Short-Term Movement and Survival of Resident Brown Trout in Response to Instream Habitat Manipulation

Austin G Galinat, Jacob L Davi

Abstract

While long-term impacts to local fish populations in response to habitat work has been researched extensively, impacts to populations during the actual implementation of projects is poorly understood. During this study, fish movement and survival was quantified pre-, during- and post-construction period of an instream habitat manipulation project involving placement of boulders and large-woody debris. Twenty Brown Trout Salmo trutta were implanted with radio transmitters during November of 2015 and located for a period of 13 weeks. Our results indicated that fish moved significantly less post-construction than pre-construction. Additionally, survival was 100% for known-fate fish. This work illustrates that actual installation of instream habitat had little to no impact on the resident fish population.