Government committed to restoring trout to Truckee

Tuesday, March 14, 2000 | 12:20 p.m.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Field Supervisor Bob Williams told about 80 people gathered in Reno Monday night that the federal Endangered Species Act requires his agency to develop a plan to get the species back in the river.

"If a group comes in and says, 'We want to maintain what we've got and we want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to go away,' it ain't happening," Williams told the angler-intensive crowd.

The Truckee River's naturally reproducing Lahontan cutthroat trout died out in 1940 because of overfishing, dams, water diversions and the introduction of competing non-native fish.

Williams is traveling around northern Nevada and California, speaking to groups interested in the river and its fishery. Public comments will be compiled and addressed by the Recovery Implementation Team, a group of technical experts charged with writing the restoration plan.

"One message to take home is: We are in a process; there are no done deals," Williams said. But many in the audience expressed doubt that the cutthroat can once again thrive in the river and said they don't want anyone disturbing the non-native fish that are already doing well in the river rainbow and German brown trout.

Under any restoration scenario, the cutthroats would become the dominant fish in the Truckee, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported on Tuesday.

"There's a large group of us that supports Lahontan cutthroat trout recovery," said Don Evans of Reno, "but we will draw a line in the sand as far as eliminating all the non-native fish."

But Fernley fisherman Bill Ijams argued in favor of "resurrecting what the water takers" took away from northern Nevada - a fish that's found only in the Great Basin.

"What we're talking about is putting back something that will be no where else on earth," Ijams said.