I was delighted to read this superb piece.  One small but important correction:  Rotenone is not a “biocide.”  That word was invented by Rachel Carson to describe DDT and its relatives--poisons that magnify in the food chain and kill pests along with everything else--i.e., the biota.  Rotenone is the exact opposite--a safe, extremely short-lived, relatively selective piscicide that has been used for 90 years in fisheries management without a single recorded injury to humans and no lasting damage to any nontarget population.  In most cases it is the only available tool for the salvation of native fish afflicted by alien introductions.  Rotenone does kill non-target individuals such as other fish, aquatic insects and (rarely) larval frogs, but non-target populations bounce right back and often in greater numbers because they no longer are preyed upon by aliens.  As conservation editor for Fly Rod & Reel magazine I was assigned to cover the demise of New York’s heritage trout in a piece entitled “Environmentalists vs. Native Trout.” 

http://www.flyrodreel.com/magazine/2004/april/environmentalists-native

It grieves me to report that a major obstacle to heritage trout restoration in New York has been the Adirondack Council which doesn’t like rotenone because it has not bothered to learn about it.  Log onto its web site, and you'll get hollered at by a loon. Loons are a symbol of wilderness, but the wild brook trout loons depend on aren't -- at least not to the council, which doesn't see or hear them. Nor do wild brook trout count as part of the "natural community" the council is pledged to defend. The council rails against helicopter and motorboat use by DEC trout managers and says it wants them "to follow the same wilderness rules as the public." It says it finds the practice of reclaiming ponds with rotenone "offensive" and wants it banned and, in fact, has gotten it banned in many situations.

When I interviewed the council’s communications director, John Sheehan, he repeated all the standard wives' tales about rotenone. For example: "There appears to be a relationship between rotenone use and Parkinson's disease." And: "Rotenone essentially kills everything that breathes with gills."  When rotenone was mainlined into rats’ brains at something like 100,000 times the concentration used in fisheries management it caused Parkinson’s-like symptoms, not Parkinson’s.  And rotenone clearly does not kill everything (or even most things) that breathe with gills.  The council’s argument--repeatedly expressed to me--that heritage trout recovery is merely about fishing is as illogical as claiming that peregrine falcon restoration is merely about birding.