State biologists want to poison all the pike in Cheney Lake, then start over with trout and salmon.
Ordinarily this sort of no-prisoners fisheries management would trip alarms. Poison the lake?
Do that and you'll kill all the fish and just about everything else.
But you might be killing just northern pike (along with some stickleback and black fish). Northern pike are fierce predators with indiscriminate taste. They eat whatever doesn't eat them first. They're native to parts of Alaska but an invasive species in Southcentral.
Invasive like Genghis Khan.
In the Alexander Lake area, they've gutted salmon runs and knocked the salmon fishing for a loop. Biologists estimate 16,000 pike are in the three-mile-long lake, with plenty of lunkers weighing in at 40-plus pounds.
Cheney Lake is a 24-acre pond. The little man-made lake along Baxter Road in East Anchorage used to be one of the city's most popular stocked-trout fishing holes. Inexpensive angling with fish-in-a-barrel odds, an easy place to take youngsters.
But evidently somebody released pike into the pool, and that was a death sentence for rainbows. Cheney's trout are history, and there's no sense restocking unless you want to fatten the pike.
Well, how about fishing for pike then? They're a worthy game fish, but those razor teeth make them a lot less family-friendly than rainbows. And they're not good for grebes and loons, either.
Drain the lake? Fish and Game biologist Dan Bosch said that was considered but found to be impractical and opposed by local residents. So the state intends to apply for a permit to poison Cheney along with invaded lakes on the Kenai Peninsula and near Yakutat.
Rotenone is the poison. It occurs naturally in the roots of tropical bean plants. It's an effective pesticide and fish killer. It breaks down quickly and in its prescribed uses poses no known threat to humans and most other mammals. (Pigs are sensitive to it, and one study found that steady doses, injected over time, produced symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats. )
Bosch said aquatic life recovers rapidly after rotenone dissipates. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agency approve its controlled use.
California has had success -- tentative success -- restoring its trophy trout fishery at Davis Lake in the northern Sierras with rotenone poisoning. A first poisoning in 1997 seemed effective for about 18 months. Then pike reappeared. A second poisoning in 2007 appears to have worked, and a massive restocking of trout in the spring has the fishery jumping again.
The state wants to kill pike near Soldotna and Yakutat because pike could spread to the Kenai and Situk river systems and play hell with world-class salmon fisheries. Poison may give Alaskans pause, but we'll go toxic on pike before we expose Kenai kings and Situk steelhead to invasive predation.
Should Cheney's pike slip into nearby Chester Creek, they could spoil dreams of restoring more than a shadow of salmon runs there, but the main reason for poison in Cheney is to restore a pleasant city fishery.
Biologists should seek the permit. Public hearings will follow, and we'll learn if there's some as-yet unknown reason not to clean out the lake. If not, let anglers have the current open season on pike all summer (catch and kill) and finish them off before freeze-up. Keep Cheney for trout and loons.
BOTTOM LINE: Northern pike have their place, but not in Cheney Lake.
ALASKA ALMANAC
Money and power in juneau
93% -- Percentage of primary and general election races for the Alaska Legislature that were won by incumbents, from 2000 to 2006.
4:1 -- Odds that the candidate who won a contested general election in Alaska from 2000 to 2006 was the one who spent the most money.
440 -- Number of primary election races in Alaska from 2000 to 2006.
75% -- Portion of those primaries in which voters did not have a choice of candidates.
216 -- Number of general election races in Alaska from 2000 to 2006.
24% -- Portion of those general election races in which voters did not have a choice of candidates.
$438,515 -- Amount Alaska candidates raised from 2000 to 2006 for uncontested general election races.
$25,000 -- Amount of campaign contributions a federal indictment says state Sen. John Cowdery tried to steer to a colleague in return for his votes on oil and gas issues.
9 -- Months since the governor signed a bill that makes it a state crime for an elected official to trade a vote for a campaign contribution.
Source: Alaska Public Interest Research Group, July 2008; U.S. Department of Justice; Alaska State Legislature BASIS database, HB109 from 2007.