ABSTRACT:
Fisheries habitat and fisheries response were compared on an area protected from grazing for 11 years and on adjacent, heavily grazed areas of similar structural and riparian character. Prohibiting grazing dramatically improved riparian vegetation, streambanks, and stream channel conditions. But this improvement was countered by off-site, upstream influences and on-site, instream improvement structures that functioned as fine sediment traps. Fish populations did not respond to improving habitat conditions because the relatively small size of the livestock exclosure did not reduce incoming, limiting influences created by upstream conditions and the artificial nature of the fishery.
Footnotes
William S. Platts is a research fishery biologist and Rodger Loren Nelson is a biological technician with the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Boise, Idaho 83702.
- Copyright 1985 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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