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Populations of the Colorado River cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki
pleuriticus) have been degraded by hybridization with rainbow trout,
non-indigenous cutthroat trout, and introgressed hatchery stocks. An
estimated 25 percent of the remaining populations are believed to be
genetically pure. Competition by federal and state agencies for limited
conservation dollars to restore and protect the cutthroat trout have
resulted in limited efforts for localized populations. A "coarse filter"
approach is needed to prioritize watersheds encompassing cutthroat trout
in order to focus conservation efforts on genetically pure populations at
high risk of extinction.
The objective of this research was to develop a spatial decision support tool in ArcView GIS to assist watershed managers with the restoration and protection of the cutthroat trout in the Upper Colorado River Basin (WY,CO,UT). Information on the distribution and status of cutthroat trout were imported into a relational database of ARC/INFO and linked to a hierarchical layer of surficial hydrography. The decision support tool also incorporates several other geographic layers of terrestrial information including land cover, land ownership/protection status, threatened and endangered species distributions, and vertebrate species richness, with the purpose of integrating both terrestrial and aquatic features in the priorization of watersheds for conservation. |
| This effort is part of a multi-region task to develop a report on the current status and distribution of native inland cutthroat trout. Synthesis of the information on the five sub-species is ongoing and the final report is expected to be published in early 1996 by the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. |