Budget decision will reduce trout stocking for next 3-5 years
By Guy Page
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department has proposed closing the Salisbury Fish Culture Station (hatchery) as part of a larger package of changes in the department that reflect the available budget for Fiscal Year 2025.
“This is not a proposal the department considered lightly,” Joshua Morse, Public Information Officer of Fish and Wildlife told VDC.
The Salisbury hatchery, located seven miles south of Middlebury, currently houses Vermont’s “broodstock” trout, the mature trout who produce eggs for the state’s other hatcheries. Closing the Salisbury hatchery will have impacts for Vermont anglers. Department staff are investigating ways to minimize these effects.
Specifically, Morse said, the closure of the Salisbury hatchery will reduce Vermont’s ability to produce trout for stocking state-wide and for special programs like trophy stocking over the next three to five years as this production is transferred to other Vermont hatcheries. The department’s ability to support conservation programs like Trout in the Classroom, provide fish for the Children’s Fishing Program, and provide eggs to independent hatcheries will also be impacted in the near-term.
The department will be transitioning all four full-time positions that currently operate the Salisbury hatchery to other roles within the department so that neither staff nor the positions are lost.
The Salisbury facility uses light-controlled rooms to fool the fish into spawning earlier in the year than normal. This gives the other hatcheries more time to grow the fish, resulting in larger fish and improved survival when stocked.
Because Salisbury is the broodstock station, it is home to the biggest fish of the hatchery program. “So if you want to see some monster fish up close, this is the place to visit,” the F&W website says.
The Salisbury hatchery began raising fish in 1931 and is one of Vermont’s historic hatcheries, listed on the National Register of Historic Sites. Vermont’s “broodstock station” produces nine million trout eggs annually for other state and federal fish hatcheries.
The state’s first fish hatchery was established in Roxbury in 1891. It is still in operation. A system of U.S. fish hatcheries began in the 1870’s.
A change.org petition in 2019 collected more than 3,000 signatures to keep the Salisbury site open.