CPW hatching and spawning threatened Greenback Cutthroat Trout

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is doing everything they can to save our state fish, the Greenback Cutthroat Trout. A fish that was once believed to be extinct has found new life in Bear Creek.

It’s become a yearly tradition: CPW Biologists wearing backpacks that make them look like the Ghostbusters wade into the water at Bear Creek to shock and catch the Greenback Cutthroat Trout.

Cory Noble, an Aquatic Biologist, said, “We electrofish the stream and collect any fish that we capture, and the ones that are ripe and ready to spawn we will bring here and hold them and spawn them.”

About 700-800 fish of this species live in the Bear Creek, so CPW has a small window to try and produce a small sample size. But every little bit helps, says Noble.

“So getting this constant flow of genetics from the wild into the hatchery is important for our conservation efforts,” Noble said.

Originally believed to be extinct back in 1937, the native fish was discovered here in Bear Creek about 75 years later in 2012. Noble says this discovery excited everyone.

“This is a very important discovery, and learning the new information about the genetics was very important for our recovery efforts. It did change our strategies for restoring the fish on the landscape quite a bit,” he said.

So where do they go from here?

“[We’ll take] any eggs that we can get from ripe females, and we will also take milt from the males, that will be able to fertilize eggs from the fish in the Leadville National Fish Hatchery,” said Noble.

And after they hatch in Leadville, they are taken to a hatchery in Salida, where they are raised. After about a year, they are then distributed into three bodies of water: Herman and Dry Gulch and Zimmerman Lake.