Years after a wildfire threatened to wipe out a rare, genetically unique species in a tiny Colorado creek, it was found “thriving” in new streams, officials said.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife recently found evidence of the unique cutthroat trout surviving multiple years and even naturally reproducing in the wild — “a huge milestone in any wildlife restoration project” — thanks to wildlife officials’ rescue efforts in 2016, the agency said in a news release.

“This is very exciting news for these fish and for the agency, considering the odds they faced back in 2016,” said Paul Foutz, a senior aquatic biologist for the agency’s southeast region where the team relocated the fish.

In July of that year, a wildfire raged near the fish’s home in the south fork of Hayden Creek and threatened to wash ash and debris into creeks and rivers, “ruining water quality, choking off aquatic life and destroying habitat,” officials said.

So “a small army of CPW aquatic biologists, hatchery staff, and U.S. Forest Service personnel donned fire-resistant suits, strapped on heavy electro-shocking backpacks, carried oxygen bottles, nets and water tanks and headed behind fire lines to pull off a daring rescue” of the rare species, officials said.

Foutz was part of the team that rescued the trout from the wildfire in 2016.

The Hayden Creek Fire would go on to char a whopping 16,754 acres that summer, and runoff from later rains overwhelmed the creek with “a thick, black sludge that ultimately poured into the Arkansas River, damaging fish and habitat for miles in that waterway” — and killed off the creek’s fish, officials said.

The only known survivors were 158 of the rare fish the agency isolated at a hatchery, officials said. Biologists released another 36 fish in Newlin Creek during the fire, but those fish didn’t make it.

Biologists scouted out creeks of similar size and habitat characteristics that flow year-round and are “remote enough to protect the prized HCC trout from human interference,” and in 2018 decided to once again try Newlin Creek and 13 other streams across the Arkansas Drainage, officials said.

Since then, biologists have released over 8,000 of the trout throughout 1.5 miles of the Newlin Creek and nearly 135,000 total fish along 25 miles of water in 18 ponds, streams and lakes, officials said.

The discovery that the fish not only survived in other streams where the team transported them, but are thriving enough to reproduce in the wild shows the agency’s conservation efforts paid off.

“Our surveys this year found ‘young-of-the-year’ fish swimming with older class fish from previous stocking,” Foutz said. “Although this does not mean the HCC in Newlin are a self-sustaining population yet, it’s a huge step in the right direction.”

Some of the other streams biologists stocked with the trout also show “good signs of survival and multiple age classes,” officials said.

The fish have unique genetics that match museum specimens that early explorers encountered in the late 1800s — and aren’t known to exist anywhere else in the world, Colorado Outdoors Magazine reported in 2019.

Hayden Pass, where the Hayden Creek cutthroat trout originated, is about a 100-mile drive southwest from Colorado Springs.

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