The Crown of the Continent Research Learning Center periodically invites both resident and visiting scientists to share their research in an open forum at Glacier National Park headquarters. These brown bag lectures highlight the science and research conducted in the park, and give the public an opportunity to interact with park scientists and resource managers.

These lectures are always free and open to the public.

Upcoming Brown Bag Lectures:

NPS

As hybridization becomes more common in Glacier National Park, it is becoming more difficult to identify native trout from their invasive cousins.

Rainbows vs. Natives:
It's a Cutthroat Competition!
Wednesday, April 29
12:00-1:00PM
Glacier National Park Community Building

And the cutthroats are losing! Rainbow trout, a popular sport fish, have been widely introduced into new waters. Biologists worry that mixing rainbow genes into native trout populations not only result in the loss of genetically pure trout but will undermine the natives' long-standing adaptations to the environment.

This loss of biodiversity poses difficult conservation questions for those making policy management decisions. Dr. Clint Muhlfeld, a U.S. Geological Survey Aquatic Ecologist at Glacier National Park, will present an overview of the evolutionary and ecological consequences of hybridization on Montana's state fish, the westslope cutthroat trout, based on ten years of research in the Flathead River system and Glacier National Park.

If it looks like a cutthroat trout and swims like a cutthroat trout...it may not be a cutthroat trout!

For more information about this research, please visit: http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/staff/muhlfeld

As always, these brown bag lectures are free and open to the public!