An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World
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Anders Halverson provides an exhaustively researched and grippingly rendered account of the rainbow trout and why it has become the most commonly stocked and controversial freshwater fish in the United States. Discovered in the remote waters of northern California, rainbow trout have been artificially propagated and distributed for more than 130 years by government officials eager to present Americans with an opportunity to get back to nature by going fishing. Proudly dubbed “an entirely synthetic fish” by fisheries managers, the rainbow trout has been introduced into every state and province in the United States and Canada and to every continent except Antarctica, often with devastating effects on the native fauna. Halverson examines the paradoxes and reveals a range of characters, from nineteenth-century boosters who believed rainbows could be the saviors of democracy to twenty-first-century biologists who now seek to eradicate them from waters around the globe. Ultimately, the story of the rainbow trout is the story of our relationship with the natural world—how it has changed and how it startlingly has not. The Washington Post - Ken Ringle …history, as we know but seldom remember, is often about unintended consequences, and few better examples can be cited than the story told in An Entirely Synthetic Fish, Anders Halverson's chronicle of how our best-intentioned efforts to widen and democratize the sport of trout fishing compromised mountain streams and lakes in often subtle but disturbing ways…Yet this is not one of those whiny, hand-wringing catalogs of environmental gloom and doom. With prose as engaging as it is thoughtful, Halverson has crafted an absorbing cautionary tale of ecological trial and error, documenting our tardy but increasing understanding of biological interdependence and its immeasurable value.
Foreword Patricia Nelson Limerick Limerick, Patricia Nelson1 A Less Bold and Spirited Nation 12 Essentially a National Matter 123 Let the Best Fish Win 284 As Many Different States as Possible 365 A New Variety of Trout 486 Define Me a Gentleman 587 Paying Customers and Hatchery Product 768 A Full-Scale Military Operation 949 Money Makes a Way 11410 The Way of the Passenger Pigeon 12911 A Single New Mongrel Species 14512 It Doesn't Do Any Good 165Epilogue The Last Generation of Troutfishers 184Notes 189Bibliography 211Index 245
