Alvord cutthroat trout
| Alvord cutthroat trout | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Salmoniformes |
| Family: | Salmonidae |
| Genus: | Oncorhynchus |
| Species: | O. clarki |
| Subspecies: | O. c. alvordensis |
| Trinomial name | |
|
Oncorhynchus clarki alvordensis Behnke, 2002 |
|
The Alvord cutthroat trout, Oncorhynchus clarki alvordensis, was a subspecies of cutthroat trout. It was known only from Trout Creek in Oregon and Virgin Creek in Nevada, although it may have lived in several of the larger Alvord Basin streams during recent times. It was native to spring-fed creeks that ran down to Alvord Dry Lake in southeast Oregon, which was a large lake during the ice ages and an isolated drainage, part of the Great Basin today. This is one of the two cutthroat trout taxa considered extinct because all known populations are hybridized with rainbow trout which were introduced into streams in the Alvord basin in the 1920s, resulting in cutbows.
The subspecies name was given in 2002 by Robert Behnke (Trout and Salmon of North America).
In the fall 2005 issue of Trout (Trout Unlimited's Journal of Coldwater Fisheries Conservation), in an article titled About Trout: Ivory-billed trout, Dr. Behnke notes a historical reference that the now "extinct" Alvord Cutthroat Trout had been transplanted into another basin adjacent to the Alvord Basin, and that this transplant occurred prior to the 1928 introduction of rainbows into Trout Creek. Dr. Behnke reflects on which stream these trout may have been introduced into.
In the winter 2007 issue of Trout, in an article titled Toward Definitiveness, Dr. Behnke relates a summer 2006 electrofishing (sampling) project with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW). He realized that the stream he’d referenced in 2005 was above the maximum lake level of any downstream flow-connected basins, and thus he doubts that redband trout ever made it to this elevated location.
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