[ad_1]
KUSA – A type of cutthroat trout with a unique genetic lineage was supposed to disappear … but earlier this year, wildlife officials found pockets of this type of fish in small streams in the San Juan National Forest .
Jim White, an aquatic biologist at Colorado Parks and Wildlife in Durango, said in a statement that it would be "difficult" to distinguish these trout from any other type of sip – but advances in genetic testing have revealed their originality.
White is one of the biologists who have been studying Colorado's small creeks for decades, looking for isolated cutthroat trout populations. They then compared the DNA results of these trout with those of fish that had been stored at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC for over 100 years.
"The painstaking work done by biologists over the years, the search for these old specimens at the museum and the genetic tests have allowed us to go back in time," White said in a statement. "Now we have the opportunity to conserve this native trout in southwestern Colorado."
Unfortunately, the huge fire this summer near Durango threatened this small population.
In a press release, the CPW stated that wildlife officials visited two streams in the fire road and removed 58 unique trout. Concern was that ash flows from the fire could have been a significant threat to these small populations.
Now, CPW is trying to develop a large stock of these unique trout to reintroduce into the sources of the San Juan River.
According to CPW, one of the challenges will be to protect these fish from disease, habitat loss and overfishing.
Protecting rare populations of cutthroat trout is something that CPW has been doing for decades.
© 2018 KUSA-TV
[ad_2]
Source link
