Last Stand for Headwater Lahontan Cutthroat Trout – Part 1

Part 1 – History and Importance

The sage steppe country of Nevada had always been a comfortable place for me because as children we were brought up to visit relatives in an old mining town in Elko County. A great place for kids to run around wild while the adults sat inside and talked. But it was many decades later, in the early 1990s, after our own kids were launched that my sister and I returned to camp in northern Nevada.

We tooled around the back country, exploring, going wherever our vehicles could take us. I still have an urge to see what is around that bend or what it looks like in that canyon.

As kids we accepted the effects of the presence of cattle, but when we went back to camp near the creeks and springs it was impossible to ignore the cowpies, the flies, and the mud and mucky water. Before putting our beds down we would have to get out the shovel and clean up a space for them. When we asked at the BLM office in Elko where we could camp without the cows, she looked at us suspiciously for a second before recommending a fenced campground.

Our education had begun – the ubiquitous nature of the problem and where the power lay.

Subsequent summers were spent in the high desert sagebrush mountains, so our knowledge of conditions on the ground increased. Because both humans and cows are attracted to water, it was impossible to miss the cow-punched, mowed and muddy areas at every spring or creek. When I see the word “spring” on a map now, it does not have the same allure that it used to. Even springs that had been fenced were often cow-trashed because the fence was not maintained against the insistent attention and weight of cows.

I had a friend at the University of Michigan who was an ichthyologist and a paleontologist, Jerry Smith, who found and studied cutthroat trout fossils in fossil beds in the west. The cutthroat trout lineage is 3 to 16 million years old and predated the Sierra Nevada uplift, and when the climate became drier and as the lakes shrank these trout continued to live and spawn in the remnants of the lakes and in the former tributaries to Lake Lahontan. Genetically they became diverse, but most of the original Lahontan cutthroat trout populations have been eliminated from these streams.

Lahontan cutthroat trout (LCT) evolved to two main forms, one living in lakes and growing to a large size (up to over 3 feet), the other a small fish that lives in streams where adults are typically 5-7 inches. Lahontan cutthroat trout are known for their adaptation to withstand warmer temperatures than other trout. They can survive short exposures (< 2 hours) in water of 83.3˚F/28˚C, as might occur on the hottest days. Researcher Dunham and colleagues noted that “Within most of the streams that we studied, Lahontan cutthroat trout occurred at sites with temperatures observed to cause sublethal stress (22˚C)”. This ability has allowed them to survive in some of the now-warm headwaters of creeks where the lower reaches have become too polluted, dewatered or even dry.

Gerald R. Smith and Ralph F. Stearley wrote in their 2018 paper:

The fossil record of Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii enables us to see them as ancient fish adapted to mountain streams and lakes, with resilience to dramatic geologic and climatic changes over time scales of thousands to millions of years…. Earliest records of the lineage are from near the California–Nevada line in the 16-to-3-million-year-old tectonic trough between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin that predates the uplift of the Sierras,

The cutthroat trout fossil lineage is described from a type specimen in a sequence dated from an ash layer at 10.2 million years, found in the Truckee formation in a quarry near Fernley, Nevada.

Cutthroat trout survived all the massive vagaries of climate and habitat changes over millions of years, but in the 1870s cattle were moved into the Great Basin desert. Lahontan cutthroat trout had diverged into a highly distinct form, and its numbers were already declining in the lakes and rivers due to heavy fishing pressure, but the destruction of their spawning sites in mountain streams and creeks was the death knell.

In 1800, more than 7400 miles of stream habitat was occupied or had the potential to be occupied by LCT (USFWS 2009). LCT now officially occupy 12% of their original range, an overestimation because some populations are entirely hatchery fish, augmented regularly. (USFWS 2022 page 7). In 2010 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) estimated that LCT occupied 8.6% of their historic range. (USFWS 2010) A new status review released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that only five of 71 populations of Lahontan cutthroat trout are considered resilient and less than half are likely to be resilient into the future. 

LCT were listed as a Threatened Species under the ESA in 1975 and entitled to Priority Habitat which was never designated; they are also the State Fish of Nevada. (USFWS 1995) Priority Habitats are those with unique or significant value to a large number of species or to listed species. However, there are no enforced protections for Priority Habitat – any protections are at the discretion of the land agencies.

Lahontan cutthroat trout came to my attention about 10 years ago when I saw the “Bring Back the Natives” Plan for Marys River. It had been pushed by Bill Baker at Elko BLM in 1988, and its objectives included restoration of LCT habitat for increased numbers and distribution in the southern end of the Jarbidge Mountains drainages. In 1992 the Natives Plan was part of the Marys River Master Plan to restore its riparian/aquatic ecosystem; the river’s degradation was blamed on “improper” livestock management. The Recovery Plan for LCT in 1995 stated, “The Marys River subbasin has the most potential for a metapopulation structure where the presence of several interconnected subpopulations increases the probability of survival during periods of restriction and hardship”. [USFWS 1995]

The Nevada Department of Wildlife has described Marys River watershed is a priority area for LCT recovery. NDOW 2004 page 33. And in 2010 the USFWS Business Plan stated on page 12: “The Marys River is a large Lahontan cutthroat system which has been the focus of previous restoration work and a great deal of basic scientific research on the demographics and genetics of Lahontan cutthroat”.

In July of 2015 I visited Marys River, camping in various places near the main river and on tributaries. The large riparian “exclosure” on the main channel showed signs of recent cattle.  Worse was a main tributary to Marys River, Hanks Creek. Its grazing use was described as “moderate” at the time, but the water was choked with algae, the channel incised, and no woody riparian plants like willows were present (see below). Hanks Creek has become a major focus because in a 1972 report it had “7 miles of fishable creek” and now the trout are largely absent.

Below is the South Fork of Hanks Creek in 2017. Water is present but not the cold, clean gravels that trout need. Note that grass regrowth does not translate to high water quality. The algal mats reduce oxygen in the water, oxygen that trout need to breathe. The bottom is covered with silt.

Below are two photos of the South Fork of Hanks Creek in July, 2017, showing conditions on the ground in the headwater streams that provide water to the main channel:

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Below is the North Fork of Hanks Creek in July, 2017, deeply incised, without surface water. The large wet meadow just upstream is prevented from draining into this channel by a road.

This dry portion of the creek bed disconnects any trout that might be surviving upstream from the rest of Hanks Creek, as well as from the main channel of Marys River. It eliminates habitat that used to be inhabited. The deep incision is the sign of a lowered water table.

Another tributary to Marys River flows in through a very steep-sided, rocky canyon, and this tributary had little sign of cattle presence. Its borders were thick with willows and roses and the channel was full of beaver ponds. In the summer of 2015 Nevada had extreme drought, and I found this tributary (below first) was the only one in the area contributing water to the main channel which was dry above its contribution (below second). I saw here that stream flow can be augmented by removing cattle and encouraging beaver, which also had ponds downstream, making a big difference to fish especially during drought years.

To get an idea of what an occupied, healthy LCT stream looks like, in May, 2018 I visited a creek in northwest Nevada where LCT were thriving – Mahogany Creek in the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout Natural Area, a 2000-acre exclosure up the mountain from Summit Lake. Flowing through an aspen grove, the channel looked this:

Visiting places of good (and inhabited) habitat helped me to see what kinds of changes I was looking at in cattle-present streams. But streams without any cattle, and without water removals for forage crops or watered pastures are rare, and these few protected areas are not enough to boost and connect LCT populations.  Smith and Stearley (2018 p.1) wrote, “Maintenance of natural habitat, including historical immigration routes among populations, would contribute more to long-term survival of Cutthroat Trout than providing minimal habitat reserves.” The Mahogany Creek population may be healthy, but it is not connected to any other LCT populations.

When I started to read through agency documents about conservation plans for LCT, I was, at first ,impressed by all the details stating their life history and habitat needs, by the dozens of surveys to determine which streams were still occupied, which streams were targets for re-introductions, and the projects to improve and monitor habitat. An immense amount of data has been collected, especially by the Nevada Department of Wildlife’s (NDOW) fisheries biologists. But after looking at these documents for years, they begin to sound the same while inhabited LCT streams continued to wink out. The earlier recovery plans had delisting as an objective for action to recover their populations, but in 1995 one plan also observed, “both lacustrine and fluvial forms are subject to high risk extinction factors”. [USFWS 1995, page 6]

I reflected on the staff time, the money spent and the tons of paper used for these plans and reviews. Some agencies do LCT status reviews every 5 years, so the documents and expenditures add up while nothing seems to change much on the ground. More fences get built, more pumps, pipes and troughs installed, and perhaps cows get moved around more. Involved in this also are grant-writers, Management Oversight Groups, Coordinating Committees and Geographic Management Units. After so many years of this tremendous effort, it began to seem a form of triage while the patient slowly declines, and I’m sure my awareness of the amount of time and money put into LCT recovery is a tiny proportion of it.

List of a few LCT Recovery and Management Plans:

• NDOW 1983
• INTERAGENCY 1989 Review LCT Program
• USFWS 1995 Recovery Plan for LCT
• USFWS 2004
• USFWS 2009 5-Year Review LCT
• NDOW LCT 2004 LCT Species Management Plan
• USFWS and NDOW 2009
• NDOW USFWS, TU, BLM, USFS  2010 10-Year Plan
• NDOW  2012
• NDOW 2017
• USFWS 2019 Updated Goals and Objectives for the Conservation of LCT
• BLM 2021 Alternative short-term grazing management plan
• USFWS 2023 Status Review
• BLM 2024 Grazing Flexibilities, Range Improvements, Restoration to Improve LCT Habitat
• BLM, USFWS, NDOW – 2024 – for 8 allotments, biannual meeting

Remarkably, I have not seen one LCT recovery plan that requires re-establishment or increases of LCT populations as part of its monitoring and assessment. Phrases like “ensuring it is present” never have teeth to actually ensure their presence. Believing that these fish have the best knowledge of where they are able to live, shouldn’t their response be the main criterion, whatever it takes?

What becomes disheartening is to see the same methods recommended year after year when the actual streams are no longer able to support, let alone restore trout. Some of the problem is inadequate standards, methods, and monitoring, some is poor enforcement, some is the long time it takes before any action. Where livestock is mentioned, the problem is “improper” management. Yet implementation of the different grazing systems such as rest and rotation demonstrably fail to reduce riparian use by livestock while further increasing upland utilization rates.

Not one Plan or Review has recommended removing livestock, although most suggest changing cattle management plans, building riparian fences, moving the cattle around more, then monitoring results to see if objectives are met. This has gone on for decades, but there are no teeth to insist that the trout habitat improves to the point where trout are re-established.

What I realized is that most Stakeholders, at least those invited to the agency-sponsored meetings*, are invested in extraction, meaning income from grazing, whether for themselves, for friends, or because that’s the way it has always been. Even showing that only a small part of the economy is from cattle production does not convince people that we can and should remove livestock from public lands. The cowboy myth is strong and the environmental damage largely invisible or ignored for reasons discussed later.

*In 2021, I was invited as a Stakeholder to participate in an LCT meeting in Elko, Nevada, organized by the BLM’s National Riparian Service Team (NRST). By then I knew the deal and showed photos of typical cow-trashed creeks and described and showed conditions on the ground after 150 years of cattle impacts. I wanted to challenge business-as-usual, so I asked what would the fish want? based on where they were thriving. I also said if this group was serious about restoring LCT they would recommend that livestock be removed. The NRST people listened politely and responded that I was the first person to say this so clearly.

The materials for this meeting talked about collaboration (excluding the trout!), which I understand to mean that the social values will be of equal to or more value compared to ecological and wildlife conditions. But the problem is that the interests of permittees and those of LCT are in opposition. Cold clean water over gravels is not a condition that a high water-need animal like cattle can meet. Livestock were not mentioned under the Objective of “Remove Threats to LCT”, but one could imagine cattle covered under the Objective to “ensure all habitats function ecologically”. If that goal were enforced, cattle would have to be removed.

When their Situation Assessment Report came out a few months later the major recommendations were about inclusion of people and future meetings. There is good language about LCT habitat, but the thrust of the action is about including all human groups. The Objectives for LCT restoration are vague generalizations, and do not include specific numbers of trout or increased inhabited miles. Just the monitoring of both streamflow (discharge) and temperature would provide useful indications of the effectiveness of management efforts, but agencies tell me they don’t have the time and personnel to perform these tests.

For several years, I looked at conditions on the ground, wrote up and sent my reports to the BLM or Forest Service. I have never seen a place with both cattle and a healthy LCT population. Where LCT are present, cattle have been excluded. The vast majority of streams have cattle and no LCT.

It doesn’t require a genius to point out that cattle and LCT are fundamentally incompatible. Each depends on water – one a commercial operation of extraction and the other a native species with a 10 million year lineage in the western US.

Yet the BLM response over the years has been they are required to operate under the “multiple use” mandate, which they explain in their mission, “Congress tasked the BLM with a mandate of managing public lands for a variety of uses such as energy development, livestock grazing, recreation, and timber harvesting while ensuring natural, cultural, and historic resources are maintained for present and future use.” Where these uses are incompatible, priority has been given to commercial uses such as grazing and mining.

The legal requirement to protect sensitive endangered and threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, to obey federal regulations under the Fundamentals of Rangeland Health, and to follow their own manual of Standards and Guidelines are largely ignored in practice. The result can be seen in my Reports to the BLM.

• Toyn Creek Report 2018
• Toyn Creek Report 2021
• Hanks Creek Report 2019
• Hanks Creek Report 2021
• Green Mountain Creek Report 2019
• Granite Mountain Pasture Report 2019
• Dixie Creek Report 2018
• Conners Creek Report 2020

Nevada is uniquely challenged in developing effective wildlife conservation programs, in part, because of its arid climate, geography and relative scarcity of water resources, which has created a unique endemic biota easily subject to threats and stressors. Throughout Nevada, water is a scarce and valuable resource essential for both human needs and maintenance of wildlife and their habitats. Consequently, the alteration of hydrologic resources is a significant source of stress to wildlife resources. Cattle have major effects on the hydrology of desert streams.

 Cattle grazing is promoted, protected and subsidized by federal agencies (with our taxes) on about 230 million public acres in the 11 western states, and 84% of Nevada is federal land; it is also the driest state. These two conditions should enable the federal land agencies to take special notice and care of Nevada’s State Fish, and yet after millions of years it is struggling to survive because its habitat cannot be protected. Lahontan cutthroat trout are adapted to overcome many climate and water quality threats, and after surviving for millennia, these iconic fish deserve to be conserved for the future.

Why have not the simple needs of LCT been addressed 52 years after being listed on the world’s premier species recovery law, the Endangered Species Act? Why has so little changed after decades of official attention? Some of the answers will be covered in Part 2, which will look further into the problem of enforcement of laws and regulations.