New Mexico Drought Threatens Rio Grande Cutthroat

Only a series of pools created by the Forest Service in the Rio de las Vacas remain as sanctuary for the native Rio Grande Cutthroat trout there. Officials are scrambling for options. “Reduced water flows are in turn threatening dwindling populations of the native Rio Grande cutthroat trout — the state fish — that biologists and conservationists have been working hard to save. The species, which over the years has been hybridized by nonnative rainbow trout and increasingly pushed out of its habitat by nonnative brown trout, now occupies less than 10 percent of its historic range.” John Arnold of the Albuquerue Journal.