In early October, I received the following message from Rio Grande Basin Native Fish Supervisor Bryan Bakevich, from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish:
“I’d like to share some great news with you about the long-term collaborative project in the Rio Costilla watershed. Last week we captured many young Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout (RGCT), documenting natural reproduction in Rio Costilla and Comanche Creek upstream of the project barrier. This is the last portion of the larger project and added another 14 miles to the distribution of genetically pure RGCT.
In addition, we documented reproduction on Middle Ponil Creek, just east of Costilla in the Canadian Basin—another amazing and responsive project that involved rescuing fish from Morphy Creek threatened by the Calf Canyon fire, holding them while we conducted piscicide treatments, and restocking them into Middle Ponil later that year.
There are far too many people and organizations that collaborated on these projects to mention individually, but many thanks to our partners at the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Trout Unlimited, Turner/Vermejo Park Ranch, New Mexico State University, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife. You know who you are!”
Though not intentionally overlooked, the partners not mentioned here, the ones I believe are most critical to the recovery of the Rio Grande watershed’s favorite fish, are the rural communities of northern New Mexico. Northern communities have brought their traditional knowledge and a generous sense of ownership to bear on bringing this fish back from the brink. Truth be told, the cutthroat would not have come this far without them.
These communities include Canones near Chihuahuenos Creek on the north slope of the Jemez, where raising the riparian water table will help the cutthroat and local cattle. In El Rito Creek and Canjilon Creek, cutthroat restoration is being conducted with an eye towards improving irrigation flows. The Village of Pecos has cooperated for years and through several potentially devastating fires to recover its unique strain of cutthroat (Pecos strain cutthroats have fewer and larger spots, which are concentrated near the tail). Community participants in the Cimarron Watershed Alliance—Angel Fire, Eagle Nest, Cimarron, and Raton—have always shown a soft spot for helping cutties thrive throughout the Ponil Creek system.
Not to be outdone, Costilla’s attempts to share water with beavers have been extremely constructive in showing how conservation outcomes must be married with empowering communities to sustain themselves.
And Questa, whose efforts to diversify its economy in the wake of the mine closure have always included the cutthroat as a deserving stakeholder in the recreational future, has invested its heart and soul in filling the Rio Grande gorge with its original trout species every spring.
The popularity of the annual Rio Grande cutthroat stocking is a testament to not only the tenacity of the fish but of the power of heritage in our special corner of the world. Baby fish stocked years ago are being caught as far away as Pilar, a sign that the annual project isn’t just for show. It’s real results, for which we should all be thankful.
