The irony is the biggest proponent over the years or planting non-native fish are state and federal fisheries entities. From the beginning they brought us the common carp, and used to plant lots of different species just about everywhere via railroad car with no concern of the effects on the native populations. Now they seem to be trying to reverse that when the barn door is already open in many cases.
And they can contradict themselves at times. For example a near by lake chain in my area used to have a nice trophy brown trout fishery due to the presence of smelt that were illegally introduced and were thriving and reproducing. However, due to the introduction of lake trout by the state, in this small lake chain, that are ferocious consumers of smelt and have even known to deplete them in smaller bodies of water, and smelt go in cycles -- the smelt are now gone. I put together a proposal to reintroduce them in conjunction with a trout association, but was told absolutely not as they are an exotic species. Never mind they are still planting rainbow and brown trout, which last I knew are also exotic species. But that's O.K. I guess. LOL
