Wild About Wildlife

By Terry McCarthy

Return of the Native: Cutthroat Trout Comeback

When Roger Lang went looking for westslope cutthroat trout near his ranch in southwestern Montana, he climbed high in the mountains--very high. "We were ranging up between 8,000 and 9,500 feet, above the treeline," says Lang, 46, a software entrepreneur turned conservationist with a passion for saving a species of trout first described by Lewis and Clark in the early 19th century.

Lang, a Californian, sold his company for some $300 million, and with part of the proceeds he and his wife Cynthia bought the 18,000-acre Sun Ranch in Cameron, Mont., from actor Steven Seagal. Lang quickly discovered that the native cutthroats--so named because of a distinctive red slash under their jawline--were in trouble. The more aggressive, nonnative brown and rainbow trout were supplanting or hybridizing the cutthroats, so Lang set out to find residual populations of genetically pure westslope cutthroats--Oncorhynchus clarki lewisi. It was only by climbing above waterfalls and other natural blockages that Lang was able to find streams with pure cutthroats.

Following genetic testing, those that turned out to be 100% pure became part of a captive breeding program. Now Lang has hundreds of breeding pairs and 4,000 fingerlings. He is working to find places to reintroduce the purebreds. Says he: "Anything that develops over hundreds of thousands of years deserves a chance of being rescued." No matter how high he has to go. --By Terry McCarthy