Studies reveal optimal diets for young Gila trout at the Mora National Fish Hatchery and Technology Center.
The names we pin on places tell a story of human experience. These autobiographical vignettes printed on road signs and on maps testify of that experience being tied to the land. The local lexicon of the Gila region in southern New Mexico and Arizona speak of conflict and privations and chance encounters. Names like Raw Meat Canyon, Rainy Mesa, Hells Hole, and Turkey Creek embellish the map.
Place names add color to this rugged land. Creeks course hemmed in by steep-walled canyons, some so deep direct rays of the sun never warm the water. With the hardscrabble-roughness of this expanse, you can see how the Apaches were emboldened to not comply with the wishes of the US government for so long. The word “Gila” itself relates to the shape of the land, corrupted from Spanish derived from the Apache word “zhil,” meaning “mountain.”
Then what a fitting name for the region’s only native trout; it is here that the Gila trout has hung on in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s stared headlong for 100-plus years at a loss of habitat and competition with introduced fishes for food, space, and mates.
Since the inception of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Gila trout has been considered endangered with extinction. That changed in July 2006. Finally after much work by the Game and Fish departments in New Mexico and Arizona, the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, New Mexico State University, and conservation groups over the course of decades, the Gila trout was down-listed to threatened, with a special provision that will allow limited sport fishing – for the first time in nearly half a century.
This possibility is distinct: there may be no one alive today that has legally angled a pure Gila trout from its native waters. By the time the Gila trout was closed to fishing in the 1950s, its numbers and range were so depleted and so reduced this copper-colored trout simply wasn’t all that accessible to anglers.
In 1973, at the time of its listing under the Endangered Species Act, scientists estimate the Gila trout swam just 20 miles of water in only four streams. That stands in stark contrast to the estimated 600 miles it once occupied in New Mexico as late as the 1890s.
It’s been a strong current that this trout has swum against. But it has been bolstered by conservation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fishery Resources Offices in New Mexico and Arizona have diligently expanded the range of the trout in stream-to-stream transfers with a mind of adding geographic security by widely separating the replicated populations. These arid mountains of the Gila are prone to forest fires, and trout don’t do well in ash-laden waters.
Recovery would not be possible without Mora National Fish Hatchery & Technology Center in northeastern New Mexico. This facility has been a refuge for wild fish faced with the grim prospects of wild fire. Three times Gila trout have been brought there from the wild in advance of moving wildfire, and held there safely in quarantine.
Gila trout have originated from the Mora facility for supplemental stocking in the wild, pressing forward recovery. These fish at the hatchery are not far removed from wild stock. That’s been by design; a science-based brood stock management plan guides the fish culture work. Only young Gila trout go out to the wild, and nature selects those fish that might get to breed by the time they reach maturity at three years of age.
Science moves forward at Mora, progressing what is known in fish diets. Feed trials conducted on young Gila trout are starting to show what best to feed young fish to ensure an optimal diet for survival and growth. That technology will be transferable to private enterprise, the manufacturers of fish food, to help them produce a better product – not just for Gila trout, but other species of fish not domesticated and not easy to feed in captivity.
The broodstock at Mora have provided a means for scientists with the New Mexico and Arizona game and fish departments to conduct a hooking mortality study. Though only recently completed, the results of the research will help the state agencies responsible for managing the sport fisheries to make scientifically sound fishing regulations.
Gila trout are swimming expressions of antiquity, artifacts of epochs past. In their genes they carry a time capsule. Coiled in the double-helix of their DNA lies the lexis of the environment from which they have sprung forth. The success of Gila trout conservation is a swimming expression of human experience, science, and the dedication of those that strove to see what had been this nation’s only endangered trout turn away from the current of extinction.
The names we pin on places tell a story of human experience. These autobiographical vignettes printed on road signs and on maps testify of that experience being tied to the land. The local lexicon of the Gila region in southern New Mexico and Arizona speak of conflict and privations and chance encounters. Names like Raw Meat Canyon, Rainy Mesa, Hells Hole, and Turkey Creek embellish the map.
Place names add color to this rugged land. Creeks course hemmed in by steep-walled canyons, some so deep direct rays of the sun never warm the water. With the hardscrabble-roughness of this expanse, you can see how the Apaches were emboldened to not comply with the wishes of the US government for so long. The word “Gila” itself relates to the shape of the land, corrupted from Spanish derived from the Apache word “zhil,” meaning “mountain.”
Then what a fitting name for the region’s only native trout; it is here that the Gila trout has hung on in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s stared headlong for 100-plus years at a loss of habitat and competition with introduced fishes for food, space, and mates.
Since the inception of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Gila trout has been considered endangered with extinction. That changed in July 2006. Finally after much work by the Game and Fish departments in New Mexico and Arizona, the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, New Mexico State University, and conservation groups over the course of decades, the Gila trout was down-listed to threatened, with a special provision that will allow limited sport fishing – for the first time in nearly half a century.
This possibility is distinct: there may be no one alive today that has legally angled a pure Gila trout from its native waters. By the time the Gila trout was closed to fishing in the 1950s, its numbers and range were so depleted and so reduced this copper-colored trout simply wasn’t all that accessible to anglers.
In 1973, at the time of its listing under the Endangered Species Act, scientists estimate the Gila trout swam just 20 miles of water in only four streams. That stands in stark contrast to the estimated 600 miles it once occupied in New Mexico as late as the 1890s.
It’s been a strong current that this trout has swum against. But it has been bolstered by conservation. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fishery Resources Offices in New Mexico and Arizona have diligently expanded the range of the trout in stream-to-stream transfers with a mind of adding geographic security by widely separating the replicated populations. These arid mountains of the Gila are prone to forest fires, and trout don’t do well in ash-laden waters.
Recovery would not be possible without Mora National Fish Hatchery & Technology Center in northeastern New Mexico. This facility has been a refuge for wild fish faced with the grim prospects of wild fire. Three times Gila trout have been brought there from the wild in advance of moving wildfire, and held there safely in quarantine.
Gila trout have originated from the Mora facility for supplemental stocking in the wild, pressing forward recovery. These fish at the hatchery are not far removed from wild stock. That’s been by design; a science-based brood stock management plan guides the fish culture work. Only young Gila trout go out to the wild, and nature selects those fish that might get to breed by the time they reach maturity at three years of age.
Science moves forward at Mora, progressing what is known in fish diets. Feed trials conducted on young Gila trout are starting to show what best to feed young fish to ensure an optimal diet for survival and growth. That technology will be transferable to private enterprise, the manufacturers of fish food, to help them produce a better product – not just for Gila trout, but other species of fish not domesticated and not easy to feed in captivity.
The broodstock at Mora have provided a means for scientists with the New Mexico and Arizona game and fish departments to conduct a hooking mortality study. Though only recently completed, the results of the research will help the state agencies responsible for managing the sport fisheries to make scientifically sound fishing regulations.
Gila trout are swimming expressions of antiquity, artifacts of epochs past. In their genes they carry a time capsule. Coiled in the double-helix of their DNA lies the lexis of the environment from which they have sprung forth. The success of Gila trout conservation is a swimming expression of human experience, science, and the dedication of those that strove to see what had been this nation’s only endangered trout turn away from the current of extinction.
