Montana Fish and Game Department

The Montana Fish and Game Department is presented as both a participant in a post-spraying investigation and a forceful advocate for protecting Montana’s sport fisheries. Its response to the DDT treatment of forest land illustrates a conflict between pest-control programs and the ecological resources those programs were supposed to manage: after evidence indicated serious danger to fish, the Department opposed further spraying while offering to cooperate on ways to limit its effects.

Role and investigative work

A cooperative study began in 1956, involving the Montana Fish and Game Department, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Forest Service. The need for an investigation was sharpened by the scale of treatment: 900,000 acres in Montana were sprayed that year, and another 800,000 acres in 1957. The biologists consequently had ample treated areas in which to examine the consequences.

The Department’s role in this study was practical as well as institutional. Rather than treating the claim that one pound of DDT per acre was safe as sufficient assurance, the investigators followed the pattern of fish deaths associated with spraying. The book connects the threat to DDT stored in bodily tissues: during physiological stress, fish draw on stored fat for energy, exposing themselves to the pesticide’s lethal effects. The findings thus made the acreage-wide program legible not simply as an intervention against forest pests but as a hazard carried into forest streams and through the lives of fish.

Opposition to further spraying

The study’s implications were especially troubling because the target had not been brought under control. Even at a rate of one pound of DDT per acre, spraying posed a serious threat to fish, while budworm control had not been achieved and many areas were scheduled to be sprayed again. The prospect of repeating a treatment that endangered fish without delivering its stated result turned the problem from a single exposure into an impending policy choice.

The Montana Fish and Game Department registered strong opposition to any further spraying. It stated that it was “not willing to compromise the sport fishery resource for programs of questionable necessity and doubtful success.” The wording makes the dispute one of both ecological cost and evidential justification: the fishery was a resource worth defending, while the necessity and effectiveness of the control program remained uncertain. The Department did not reject cooperation altogether, however. It said it would continue working with the Forest Service “in determining ways to minimize adverse effects.” Its position therefore combined a clear refusal to accept the existing risk with a willingness to pursue less damaging approaches.

Significance

The Department’s response marks a shift from monitoring the consequences of a large-scale chemical program to challenging its continuation. Its participation in a cooperative study produced evidence that could be brought to bear on decisions about additional spraying; its subsequent opposition put the survival of fish and the value of the sport fishery against a program whose success was in doubt. The Department’s continued willingness to work with the Forest Service also distinguishes opposition to harmful practice from refusal to engage in management: the stated aim was to reduce adverse effects, not to abandon practical discussion.

In the book’s wider account of pesticide use, this case shows how the consequences of forest spraying could reach beyond its intended target and undermine another public resource. The Department’s position gives institutional expression to that contradiction: a program conducted in the name of control threatened fish, yet had not controlled the budworm. Its warning rested on a concrete local record of extensive treatment, observed mortality, and planned respraying, rather than on an abstract objection to chemical intervention.