Bring it Back, Make it Wild

by Jim Dexter, Fisheries Chief—Michigan DNR

As a pre-teen in the Detroit area and spending a significant amount of time in Lewiston, I was already a fishing fanatic. I didn’t care what I fished for or where. My neighborhood pals also fished, and we spent hours with our tackle boxes trading lures and plotting our next adventure. We grew up loving being outdoors and fishing. I don’t think any of us knew about stocked fish. Thanks to Mother Nature, we assumed what we caught was supposed to be there.

My affinity for wild things punctuates who I am. As a young boy, I became enamored with wild little brook trout and their stream environments and began a lifelong journey to work managing fisheries. I have been drawn to wild fisheries my entire life and have worked alongside many other passionate professionals to do our best to ensure that they remain, improve, and proliferate.

The Arctic grayling (Thymallus tricolor) was historically found in most coldwater streams north of the knuckles in the Lower Peninsula. The grayling is arguably the most iconic species the state has been known for. When the state was settled in the early 1800s, grayling were king in all the major coldwater rivers. They were there for the taking, an easy target for sport fishing and commercial exploitation, and they were wild.

However, massive deforestation had devastating effects on grayling and their habitats. Coupled with excessive commercial exploitation, grayling disappeared from Michigan’s Lower Peninsula by the 1870s. One lone population remained in the western Upper Peninsula until 1936, yet it is believed that grayling were introduced there.

There is something deeply profound about bringing back a species that for thousands of years called Michigan home. Think about moose and elk as examples, extirpated like grayling and now found wild in the state. Successful recovery efforts also include the Kirtland’s warbler, now off the endangered species list, and the ongoing efforts to recover lake sturgeon throughout the region. These examples all have significant meaning to Michigan residents, who understand the importance of native species in our landscapes.

In 2016, I had a conversation with Troy Zorn, fisheries research biologist at our Marquette station, regarding grayling. Troy’s entire career has centered on stream research regarding coldwater species. He had learned of a successful experiment in Montana with grayling, using in-stream remote site incubators (RSIs) to recover a handful of populations to wild status in Montana. Montana and Michigan are the only two states in the Lower 48 that grayling were native to.

We had a great discussion about Montana’s work and further discussed recent investigations with grayling that the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians had been conducting. We talked extensively about the status of Michigan’s landscape and the watersheds where grayling were historically king. Watershed healing has been progressing over decades. Tremendous improvements are being made with stream connectivity, habitat work with partners, and forestry practices. In my opinion, the time was ripe for another attempt to bring back grayling to Michigan.

Venturing down this path was a difficult decision initially for me. As chief, I knew that this would require additional bandwidth that we didn’t have. Flat budgets, overworked staff, and multiple projects in the queue added up to difficulty. We decided that if we were going to go down this path, it would have to be with community support, multiple partners, outside funding, and many hands pulling in the same direction. Our first move was to engage the Little River Band to partner with us, as we both knew that neither of us could make this happen on our own.

I recall like it was yesterday, meeting with Frank Beaver, natural resources director for the tribe, and a few members of their tribal council. The point of the meeting was to lay out a vision for a “Michigan Arctic Grayling Initiative” in which the Michigan DNR and the tribe would be foundational partners utilizing each other’s knowledge, intuition, research capabilities, and ability to leverage resources.

As I laid out a vision for this initiative, I covered the history of everything done to grayling, their habitats, habitat recovery, and the DNR’s attempt to restore grayling previously. Over the past century, Michigan had tried multiple times to recover grayling, starting in the 1880s and through the early 1990s. Fry, fingerlings, sub-adults, and adult fish were all stocked and failed. As I described the previous attempts, I must have been saying we failed too many times, as one of the council members interrupted and said no, you have been successful. You have learned what not to do.

That was an inspirational moment that nailed it for

me. I knew we had a foundational partnership that would thrive and work our hardest to succeed. In 2017, we held our first public meeting for the Initiative and since have garnered the support of over 40 organizations, universities, government agencies, businesses, and philanthropists.

We know you can’t just stock grayling and walk away and hope they are there years later. Developing the vision took a lot of time and understanding that we were going to be in this for the long haul, which included identifying an appropriate source of eggs, rearing our own broodstock for future egg takes, evaluating RSIs in Michigan’s low-power stream environments, attaining community nominations of watersheds for potential inclusion into the program for future stocking, evaluating streams in those environments for suitability, and conducting research into competition, predation, and homing cues.

Now in our sixth full year, we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Initiative has successfully partnered with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (AK) to obtain the necessary eggs to begin our broodstock. AK has been immensely supportive of our efforts, coordinating egg takes on the Chena River near Fairbanks. This is, of course, a 100% wild population, and outside of the pandemic year 2020, we now have two year classes of wild AK grayling in Michigan facilities. We are hopeful that we will obtain a third year class this coming May.

A quarantine building was constructed with ultraviolet light filtration at Oden State Fish Hatchery to rear grayling to near yearling size and obtain clean health certifications before transferring fish to the Marquette State Fish Hatchery, which is now home to Michigan’s first-ever grayling broodstock.

Research has been conducted on RSI suitability by the Little River Band and Grand Valley State University. While RSIs can work, they present challenges due to the low-gradient tributary streams we would be looking at for rearing grayling. We continue to investigate alternative ways to incubate grayling eggs in tributary streams successfully, which will allow them to home back to these sites for reproduction. This work is currently ongoing at Marquette State Fish Hatchery in conjunction with Northern Michigan University.

Extensive evaluations of potential receiving waters have been conducted and are continuing. The Manistee River Watershed is complete, as is the Boardman and Maple River watersheds. All three of these watershed investigations have been worked on by our tribal partners—the Little River Band, Grand Traverse Band, and Little Traverse Band of Ottawa Indians. Our university partners have played an increasingly important role in these investigations. Stream investigations continue on the Jordan River, and we are seeking to queue up future research in the upper Au Sable watershed.

Once all watershed investigations are completed, the partnership will go through a process to evaluate every tributary for meeting suitability metrics for egg, fry, and fingerling survival. Decisions will be made for where a limited number of eggs can be stocked for the best chance of success. We have no idea where this will go at the moment. We may have enough eggs to do several streams, but will that also extend to a number of watersheds? We simply don’t know yet, but we do understand that we have to be very selective to provide the best chance of success.

Research at Michigan State University is wrapping up. We have learned a tremendous amount about the interactions of grayling as both fry and fingerlings with brown and brook trout. This work will provide a fine point to help steer our future stream selections.

The Michigan Arctic Grayling Initiative has made great progress. As the saying goes, good wine takes time. This initiative is no different. We expect enough eggs to begin introductions, perhaps as soon as 2024, but most likely 2025. Our goal is not to create a perpetual stocking program but to slip this species back into some of its home waters and end up with wild grayling populations. Populations that Michigan’s citizens can enjoy fishing for knowing that they are just there, back home again.

I can’t say enough about the strength and support of our partners. The Initiative has brought in nearly $750,000 in donations and grant support to date. Thanks to this program, four master’s students, one post-doctoral, and one Ph.D. are in progress or completed. This is your program, and the DNR and the Little River Band are your conduits to making it successful. A tremendous amount of gratitude goes to our supporters, including the Henry E. and Consuelo S. Wenger Foundation, Consumers Energy Foundation, Rotary Charities of Traverse City, The Frey Foundation, Trout Unlimited, various watershed councils, and many private donations from small businesses and private individuals.

The Petoskey-Harbor Springs Community Foundation is the Initiative’s fiduciary. www.phsacf.org Please visit www. MIGrayling.org for more information on this initiative.

J.A.Henry

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