Endangered
Gila trout
Oncorhynchus gilae
Gila trout is a salmonid in the family Salmonidae (order Salmoniformes) — Oncorhynchus gilae, recorded as Endangered.
Appearance
Gila trout have a yellow body, with black spots. By the time the Gila trout was closed to fishing in the 1950s, its numbers and range were so depleted and so reduced this copper-colored trout simply wasn't very accessible to anglers.
The average total length is about 30 cm (11.8 in). With maximum total length approximately 55 cm (21.7 in).
Range and habitat
The Gila trout is native to tributaries of the Gila River in Arizona and New Mexico. The Gila trout is found historically in the Verde and Agua Fria drainages in Arizona. A note in the archives of Aldo Leopold, dated 1923, contains anecdotal evidence of a native trout in Tonto Creek, AZ.
Conservationists hope to eventually delist the species and allow fishing, thus forming alliances with fishermen in order to help preserve the species.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Depending on the water temperature, spawning season occurs in late spring and summer.
In crisis
Prior to 2006 the Gila trout was federally listed as endangered. In July 2006, after much work by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and Arizona Game and Fish Department, the United States Forest Service and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the Gila trout was down-listed to threatened, with a special provision called a "4d rule" that will allow limited sport fishing – for the first time in nearly half a century. The Gila trout has been threatened by competition and hybridization with introduced game fish such as the rainbow trout.
Even so, the primary cause of reduced Gila trout populations is habitat loss caused by loss of water flow and shade-giving trees, caused in turn by fires, human destruction of riparian vegetation, livestock overgrazing, agricultural irrigation and water diversion, and channelization of streams in the Gila trout's native range. After listing USFWS began an aggressive program of stream restoration, removing the introduced trout, restoring and repairing riparian vegetation (to maintain cooler water temperatures), and restocking restored streams with young Gila trout.
Gila trout is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Gila trout, Wikidata item Q596296. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
