Humboldt Cutthroat Trout

Introduction: The Humboldt Cutthroat is a minor supspecies of Lahontan Cutthroat that is native to the Humboldt River drainage in Neveda. It is beleived that during wet years this fish held as much as 2,210 miles of stream habitat, which today has been reduced to somewhere around 180 and 250 miles and 71 different streams. Due to the region that it lives in this trout has become very well adapted to life in unstable stream environments, where flows and temperatures may fluctuate to a high degree. This has most likely been the on thing that has saved the Humboldt Cutthroat from the extinction because most nonative trout cannot survive under these conditions so there has been very little hybridization. If fact today there are only four streams in the upper Humboldt River drainage that are known to contain rainbow-cutthroat hybrids. Like many trout in arid parts of the Western United States, cattle grazing has had a major impact on the populations of Humboldt Cutthroat by increasing the sediment load and destroying vegatation in the riparian zone. This could easily be seen in the stream that I found this trout in, where cattle had caved the banks of the stream in causing it to run murky an cut itself into a 10 foot deep canyon. Other major causes of the decline of the Humboldt Cutthroat that have lead to it begining listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act include water diversion and mining. Today the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have began to create fenced off enclosures around the ripirian zone of streams containing this fish so that the streams can begin to recover.

Description: The Humboldt Cutthroat tends to have a high degree of variation from one population to the next, due to isolation. Most streams that hold this trout dry up in the desert before conecting to larger streams in the drainage. The coloration of this trout tends to be bronze or copper with some hints of yellow. The Humboldt Cutthroat also tends have a redish colored stripe along part of their lateral line. These trout tend to be more sparsely spotted than the lahontan cutthroat and their spots are fairly evenly distributed across their bodies. An interesting trait common to the Humboldt Cutthroat is the presence of spots around their eyes.