Whoops!  Trout restoration used wrong fish

Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Tyler Baskfield said the research results are a setback but state biologists believe the program will succeed over the long term.

"We've been moving fish around in the state since the late 1800s and now the new science comes in and all of a sudden it's a different playing field," Baskfield said.

In 1998, officials projected it would cost $634,000 to bring the greenback to recovery, with the money coming from a variety of sources. It wasn't clear how much of that has been spent. Figures for the recovery project before 1998 weren't available.

The study's lead author, Jessica Metcalf, who recently completed her doctorate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, said scientific advances continue to shed new light on the program. She said there's reason for optimism about the findings.

"Four of the native populations appear to be pure greenback cutthroat trout," Metcalf said in an interview from San Francisco, where she was set to present the research Thursday at an American Fisheries Society meeting.

Extinct in 1937
Greenback cutthroat trout were historically found in the drainages of the Arkansas and South Platte rivers in Colorado and a small part of Wyoming. They were declared extinct in 1937 due to overfishing, pollution from mines and competition from nonnative fish.

Researchers said remnant populations were found in the 1950s in tributaries and provided brood stock for fish raised in federal and state hatcheries and released in their native habitat. The fish was added to the federal endangered species list in 1978.

Other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, have helped with the recovery program. An overall cost estimate wasn't available.

The greenback, the Colorado River cutthroat trout and the Rio Grande cutthroat trout all evolved in Colorado. A fourth subspecies, the yellowfin cutthroat, is believed to be extinct.

Metcalf said although the greenback and Colorado River cutthroat are closely related, they've likely been different subspecies for about a half million years. One of the challenges facing biologists, she said, was the lack of baseline information about the greenback, which was already "in major decline" when first described in detail in the late 1800s.

In June, federal officials rejected efforts to designate the Colorado River cutthroat trout as endangered, citing a substantial increase in the number of known populations.

University of Colorado professor Andrew Martin, the study's principal investigator, said while the findings might give the recovery program "black eye," the hope is that biologists and agencies will move ahead on recovering the species before it goes extinct.

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