According to Twin Cities news organisation, the DNR had made a potentially devastating error. The state agency charged with protecting Minnesota's multibillion-dollar fishing industry from diseases allowed a virus potentially dangerous to fish into the state last year.
Twin Cities reports that, as of Last May, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources mistakenly approved a shipment of 2,000 rainbow trout from Wisconsin to a rural Cloquet man, who legally purchased them and put them into his private pond.
But soon after the stocking, DNR officials told Teberg his trout came from a Wisconsin fish hatchery that had tested positive for a contagious fish virus called infectious pancreatic necrosis (IPN), which had never been found in Minnesota.
The virus isn't dangerous to humans, but it can be fatal to trout and salmon.
Realizing their mistake, DNR officials told Teberg they would net and kill every trout in his pond. The agency spent $11,000 in taxpayer money to "depopulate" the pond, test the fish and bury many of them in Teberg's pasture.
Fish Virus Slips Through Minnesota's Net
US - The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) allowed 2,000 trout to be imported from Wisconsin to stock a rural Cloquet man's private pond. But the source hatchery had a contagious fish virus not found in Minnesota.
