Western Reserve Land Conservancy reports on the success of a program in which Native Ohio Brook Trout were reintroduced to streams after the species was believed to have been lost forever.
In 1972, Dr. Andrew White of John Carroll University found two reproducing populations of Native Ohio Brook Trout in the headwaters of the Chagrin River in Geauga County. At the time, it was believed that this species, which can survive in only the coldest and cleanest water, had died off due to pollution and development. Subsequent DNA testing confirmed that these fish were indeed the remnants of the original brook trout that lived in Ohio’s streams and rivers after the glaciers retreated some 10,000 years ago.
“They were genetically tested and they are a unique population, a strain found only here in Ohio,” says Paul Pira, director of the Geauga Park District’s Natural Resource Management Program.
No additional populations were found when the state surveyed streams in the Chagrin, Grand, and Rocky River watersheds. But the study found 15 suitable sites for reintroduction of brook trout – very small, spring-fed streams that are completely forested. From 1996 to 2004, Native Ohio Brook Trout – raised first in a private hatchery at University School and then at a state-operated one in Castalia – were reintroduced to those creeks.
Today, six or seven of the streams – all in Northeast Ohio – still have reproducing brook trout populations. In nearly each case, the properties containing the streams have been protected by county park districts and by organizations such as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Western Reserve Land Conservancy.
This video follows Pira and two Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife biologists as they survey trout populations in one stream.
The goal of the brook trout reintroduction program is to return a habitat-sensitive, native fish to its former range, not to produce a sport fishery. In fact, Native Ohio Brook Trout are listed as a threatened species. The project has reinforced the need for collaboration and land-protection in conservation efforts by a number of partners, including the state, Geauga Park District, the history museum, the Land Conservancy, Cleveland Metroparks and others.
