MORA COUNTY, N.M. (KRQE) – The Mora National Fish Hatchery is the only hatchery in the world dedicated to raising the threatened Gila trout for both recovery and conservation purposes. And after adjusting protocols and making improvements to their infrastructure,
researchers believe this once-endangered species has a promising future.
“So the future for Gila trout, I say, looks promising, right, very promising,” shared excitedly Daniel Gallegos, project leader at the Mora National Fish Hatchery.
Encouraging words from project leader Gallegos as we see the Gila trout finally thriving after years of diligent recovery efforts, but that wasn’t always the case. “So, Gila trout were initially listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966,” explained Gallegos. “However, due to successful recovery efforts, in 2006, Gila trout were actually downlisted and threatened, and that’s currently where we’re at today.”
Gila Trout habitat restoration project underway
The native species faced a myriad of threats, such as habitat loss and degradation, along with competition and predation.
This new listing presented a big opportunity for researchers in the years that followed, allowing conservationists at the Mora National Fish Hatchery to try new recovery protocols. “So, we made several changes across the board with our spawning protocol, culture techniques when growing out these fish, and we’ve had phenomenal success,” continued Gallegos.
The original spawning process used at the hatchery allowed water to get into the eggs, affecting fertilization before the male was able to fertilize the eggs, drastically reducing the window for successful fertilization. “So that’s one big change we made is we started drying off the fish around the vent area, right, where the eggs and the sperm come out from the fish,” said Gallegos.
Efforts underway to restore Canjilon Creek Watershed in northern New Mexico
Gallegos and his team, fine tuning the best process to decrease mortality rates and boost survival, “Overall, the implementation of, all these changes to our spawning protocol and our culture techniques helped to see essentially the best few years that this facility has ever seen, right, in the entirety that it’s been around.”
Those efforts have increased survival rates drastically from 30% to a whopping 91% today. “Here at the hatchery, we still have plans to continue to modify and improve our infrastructure…our goal here is essentially to kind of make this facility as efficient as we can,” shared Gallegos.
These new methods have proven so successful that the Mora National Fish Hatchery has been able to share its techniques with fish hatcheries across the United States to recover other endangered or threatened species like the Lahontan Cutthroat trout in Nevada.
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