Biologists rescue threatened trout from NM creeks

As firefighters worked Friday to corral the wildfires burning around the West, a special team of biologists were trying to save a threatened trout in southwestern New Mexico from the post-fire ravages — choking floods of ash, soil and charred debris — that are expected to come with summer rains. The team was using electroshocking devices to temporarily stun the Gila trout so they could quickly be scooped into a net. From there, the fish were being put into a tank to be ferried out of the wilderness via helicopter to a special truck that was waiting to drive them to a hatchery in northern New Mexico for safe keeping. The first load of trout was brought out Friday and the work would continue into Saturday, said Art Telles, a biologist and staff resource officer with the Gila National Forest. “When we have hot fire in some of these drainages, that can move ash and sediment after the rains start and that is pretty deadly to trout,” he said. The fish wranglers are focusing on small creeks deep within the perimeter of the Whitewater-Baldy fire, a blaze that has charred more than 453 square miles of the forest and its famed Gila Wilderness. The fire, the largest in the state’s history and the biggest currently burning in the United States, is 63 percent contained...more