{"id":787729,"date":"2026-07-27T18:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/787729\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T18:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T18:00:12","slug":"threatened-gila-trout-airlifted-by-new-mexico-crews-to-safeguard-rare-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/787729\/","title":{"rendered":"Threatened Gila trout airlifted by New Mexico crews to safeguard rare population"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.krqe.com\/tag\/catron-county\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">CATRON COUNTY, N.M.<\/a>\u00a0(KRQE)- It wasn\u2019t your typical rescue operation as a helicopter airlifted 78 Gila trout to safety after the Sacaton fire scorched nearly 10 thousand acres of the Gila Wilderness.<\/p>\n<p>The Gila trout lives nowhere else in the world, but the Gila Wilderness and was one of the first fish species to ever be protected under the Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTtoday, they\u2019re listed as threatened mostly due to this habitat loss from large wildfires but also competition and hybridization with nonnative trout,\u201d said Dan Trujillo, a Gila trout biologist with the New Mexico Department of Wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trujillo and his crew raced to evacuate the trout from Iron Creek, home to one of the species\u2019 most genetically diverse populations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIron Creek holds what we call a relic lineage and those are the remnants of a population that used to be much larger,\u201d he said.\u201dIt represents Gila trout as a whole fairly well and so in order to maintain the genetic health of this lineage, we decided to go collect these fish before the population was potentially lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trujillo said the mission was launched as a precaution in case ash or sediment from the fire degrades Iron Creek, causing both short- and long-term impacts to the ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is one small project that is in the broader scope of conservation for the species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trujillo says the uniquely-bronze-finely-spotted trout once thrived throughout coldwater streams across the Gila watershed, but that is not the case anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He said they now mostly live in isolated pockets in high headwater areas and a couple of large streams.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The rescued group will now breed at the Mora National Fish Hatchery, where biologists hope their offspring will eventually be released back into the wild.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trujillo said the trout is a part of New Mexico\u2019s natural landscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs long as there have been trout in the Gila there have been Gila trout. They\u2019re pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trujillo said while these types of operations can often be stressful on fish, not a single one perished.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CATRON COUNTY, N.M.\u00a0(KRQE)- It wasn\u2019t your typical rescue operation as a helicopter airlifted 78 Gila trout to safety&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3828,79,201],"class_list":["post-787729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-mexico","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}