Shortly after World War II, California fish managers had a brainstorm: They loaded juvenile trout into airplanes and saturation-bombed naturally fishless lakes in the High Sierra Mountains of California. Some of the fish hit rocks and ice, but most hit water.

Gorging on zooplankton, insects and two kinds of mountain yellow-legged frogs, the alien invaders unraveled aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, often in designated wilderness.

In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed both groups of frog as endangered, prompting aggressive action by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The agency plan called for eradicating trout in 110 lakes, though trout would remain in 465 park lakes and hundreds of stream miles, leaving plenty of fishing opportunity.

Gillnets would be used where possible. But in 33 lakes, the only option was rotenone, a short-lived, organic fish poison derived from plant roots and applied at 100 parts per billion. In modern fisheries management, rotenone has never been seen to permanently affect a native ecosystem except to restore it. For centuries, Indigenous peoples have used high concentrations to kill fish for consumption. Rotenone only affects gill tissue.

But as early as 2008, numerous anglers, media and local politicians were throwing hissy fits about an effort to protect mountain yellow-legged frogs merely by suspending trout stocking in 175 waters within national forests.

“If the yellow-legged frog disappears, would anyone notice? Seriously. Does anyone really care?” editorialized Feather Publishing in its six newspapers. And Terry Swofford, chair of the Plumas County Board of Supervisors, declared, “To me, this is just another way of destroying our economy.”

When the environmental review process for frog recovery in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks was completed in 2016, it generated plenty of support from environmental and angling communities. But there was still opposition.

Leading the charge against frog recovery via rotenone, and even gillnets, was the environmental group Wilderness Watch. “Poison has no place in wilderness,” it proclaims, wherever rotenone treatments are planned in wilderness.

But the Wilderness Act explicitly provides for the use of poisons to eradicate alien species. Federal permits are routinely issued.

Still, many opponents echoed Wilderness Watch’s false assertion that rotenone is “linked” to Parkinson’s disease. The myth derives from an Emory University study designed to create Parkinson’s-like symptoms, not the disease itself. Concentrated rotenone was pumped into rats’ veins for five weeks. No rat developed the disease, just Parkinson’s-like tremors.

Elsewhere in the Sierra, Wilderness Watch had litigated against, and dangerously delayed, rotenone treatment to save native Paiute cutthroat trout that were being hybridized off the planet by alien rainbow trout. Rotenone, it had testified, might harm mountain yellow-legged frogs — which don’t even exist in Paiute-cutthroat habitat.

After 2016, the opposition fell silent, and in 16 lakes cleared of trout with gillnets, ecosystems reawakened. Before eradication, surveys of two lakes revealed 134 mountain yellow-legged frogs and 53 tadpoles.

Just three years later, there were 4,000 frogs and 14,800 tadpoles.

“Once insects and frogs explode, everything reacts,” said Danny Boiano, the parks’ supervisory ecologist. In all 16 gillnetted lakes, he and aquatic ecologist Laura Van Vranken report spectacular recovery of frogs as well as frog predators such as coyotes, couch’s and mountain garter snakes, and northern water shrews. They’re seeing huge hatches of aquatic insects along with a resurgence of birds.

Ralph Cutter, who runs a guide service and fly-fishing school, understands what’s at stake even though his livelihood depends on the alien trout. His message: “I would much rather leave a legacy of as natural an ecosystem as possible, rather than an artificial and synthetic landscape designed for the amusement of certain enthusiasts — including myself.”

He added that the “Sierra should not be managed like a pee-wee golf course.” And this from the Native Fish Society: “Each high-mountain lake is a beautiful and unique place and is appreciated for what it is. Why treat them like amusement parks?”

Still, some anglers remain ecologically challenged, knifing float tubes and removing and damaging gillnets.

Rotenone use will begin shortly in 33 lakes. “Our first treatments may rekindle angst, so we’ll need to continue with educational efforts,” said ecologist Boiano. With rotenone, there’s always a fight.

Ted Williams, an avid trout angler, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that seeks to spur lively conversation about the West. He writes about fish and wildlife for national publications.

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She was one of some 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry who were forcibly imprisoned during World War II, a time when racist fears swept the country.

After traveling in a railroad car from the West Coast, Tanigoshi and her family arrived at a prison camp close to Kansas that became known as Amache. The military-style barracks were laid out on a barren landscape in lightly populated eastern Colorado. It was one of 10 such prisons hastily erected in America during the 1940s.

Now, thanks to a bill that passed the House and is now before the Senate, there’s a good chance that Amache will become a new national historical park, telling its story of mass hysteria, hardship and survival.

Tanigoshi, who I met at Amache recently, said that the people imprisoned were patriotic Americans, and after men in the local town of Granada joined the military and labor became scarce, camp prisoners filled in at harvest time, mostly as volunteers. The need to harvest the main crop of sugar beets set the stage for camp residents and locals to trust each other. 

Once Amache Director James Lindley got to know the incarcerated families, he began to relax restrictions, opening the door for a new community to form. Teachers were allowed to move into the camp to be closer to their students. He also allowed internees to work at other jobs in Granada, one mile away, and permitted camp residents to go to town for social activities such as seeing a movie or going to a soda fountain. According to reports told of the camp, Amache was humanely run, the place internees in other camps wanted to transfer into.

Living conditions, however, were grim for the approximately 7,000 people who were never allowed to protest their incarceration. Still, 441 men from the camp served in our military during World War II.

When the camp was closed after three years, its origin story was mostly neglected. But in 1993, Granada High School teacher John Hopper asked his students if they’d like to do some volunteer work, helping to restore the camp’s water tower and signs and any structures that remained standing. The students were enthusiastic, he said in an interview, and so began the Amache Preservation Society that continues to maintain the site today, along with other volunteer groups.

“Generations of kids and their parents have worked to keep Amache’s history alive,” said Hopper, who is now school principal. “Students travel all over, including Japan, to tell the story of how the camp came to be and what it was like.”

Another frequent visitor is Bonnie Clark, archaeologist at Denver University. Since 2008, she and her team, some descendants of internees, have been researching life at the camp.

When I visited the camp and its museum, one of her team, Greg Kitajima, showed me butterflies made from tiny seashells that his mother made when she was an internee.  The layered shells give shape to the insect forms; the pastel stripes of the shells add delicate color to the shapes.  Greg also tells me stories he heard from his grandparents, strawberry farmers in San Jose, California, who suffered severe discrimination as war fever swept through America. They, too, were sent to Amache. His eyes well up as he shares the memories.  It is painful to hear. My eyes tear up, too.

I believe that the move by four Colorado Congressmen to designate Amache a national historic site is one that can bring us together. This place of deprivation, yet community, needs to be preserved.

Late in the day, when I’m walking around the camp’s recreation hall, bunkhouse and a guard tower, the setting sun mellows the landscape. I think about what Greg told me, about how his family feels linked to this place. They were people who made the best of a bad situation – the best they could.

Amache’s power is that it invites us to listen and learn from the past, to renew our sense of humanity. Perhaps Amache can help to heal our nation’s troubled soul.

Paul Zaenger is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He was a supervisory park ranger who recently retired after 40 years in the National Park Service.

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