The AAT curriculum was developed by participating Adopt-A-Trout teachers and staff from The Blackfoot Challenge and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
Through the AAT, students will learn about a wide variety of topics from fish identification to radio telemetry. The following topics will be covered during the program, through field experiences, discussions with fisheries biologists, background information you share with your students, web site use, and curriculum activities:
- Fish species native to western Montana
- Reasons that native fish are important
- Habitat needs of native fish
- Non-native fish species in western Montana
- Reasons that non-native, invasive fish species are a problem
- Reasons fish migrate
- Advantages and disadvantages to migrating
- Reasons that fish return to the stream in which they were reared to spawn
- How Milltown Dam and other dams affect fish
- The legal status of bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout in Montana
- Factors that led to these fish being given this status
- What radio telemetry is
- Kinds of information biologists can gather using radio telemetry
- What Fish, Wildlife and Parks and other people are doing to help native fish