53 many cases, this practice is important to the health of the river and the balance of the ecosystem. In the mid to late 1990s, Illinoisan biologists observed that despite the relative hardiness of the northern strain of largemouth bass in the Chain O’ Lakes, their numbers were dropping as the smaller yellow bass, another native species which reproduces in much larger numbers, outcompeted them for resources.2 They started to revitalize the population by stocking 65,000 fingerling bass, all branded with a black spot. The next year, they would net some of the fish and record what percentage of the population came from stocked fish to see how well the bass were spawning naturally, with the hope that one day they would be able to stop stocking. Though the problem has not been resolved yet, this effort has improved the situation drastically, with only 25,000 northern largemouth bass being stocked in 2021 and 17,000 in 2022.3 There are many situations, however, where stocking fish can be highly detrimental to the ecology of the body of water. Many of the high altitude or backcountry lakes chosen for recreational trout stocking in the western part of the United States (including the Klamath mountains of northern California) in the late 1800s had no fish in them at all prior to the introduction of the trout. Instead, these lakes had large populations of invertebrates and frogs, populations devastated by the sudden introduction of a predator they had no protection against.4 Though there have been no species devastation events similar to this in the Fox River as of now, there catastrophic effects could very easily be replicated if the wrong population of fish is suddenly elevated due to stocking. Finally, there are the most complicated cases, where species were introduced to solve an important ecological problem (not just for recreational purposes) yet ended up creating a whole new 2 Stanek, Steve. “Stocking Fish Is Going Swimmingly: By Branding and Stocking Bass on the Chain o' Lakes, Outdoor Enthusiasts and Biologists Are Improving Fishing and the Environment.” Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1997. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2278441343. 3 “FOX CHAIN O LAKES.” Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Accessed November 12, 2022. https://www.ifishillinois.org/profiles/waterbody.php?waternum=00080. 4 MacDonald, James. “The Dark Side of Fish Stocking,” JSTOR Daily, March 12, 2018. https://daily.jstor.org/fishstocking-the-dark-underbelly-of-resource-management/.
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