With the first full weekend of summer upon us, Trout Unlimited today launched TroutBlitz, a citizen-science initiative aimed at enlisting everyday anglers to help the organization catalog and map healthy populations of wild and native trout all across North America. And all anglers need to do is go fishing.
“This is a great new effort for TU, and we’re all very excited to get everyday anglers involved in helping us identify populations of wild and native trout in North America,” said Jack Williams, TU’s senior scientist. “We’re asking all anglers—not just TU members—to be a part of TroutBlitz and use the simple interface to upload photos and locations to our project site. By sharing this information, anglers can help us identify healthy populations of native trout and help us understand where non-native trout have been introduced over the years.”
The applications are virtually endless for TU and it will compliment many existing scientific efforts, Williams noted. Not only can TroutBlitz participants help TU identify native and wild trout populations by using the TroutBlitz interface, they can help the organization identify intact watersheds, important tracts of intact habitat and waters that could benefit from restoration work, reconnection efforts or even native fish reintroduction efforts.
“The data could be very important on a number of fronts,” Williams said. “Anglers can help us flesh out our understanding of native trout ranges across the continent, and they can help us better understand the proliferation of non-native trout, as well. Additionally, we can use their help in locating previously unknown populations of rare native fish, like bull trout or grayling. And to help, all they need to do is go fishing.”
Trout Blitz Fish Handling from Trout Unlimited on Vimeo.
