon. Coho salmon, steelhead, and brown trout soon followed. |
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They didn’t thrive at first, though. Dams impeded spawning migrations, pollution from lumber mills and tanneries degraded water quality and clearing forests for urbanization and agriculture warmed waters. This limited natural reproduction of stocked non-native species. It was also devastating for native species: combined with overharvesting, environmental harm caused the decline of some, like brook trout, and the wholesale loss of others, like Atlantic salmon. |
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