Wyoming fisheries biologists adapt to elude controversy on cutthroat trout restoration

BILLINGS – Seven years ago, some Wyoming fisheries biologists found themselves swimming against the current.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Cody-area biologists had proposed restoration projects for native Yellowstone cutthroat trout on streams identified as the best places for success, but some vocal members of the public disagreed.

“We were obviously missing something,” said Joe Skorupski, a Cody fisheries biologist who gave a presentation on the topic at the Draper Natural History Museum earlier this month.

So the agency regrouped and reorganized, hiring a facilitator and holding public meetings to involve those interested in the process.

As a result, the public had buy-in for two projects – one on Crandall Creek, an upper tributary to the Clarks Fork Yellowstone River, and East Tensleep Creek, a tributary to the Nowood River in the Bighorn Mountains.

Effort’s purpose

Yellowstone cutthroat trout occupy only a fraction of their original habitat – portions of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah and Nevada – less than half of where they were originally found.

Of that, only 17% is considered intact, Skorupski said. The reasons are varied, everything from habitat degradation by historic mining, livestock grazing and logging to overfishing and introduction of nonnative species like brook and rainbow trout that outcompete the natives.

“But hands down the most impact we see today and challenges that exist … are the nonnative trout,” Skorupski said, noting that nonnatives like rainbow trout will interbreed with native cutthroats. Brown trout and brookies will eat cutthroats.

In the Cody region, Yellowstone cutthroats occupy around 30% of their historic habitat, only 10% of which is considered secure, Skorupski said.

The drop in populations has been so steep that in 1998 the species was petitioned for protection under the Endangered Species Act, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deemed the action was not warranted.

Group’s three Rs

For its part, WGFD created a cutthroat trout conservation team to identify problems and solutions to restore Yellowstone cutthroats to their traditional range.

The aim was to protect the species, its habitat and ecosystems to ensure the fish did not go extinct.

The group was guided by the three Rs of conservation: representation, making sure the fish’s genetic integrity was protected; resilience, ensuring a population could withstand or rebound from disturbance events such as fires and floods; and redundancy, safeguarding the fish by spreading them out across the landscape.

Skorupski pointed to the Greybull River, in the Bighorn Mountains, as a good example of an intact Yellowstone cutthroat trout fishery in Wyoming.

“But we don’t want to say that the Greybull is enough,” he said. “We want to make sure if something happens in the Greybull, thinking about 100 years forward, (cutthroat are) still going to exist on the landscape across their entire range.”

Regrouping

Based on the guidelines, Wyoming Game and Fish had success restoring cutthroats in the Cody region, including at Dry Medicine Lodge, South Paintrock and Dead Indian creeks. It was when the agency attempted to expand to some other waters that it met headwinds.

The Cody Enterprise newspaper summed up the issue, Skorupski said, when its reporter wrote following a 2016 meeting: “While the big picture is conserving a native species that is under siege, the remedy met with anger and disappointment.”

Skorupski said the department recognized it had “social challenges” which took about three years to overcome through a collaborative process – putting the social part of the work at the front end, rather than the back, of the project.

The agency learned that the members of the public involved were concerned about diverse fishing opportunities while also protecting existing cutthroat populations, but they wanted to see restoration prioritized in historically occupied habitat.

They also wanted the agency to be responsible with how much time and money was invested in the work.

The public was especially concerned about the department’s end goal, Skorupski said, how far did the agency want to go with the work? How much was enough?

End goal

In the end, the group identified 16 out of 27 streams that met the criteria for cutthroat conservation work. Of those, seven ranked the highest for meeting “social and biological viability.”

“We landed in a really successful spot,” Skorupski said. “You can bridge biological and social desires.”

The first goal for WGFD is to restore Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations. Beyond that, however, Skorupski said the agency needs to enhance and maintain watershed health to ensure the fish endure over time.

“So essentially, we’re trying to prevent a species from blinking out on the landscape.”

At Crandall Creek, one of the two streams identified through the public process, WGFD has been working to remove rainbow trout to protect native cutthroats.

“It’s a really big system, interconnected it’s over 64 miles,” Skorupski said. “So we’ve been working on that the last couple of years.”

For the other project on East Tensleep Creek WGFD has identified a site for a barrier to block fish from going upstream and creating a safe haven for cutthroat.

Skorupski said the agency is completing the paperwork for that project.

“We are seeing declines in that population every single year to the point where we’re concerned we could lose that population if action is not taken,” he said.