Wednesday January 29, 2025
KPVI —
In the fall of 2018, officials with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and their partners celebrated what they thought was a milestone: an end to the infestation of invasive northern pike in the Kenai Peninsula.
Their laborious program – they thought – had ridden the peninsula of the salmon-gobbling species that has wreaked havoc on the natural runs that are important to commercial and sport fishers, as well as to the overall ecological system.
“We were all excited, you know. We spent, like, 15 years eradicating them off the peninsula. it was like this big, monumental moment,” said Kristine Dunker, a biologist who coordinates the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s program addressing invasive northern pike.
The celebration proved short-lived.
A week later, Fish and Game officials got a report from an angler who was fishing in a remote lake on the northern part of the peninsula. The angler, who went to a site in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge called Vogel Lake, said he had caught a northern pike there. Fish and Game officials, armed with nets, came to Vogel Lake the following spring and confirmed that invasive pike were in the lake.