After more than five decades of recovery efforts, the Apache trout has been removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened species.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was in Mesa Wednesday to make the announcement alongside Gov. Katie Hobbs, White Mountain Apache Tribe Chairman Kasey Velasquez, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Deputy Director Siva Sundaresan and several conservation groups.
“After more than 50 years of devoted efforts among federal, state, Tribal and non-governmental organizations, the incredible recovery of the Apache trout reminds us of the transformational power that collaborative conservation efforts — grounded in Indigenous Knowledge — can have on fish and wildlife,” Haaland says.
It’s a significant conservation success that marks the first sportfish and trout to be removed from the list.
The Apache trout lives exclusively in streams of the White Mountains in eastern Arizona. They're sacred to the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the official state fish.
It was one of the first species listed after the 1973 passage of the Endangered Species Act. The fish species was downlisted to threatened in 1975 and conservation efforts to support the Apache trout have continued.
Due to those efforts, 30 populations of Apache trout now occupy 175 miles of habitat — a drastic change from 1979 when just 14 trout populations lived in 30 miles of habitat.
In a post to social media, Velasquez thanked the federal government and other partners for collaborating with the tribe to ensure the Apache trout’s recovery.
