Fish once on the cusp of endangerment will soon be a Utah sportfish, officials say
A fish that was once on the cusp of endangerment will soon be a sportfish in Utah, wildlife officials said.
The roundtail chub’s status change is thanks to the state’s conservation efforts, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) said in a Friday, Sept. 30, news release.
“While roundtail chub are considered a species of greatest conservation need, they are a conservation success story and their populations in Utah are doing well enough now to withstand some fishing pressure,” Randy Oplinger, the agency’s sportfish coordinator, said in the release.
Prior to the change, approved by DWR’s board on Thursday, Sept. 29, anglers were prohibited from catching the species under state law.
Efforts to protect the fish, an endemic species only found in the Colorado River Basin, began in 2006, according to Matthew J. Breen, a native aquatics project leader with DWR.
Breen wrote in an August 2020 blog post that the roundtail chub was considered a “sensitive species,” or those that need special attention for conservation to prevent them from falling under the Endangered Species Act.
A number of factors contributed to the species’s population decline, according to Breen, including “habitat loss from large dams, water diversions, predation from non-native species and competition with other introduced fish.”
“These fish haven’t caught much of a break since they were used as an important food source by early Utah settlers,” Breen added.
After years of other efforts, in 2019, Breen and his team decided to take a different approach to help prevent the fish from falling under the Endangered Species Act.
“Once a fish is listed, your options narrow considerably, and there are many things you can’t do,” Breen said. “A future listing for this species could hinder anglers, water users and landowners.”
The team looked to hatcheries as “an obvious place to start,” Breen said.
After weighing their options, the team decided on creating an “offsite brood-stock hatchery” at West Green’s Lake, a privately owned “predator-free lake,” according to Breen.
In fall 2019, Breen and his team “set out on a four-day trip, spanning 50 miles of the White River” to find and gather roundtail chub that could be moved to the lake for breeding.
This time around, the team only ended up with four fish, Breen said. But, when the team visited again in June 2021, they had much greater success.
“In all, we were able to find another 41 roundtails to add the first four fish in West Green’s Lake,” Breen said. “Our team was pretty excited!”
At the time, Breen was hopeful about the success of their efforts, adding that if the effort was “successful, we also hope to open up this pond in the future and give anglers a unique opportunity to fish for this native species,” Breen said.
Now, anglers can expect to catch the fish starting in 2023.
“These are a fun species to fish for because they take a wide variety of flies, lures and baits. Roundtail chub are found in the Colorado and Green rivers and their tributaries,” Oplinger said.
For a full list of permitted waters to catch the fish, check DWR’s website.
This story was originally published October 4, 2022 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Fish once on the cusp of endangerment will soon be a Utah sportfish, officials say."
