The off-again, on-again program to treat Strawberry Reservoir to remove unwanted fish appears to be on again.
According to Bruce Schmidt, fisheries chief for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, "It looks like we'll be able to do it next August. It's looking really good."The division will need about 1 million pounds of the natural chemical rotenone to treat the reservoir, located about 25 miles southeast of Heber. That, said Schmidt, accounts for about one-fourth of the world's annual production.
Suppliers now say they can provide that much rotenone, he said.
"We should know within a couple of weeks. First we have to sign agreements with the Bureau of Reclamation, the National Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And then we have to sign a contract with the suppliers."
Rotenone is produced from the roots of a plant native to South America. Plans to treat Strawberry Reservoir in 1988 and this year were canceled when terrorism, drug wars and economic problems reduced harvests.
"This summer, terrorist and drug-smuggling activity declined in the remote area of Peru where rotenone root is found. That, coupled with crop failures brought on by a drought in the area, forced laborers into the jungle to harvest rotenone root," he said.
Strawberry was once considered the top trout fishery in northern Utah. But chubs and suckers now account for 95 percent of the fish in the man-made lake.
Treatment would wipe out "more than 95 percent of the fish in Strawberry," Schmidt said. The division then would plant Bonneville cutthroat trout and kokanee in the lake.
"The Bonneville cutthroat are a predatory trout, and they would eat young chubs or suckers. And kokanee are very aggressive competitors for forage, and they would out compete trash fish for feed," he said.
"Another advantage to planting these two species in Strawberry is that Bonneville cutthroat spawn in the spring and the kokanee spawn in the fall, so we would have significant natural reproduction."
The division also would plant sterilized rainbow trout in the reservoir, to increase fishing opportunities. The cutthroat and rainbow then would not be able to interbreed, keeping the Bonneville cutthroat strain pure.
Last week, the DWR completed treatment of Steinaker Reservoir to rid it of trash fish. On Wednesday, the DWR hopes to treat Otter Creek.
Crews said they believed most of the bluegill, green sunfish, walleye and white suckers were killed.
Before the project, the division removed about 300 adult bass from Steinaker, and those fish will be returned to the reservoir, around Thanksgiving Day, once the rotenone detoxifies.
In December, the division plans to transplant about 25,000 fingerling rainbow trout.