Bonneville Cutthroat Trout Return to Snake Creek, Great Basin National Park

First published in The Midden*, Great Basin National Park's newsletter, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2019. By Jonathan Reynolds, fisheries biologist.*

Park staff, the Nevada Department of Wildlife and volunteers look for Bonneville cutthroat trout in Hendry's Creek to move to Snake Creek. NPS photo by Julie Long.

Great Basin National Park has finished the last step of a project to bring a native fish back to Snake Creek.

Clearing the creek

• 2016: a first rotenone treatment removed non-native brook trout from the upper Snake Creek watershed.
• July 2018: a second treatment removed any brook trout that had survived.
• October 2018: 74 sites — one every 200 metres of stream — were sampled for fish DNA. The government shutdown delayed processing, but by April 2019 the park had the official report from the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

No fish DNA was found at any of the 74 sites.

Bringing the natives back

That result let the park move to the final step: returning native Bonneville cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii utah) to Snake Creek. With the Nevada Department of Wildlife and Bureau of Land Management staff, the park collected 118 of them from Hendry's Creek in the North Snake Range, carried them to Snake Creek, and released them at points along the stream.

Bonneville cutthroat trout released into Snake Creek. NPS photo by Jonathan Reynolds.

The population will be closely watched, and more fish released if needed. It should grow quickly in the coming years, giving the species a conservation population and park anglers a productive fishery.

Sources

• National Park Service, Great Basin National Park, "Bonneville Cutthroat Trout Reintroduced to Snake Creek," The Midden, Vol. 19, No. 2, Winter 2019. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/bonneville-cutthroat-trout-reintroduced-to-snake-creek.htm
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.