Lahontan Cutthroat Trout once thrived throughout the high-elevation streams and lakes of the Walker Basin, straddling the California-Nevada border, but non-native trout introductions and decades of land use change have pushed the species to the edge: roughly 95% of their historic California habitat has been lost, and these fish now survive in only a handful of isolated, fragile populations.

CalTrout and our partners, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, Trout Unlimited, and the Walker Basin Conservancy, are working stream by stream to change that trajectory. On Silver Creek, the team uses eDNA sampling and electrofishing to remove non-native Brook Trout that outcompete and hybridize with native Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, and in summer 2024, that same non-native removal work expanded to Slinkard Creek, one of the species' most important remaining strongholds. At By-Day Creek, crews are thinning white fir across a 460-acre ecological reserve to reduce the risk that a severe wildfire could wipe out an entire population in a single event, a real danger for a species now confined to such small, isolated refuges.

Each stream reclaimed for Lahontan Cutthroat Trout brings the species closer to a more secure future, with durable, self-sustaining populations. It's slow, careful work, but it's exactly the kind of stronghold-by-stronghold recovery this ancient native trout needs to persist in the waters it has called home for thousands of years.