Jim White, Tim Haarmann and Aaron Jones prepare rare native cutthroat trout for release on Banded Peak Ranch.
Page Buono, On Land, Western Landowners Alliance
Just a few days after Jim White, aquatic biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and his colleague spotted the smoke of what would become the 416 fire, they were riding ATVs through a smokey haze up a remote drainage. They drove as far as they could, then trekked with large packs and electrofishing equipment into the creeks where the cutthroat were. Fire burned around them, and they had only a few short hours to catch as many fish as they could.
By the time they arrived back at their truck with bagged fish—exactly 54 of them—in hand, the journey had really only just begun. The already tenuous existence of the species had just become more so.
Eventually, White and his colleagues would turn to Tim Haarmann, the ranch manager of the 52,000-acre Banded Peak Ranches in southern Colorado for help buoying the species.
But we’ve stepped into this story midstream. Before the bags of fish and before Banded Peak, before the fire, we weren’t certain this strain of native cutthroat existed at all.
Watch the video: The Fish and The Flame | A Collaborative Conservation Success Story in the Western U.S.