Bonneville Cutthroat Trout Reintroduced into Strawberry Creek
Thirty-four Bonneville cutthroat trout were moved from Mill Creek into Strawberry Creek on October 15th. Although this is a small number of fish, they have the potential to have hundreds of babies in their first year. Park staff will monitor the population and supplement it with additional reintroductions if necessary. Strawberry Creek has five miles of fish habitat in the Park and an additional two miles outside the Park.

Strawberry Creek was once connected to the Snake Arm of Lake Bonneville, and as the lake dried up, Bonneville cutthroat trout moved into the stream. When settlers came into the area and began stocking Strawberry Creek, the non-native brook and rainbow trout outcompeted the Bonneville cutthroat and it disappeared. Since the National Park Service mandates that national park areas be managed for the native species, the NPS, in cooperation with the Nevada Division of Wildlife (NDOW), treated Strawberry Creek in 2000 with the piscicide rotenone to remove the non-native trout. After electrofishing the stream three times and determining that the treatment was successful, Bonneville cutthroat were reestablished.

Snake Creek Treatment
Snake Creek also sported native Bonneville cutthroat trout at one time, and the upper four miles of the stream was designated as a location to return the native trout. Towards that end, this section of stream, from the top of the pipeline past the last fish in each of the upper tributaries, was treated with antimycin August 5th-10th. Antimycin is a more selective killer than rotenone, and it did not have as large an impact on the macroinvertebrate population in Snake Creek as rotenone did in Strawberry Creek. Macroinvertebrates will continue to be sampled and their recovery will be compared to that of Strawberry Creek so that fisheries managers in other areas will be able to make better decisions about how they remove non-native fish. In addition, the entire upper section of the creek will be electrofished twice more to make sure that the treatment was successful, and then Bonneville cutthroat trout will be reintroduced. NDOW is an important partner in this process, since they control most of the donor populations. With their cooperation, BCT may be reintroduced into Snake Creek in September 2003.

South Fork Big Wash Bonnevilles Growing Quickly
In September we completed a standard fish population survey in the South Fork of Big Wash, where Bonneville cutthroat trout were reintroduced in 2000. The fish that had been moved there from Mill Creek had taken advantage of the bigger creek and more nutrients and had grown 60% in length over two years. Several were larger than any Mill Creek fish. These fish successfully spawned last year, as evidenced by the several small fish we found.

In late September, a storm caused a flash flood in the creek, washing unstable slopes from last year's wildfire into the creek. While large fish were found in several pools, the sediment was up to two inches deep in some pools and may have harmed this year's spawning success.

Volunteers contributed over 700 hours to the fisheries program at Great Basin National Park in 2002. We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who came out and helped us-we couldn't have done as much as we did without your help!