State of Our Trout Part II

His department needs it to fix a major setback. Brown trout have reappeared in the Upper West Fork of the Gila River, thought to have been cleansed of aliens in 2006. The recovery team was set to go in again with antimycin when word came from Arizona that antimycin had lost its kick. The single supplier, Nick Romeo, had died; and his contractors had apparently let water contaminate the formulation. 

So Propst had to ask the Water Quality Control Commission to amend its order so that he could use rotenone. He figured this wouldn’t be a problem because the commission had just okay-ed rotenone in Rio Grande cutthroat recovery. But, on the strength of McCampbell’s junk science, it concluded that rotenone might somehow be more dangerous in Gila-trout water than in Rio Grande cutt water and scheduled a new public hearing for May 28, 2008. Propst, who never seems to run out of energy and optimism, sounded dispirited when I talked to him on May 14.  

But on May 29, he told me he was “feeling a whole lot better.” McCampbell had missed the filing deadline and could only testify by a letter containing her boilerplate rants. Propst had been out the door before noon with the blessing of the hearing officer. And in August the Water Quality Control Commission granted him permission to renovate the Upper West Fork with rotenone.  

There’s still lots of work to be done, particularly in Arizona, but Gila trout are well on their way to recovery. In 1970 these fish barely survived in about 12 miles of stream in four drainages. At this writing, they’re secure in about 78 miles in 13 drainages; and when the Upper West Fork of the Gila is reclaimed probably this year, the sanctuary will have expanded to 95 miles in 15 drainages.Game and fish opened two Gila streams to angling in the summer of 2007. One is no-kill. The other, because its fish are slightly introgressed, has a two-fish daily limit. (Comparison will provide important data on what kind of fishing pressure Gila trout can withstand.) On July 1, 2008, the department allowed catch-and-release on the lower part of Mogollon Creek, a showcase for the project because it grows 14-inch fish. With no advertising, the department got 170 anglers to file for its 2007 Gila-trout stamp (free but required so that it can collect creel census data).

Rio Grande Cutthroat

The Rio Grande cutthroat trout (New Mexico’s state fish) has been extirpated from 90 percent of its historic range. It used to occupy the tributaries of the Rio Grande at elevations of 7,500 and higher. Now most populations have been pushed up to at least 8,250 feet. Of the 120 surviving significant natural populations, 112 exist as genetically isolated fragments.  

Because 38 percent of Rio Grande cutthroat trout populations share habitat with non-native trout, aggressive piscicide treatments are desperately needed. But recovery stalled in 2005 when chemophobes got the Game Commission to revoke the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish’s authority to use rotenone and antimycin.  

“The Rio Grande Cutthroat is not an endangered species but is a popular sport species among fishermen,” proclaimed the group Wilderness Watch. “It is both sad and ironic that it was Aldo Leopold who convinced the Forest Service to protect the Gila as our nation’s first wilderness in the 1930s. Now, it is in danger of being converted to a fish farm for recreationists.”  

It was also Aldo Leopold who wrote: “If education really educates, there will, in time, be more and more citizens who understand that relics of the old West add meaning and value to the new.”  

One might suppose that an outfit with a name like “Wilderness Watch” might know about the work of Leopold, the father of wilderness, or at least be vaguely familiar with the language of the Wilderness Act, which, because of Leopold, provides for precisely the kind of replacement of wilderness parts the Rio Grande cutthroat recovery team is implementing. But no.