For the third time in four years, I’ve participated in the release of trout raised in the classrooms of elementary schools under Trout Unlimited’s Trout in the Classroom program.
The program is designed to encourage students to appreciate the environment, the value of clean cold-water fisheries, to take responsibility for raising and caring for a living creature that will be returned to the wild and to encourage them to learn about fishing.
This latest release, however, was very special to me. It involved the release of once endangered Gila trout back into their home waters in the Gila Wilderness of southwestern New Mexico.
I’ve been writing about Gila Trout for about 50 years, from when they were first placed on the endangered list, to when they were downlisted to threatened, then back to endangered when terrible forest fires ravaged their native waters in the Gila Wildness.
Finally, the species has been fully de-listed and self perpetuating populations of Gila trout have been established in certain waters in southwestern New Mexico and eastern Arizona so that anglers can now catch and keep them.
In northern New Mexico, the Rio Grande cutthroat trout was on the verge of being listed as endangered, but a long-term effort has made that species’ outlook strong enough to allow it to escape that classification. The Gila trout, however, was truly on the edge of extinction.
The fact that this species has now been made available for the Trout in the Classroom program was a culmination of many years of dedicated work. It included initial optimism, followed by periods of great anguish, then finally buoyed by the realization that they could once again swim throughout their original habitat in one of the most inhospitable landscapes where cold-water species of fish can be found in the United States.
The Trout in the Classroom project at G.W. Stout Elementary School started more than a year ago under the direction of a dedicated teacher, Keith Rogers, who is an avid outdoorsman and has a passion for the open spaces of southwestern New Mexico and the Gila Wilderness. Trout eggs were delivered to the school last spring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Mora, NM. Rogers’ students monitored water quality, fed the fish, cleaned the aquarium, recorded their progress and wrote about the project.
As the coordinator for Trout in the Classroom projects for Trout Unlimited’s Gila-Rio Grande Chapter, I’m proud to say I had a role in helping obtain equipment, direction and support for the program.
With about 50 students from the school present last week on April 2, we released 14 of the fish into Lake Roberts, a man-made lake fed by the waters of Sapello Creek, which from there flows west into the Gila River. There was great support from students at G.W. Stout Elementary, involved parents, other teachers at the school, the U.S. Forest Service, Trout Unlimited, Silver City Consolidated Schools, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, student groups from New Mexico State University and Western New Mexico University and the Mesilla Valley Fly Fishers (of which I am also a member). With all the turmoil in our country today, it’s a great feeling that so many groups and individuals can get together to make a project like this happen and be so successful.
Below is a video of some of the fish in a special cooled and aeriated containersjust before they were released into Lake Roberts. Notice how colorful the juvenile fish are:
The students seemed to be happy to participate in the field trip. They acted — well like my own 11-year-old granddaughter and 12-year-old grandson act — full of energy, occasional moments when they were focused on the project and lots of social interaction.
In addition to releasing the fish, there were activities for the students. One was a eco-scavenger hunt, where students had to collect things like pine cones, juniper berries, aquatic insects, oak leaves, etc. A bonus for a prize was if they brought in trash from around the area where the fish were released. There was also a nature hike and a fly casting clinic, which I helped with as much as I could with windy conditions and “tween”
attention span limits that are normal for that age.
Finally, below is a picture of the group, not including about a dozen other volunteers. It was a great day at Lake Roberts, for the students, for the adults and for the fish that are now swimming freely in their new waters.
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