Restoring Golden Trout

Photo: Anthony Greco/Flickr

Golden trout are one of fly fishing’s more enigmatic characters, with their ostentatious colors and mercurial attitudes. And while they’re doing relatively fine in places like Wyoming, goldens back in their native habitat in California still face many legitimate threats.

A new story by Greg Fitz, of Trout Unlimited, was published in American Fly Fishing, and it details the launch of the Golden Trout Project’s efforts to help restore these fish to more of their historical native range.

Goldens only occupy a small portion of their native range – the same problem facing cutthroat trout elsewhere in the West – and the habitat they do occupy isn’t quite up to par. According to Fitz’s story, streams flowing through meadows are a significant part of golden trout habitat, but a study says that 60% of meadow habitat in the Sierra Nevada is impaired.

The bulk of this new effort to restore golden trout will focus on restoration and monitoring work over 3,000 acres and 40 miles of stream habitat. Nearly 2,500 beaver dam analogues will be built, which are man-made beaver dams that accomplish the same things natural ones do – reconnecting floodplains, recharging groundwater supplies, and providing cooler, deeper water as a refuge for trout during the warmer months of the year. Restoring stream side vegetation will also be a priority for these projects, and it’s expected this work will take the better part of the next decade.

Since much of this work takes place in the high country, and often in wilderness areas, crews have to do most of it by hand, without power tools. There’s certainly a large sense of dedication to helping these trout have a better future. Expanding their range will expand the population, increasing genetic diversity, and giving golden trout a better chance at surviving any ecological changes they may face.

To learn more about the project, you can read all of Fitz’s story here.