ABSTRACT Three native trouts occur in the southwestern United States. The Rio Grande cutthroat trout <em>Oncorhynchus clarkii virginalis</em> persists in New Mexico and southern Colorado on the Santa Fe, Carson, and Rio Grande national forests and private lands. The Gila trout <em>O. gilae</em> and the Apache trout <em>O. gilae apache</em> (also known as <em>O. apache</em>) occur in isolated headwater streams of the Gila and Little Colorado rivers on the Gila and Apache- Sitgreaves national forests and Fort Apache Indian Reservation in southwestern New Mexico and east-central Arizona, respectively. For more than two decades, intensive management has been directed at the Apache, Gila, and Rio Grande cutthroat trouts. Despite the efforts, their decades-long listed status remains unchanged for the Gila and Apache trouts, and the Rio Grande native is under consideration for listing. The objectives of this paper are to review the literature and management activities over the past quarter of a century in order to delineate why recovery and conservation have been so difficult for southwestern trout.
Geologic framework of pre-Cretaceous rocks in the Southern Ute Indian Reservation and adjacent areas, southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico