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Mule Train: Next Step In Saving Rare Trout From Wildfire, Extinction

WESTCLIFFE, Colo. (CBS4) -- Colorado wildlife officials continued their efforts to save a Colorado fish from extinction last week. Two thousand young cutthroat trout were packed into steel canisters and placed on the backs of mules for the trek to their new home in Cottonwood Creek on July 1.

"This is a throwback," said Bill Vogrin of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife. "The first fish brought into Colorado were brought by horseback."

Mule Team Trout 1 (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bill Vogrin)
Justin Krall, a District Wildlife Manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, rides his mule Speedy as mule Jenny follows carrying saddle tanks with about 2,000 rare Hayden Creek cutthroat trout. (credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife)

These are special cutthroats, the recipients of no small effort to keep the species alive after it was thought to be lost forever.

Mule Team Trout 3 (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bill Vogrin)
(credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife)

The rare cutthroats were first discovered in 1889 by ichthyologist David Starr Jordan. He collected of pair of the trout from Twin Lakes near Leadville for evaluation. Turns out they were genetically unique, and those two fish reside today at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

Within a few decades, they were believed extinct.

It wasn't until 1996 that biologists were shocked to discover a trout that shared the same genetics. It was found in Hayden Creek, almost 100 miles south of Leadville, a small waterway running east from the Sangre De Cristo mountains toward the town of Coaldale.

This, the species's only home, is the same area that saw a lightning strike start a 16,000-acre wildfire in 2016.

hayden-creek-fire-1-fremont-county-so-fb1
( credit - Facebook/Fremont County Sheriff's Office)

As residents raced out of the area with their belongings, firefighters sprinted in -- followed closely by a group of volunteers intent on saving fish from the fire.

They came out with 158 of the trout. Those fish left behind predictably did not survive the subsequent sludge of ash washed by rainfall from the fire area's hillsides.

Hayden Fire Trout 1 (from CPW)
A rare cutthroat trout after it was rescued from the South Prong of Hayden Creek on July 20, 2016, by Colorado Parks and Wildlife staff and U.S. Forest Service volunteers who went behind fire lines to save nearly 200 of the unique fish. ( credit: Colorado Parks & Wildlife)

Thirty-six of those survivors went immediately to Newlin Creek south of Florence. Those fish did not survive drought the following year.

The remaining cutthroats, however, were housed at the Roaring Judy Hatchery near Crested Butte. In a credit to the facility's staff, the wild fish were nursed back to health and encouraged to spawn.

Hayden Fire Trout 3 (from CPW)
CPW's Seth Firestone, manager of the Roaring Judy Hatchery north of Gunnison, counts fertilized eggs after recent spawning efforts of the 158 rescued greenback trout from the South Prong of Hayden Creek. ( credit - Colorado Parks & Wildlife)

 

Mule Team Trout 5 (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bill Vogrin)
Josh Nehring, CPW senior aquatic biologist, reaches into a bag of rare Hayden Creek cutthroat trout to return the fish to the wild whitewater of Cottonwood Creek. (credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife)

It's their offspring that were hauled uphill last week.

Mule Team Trout 6 (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bill Vogrin)
(credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife)

"In creeks like this, really steep (trail)," CPW's Vogrin said, "we were able to put 2,000 fish on each mule. That saved us a ton of manpower."

The mules took the longest stretch of trail, allowing the fish to be transplanted six miles up the drainage.

Mule Team Trout 4 (Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Bill Vogrin)
(credit: Colorado Parks and Wildlife)

This won't be the last operation of its kind.

"We are looking at several streams in the Arkansas basin where these fish could be introduced," said Josh Nehring, CPW senior aquatic biologist. "Spreading them across the region makes them less vulnerable to extinction due to an isolated catastrophic fire or flood event."

Breeding greenback cutthroat trout
LEADVILLE, CO - AUGUST 26: Now that a DNA mystery has been solved to verify the identity of Colorado's state fish, the state is trying to bring these greenback cutthroat trout back from the brink of extinction by breeding them in tanks at the Leadville Fish Hatchery, August 26, 2014. Ed Stege the manager of the Leadville hatchery, which dates to the 1880s located above 10,000 feet elevation, said the hatchery seems to be a good breeding ground with colder water similar to the conditions where the greenback cutthroat trout evolved. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Colorado's greenback cutthroat, the state fish, is undergoing similar redistribution. The fish was thought to be extinct in the 1950s but was discovered in a section of Bear Creek southwest of Colorado Springs in 2012.

CBS4's Matt Kroschel accompanied a group relocating a fresh batch of greenback cutthroats to their new home in Herman Gulch off Interstate 70 last summer.

Greenback Cutthroat trout yearlings released into Herman Gulch by volunteers from Trout Unlimited.
CLEAR CREEK COUNTY, CO - JULY 17: Volunteers with Trout Unlimited carry backpacks, full of 18 yearling Greenback Cutthroat in each bag, up the Herman Gulch trail on July 17, 2017 in Clear Creek County near Silver Plume, Colorado. The volunteers hiked them in up as far as 3 1/2 miles on the trail to release them into Herman Gulch. 960 pure bred Greenback Cutthroat Trout were released into Herman Gulch. Colorado Parks & Wildlife has made great efforts to establish new populations of the endangered fish. CPW hopes the introduction of these fish into Herman Gulch will successfully increase their wild numbers. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

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