When 19th-century miners first scouted eastern Arizona, they found that the region’s alpine streams contained more golden wealth than merely ore. The White Mountains are home to the Apache trout, one of only two native salmonids within Arizona’s borders. They’re lovely fish, endowed with mustard flanks, pink and purple undertones, and constellations of black spots. Miners called them “yellow trout” or “yellowbellies.”
Colonization wasn’t kind to the Apache trout. The newcomers caught and ate them by the bushel, and logging, overgrazing and mining degraded their mountain creeks. Worst of all were the legions of non-native trout — brook, brown and rainbow — that the state stocked for mining camps and anglers, which swiftly overwhelmed their native rivals. When the first iteration of the Endangered Species Act passed in 1967, Apache trout were protected by it, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service classified the species as threatened in 1975.
This is a familiar ecological saga in the West, where native trout are among the most imperiled groups of species. But thanks to the concerted efforts of federal and state agencies, nonprofits and the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Apache trout gradually recovered. On Sept. 4, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed Oncorhynchus apache from the federal list of threatened and endangered species — making it the first American sportfish to achieve delisting. The fish’s recovery, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement, “reminds us of the transformational power that collaborative conservation efforts — grounded in Indigenous Knowledge — can have on fish and wildlife.”
Yet the Apache trout’s future is far from assured. The West is rapidly getting hotter, drier and more flammable — hardly promising for a fish dependent on cold, clear flows. “I don’t see this as, ‘OK, it’s time to stop, we’re patting ourselves on the back,” said Nathan Rees, Arizona state director for Trout Unlimited.
ALTHOUGH CONSERVATION SUCCESS stories never have single authors, the White Mountain Apache Tribe deserves the lion’s share of credit for the trout’s comeback. By the 1940s, Apache trout endured in just 12 streams — all of them on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. (At the time, Apache trout were lumped together with Arizona’s other endemic salmonid, the Gila trout; not until 1972 did biologists reclassify the Apache as a separate species.) In 1955, the tribe, which regards the trout as sacred, closed its streams to sportfishing — an act of radical foresight that predated the trout’s federal listing by more than a decade.
In the 1980s, the White Mountain Apache, aided by a panoply of agencies, began assisting Apache trout in earnest. Land managers closed forest roads, improved logging management and fenced cattle out of streams to ease pressure on the fish’s habitat. Tribal and state agency staff bred Apache trout in captivity and returned them to their former public-land domains. Slowly, the fish’s population began to tick upward.
“The species was resilient and would just persevere.”
“I think we’re the leaders,” said Tim Gatewood, the tribe’s longtime fisheries manager and a tribal member. “A lot of times, those guys that helped take part in management came through our office, and we kind of told them what we wanted.”
Most crucially, fish managers curtailed the non-native fish that bedevil Apache trout. In many streams, agencies installed barriers to prevent invasive trout from penetrating Apache strongholds. With those headwaters secured, biologists set about purging the invaders, both with poison and currents of electricity. The process was hardly linear: Rock barriers failed and had to be replaced with sturdier concrete ones, and the 2011 Wallow Fire, the largest conflagration in Arizona’s history, killed thousands of Apache trout and incinerated riparian vegetation. Several times the fish was on the verge of delisting, only to narrowly fall short.
“We’d get close, and then there’d be a setback,” said Julie Carter, aquatic wildlife branch chief for the Arizona Department of Game and Fish. “But the species was resilient and would just persevere.”
Today, surveys indicate that the species currently inhabits less than a third of its former range, which once encompassed nearly 700 miles of stream. Still, recovery efforts have saved the fish from immediate jeopardy. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Arizona has 30 discrete populations of Apache trout, enough to satisfy the agency’s recovery plan. The Apache trout is now among a tiny handful of Western fish, alongside the Modoc sucker, the Oregon chub and the Borax Lake chub, ever to escape the threatened list — and the only one to which an angler might conceivably cast a line.
IN ITS 2023 PROPOSED delisting rule for the Apache trout, Fish and Wildlife acknowledged that the Southwest suffers from “a megadrought that has large consequences for streamflows” and thus for the suitability of trout habitat. Megafires, too, remain a concern: According to the Service, some important drainages still face “a high risk of crown fire … and subsequent debris flows” that could smother trout streams.
For those reasons and more, not everyone is celebrating the trout’s delisting. In public comments submitted to Fish and Wildlife, Robin Silver, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity, excoriated the decision for its failure to account for “the foreseeable effects of climate change and related long-term impacts.” While the agency’s analysis suggested the fish’s prospects were fairly rosy for the next 30 years, Silver objected to the timeframe’s relative brevity. Silver also noted that some streams are still battered by overgrazing, and that non-native fish barriers aren’t foolproof. “The bottom line is that the habitat is objectively not protected,” Silver said.
Over the next six decades, climate change’s impacts on Apache trout may be complex. According to one 2023 study, some formerly frigid headwaters could become just mild enough to support spawning trout, increasing Apache habitat. When the study’s authors incorporated the likelihood of reduced rain and snowfall into their model, however, they found that a number of Apache-bearing streams will become less hospitable by the year 2080.
Apache trout are hardly the only Western salmonid in climate-related peril. A 2021 study found that the distribution of bull trout and cutthroat trout stands to contract, respectively, by 39% and 16% by 2080, as their streams become warmer, drier and more vulnerable to invasive species. Such projections present a conundrum for managers: How should agencies weigh a species’ current status against its dubious future?
“The bottom line is that the habitat is objectively not protected.”
One answer is to pursue restoration projects aimed at enhancing climate resilience. This year or next, for instance, Trout Unlimited will begin to restore Thompson Meadow, a section of the Black River watershed degraded by overgrazing. According to Rees, the group intends to plant willows, fence out elk and construct more than 200 artificial beaver dams — efforts that will, in theory, cool the drainage’s overheated flows and bring back the complex shaded habitat that Apache trout require. The White Mountain Apache Tribe, the trout’s traditional keepers, has received more than $2.5 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to replace derelict road culverts on trout-bearing creeks, allowing the fish to flee to cold headwaters as downstream reaches warm.
“I know (delisting) is not the end here,” said Gatewood. “It’s just more work.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation. hcn.org/cbb
