Brook Trout Outcome:Factors Influencing Progress

To ensure state and local officials make land-use decisions with brook trout habitat in mind, we must teach them about the importance of and issues facing brook trout populations and engage them in habitat restoration and conservation work.

• Improved coordination and communication among states, nongovernmental organizations and Chesapeake Bay Program Brook Trout Action Team members will identify opportunities for habitat restoration and improve the reporting of related monitoring data.
• Conservation practitioners will need coordinated training in the use of brook trout decision-support tools if these tools are to guide their conservation and restoration work.

• Habitat stressors. While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service and academic institutions across the watershed conduct research that will inform habitat conservation, a better understanding of brook trout habitat stressors (including acid mine drainage and climate change), brook trout population genetics and spatially explicit links between stressors and populations is needed to improve our conservation and restoration decisions.
• Monitoring. While states and non-governmental organizations monitor streams occupied by brook trout, additional monitoring to support the annual reporting of brook trout occupancy and to highlight correlations between the restoration of brook trout habitat and improvements in the health of brook trout populations is needed.
• Refinement of available decision-support tools. Incorporating information about brook trout population genetics into decision-support tools could improve conservation and restoration decisions.