Whiskey Creek Gila Trout

This unique lineage of Gila trout was brought to Mora National Fish Hatchery in Mora, New Mexico, from the wild after the Whitewater-Baldy Complex wildfire in 2012. With their entire watershed wiped out these fish were brought on station for the first time. To keep these fish as wild as possible the hatchery used naturalistic rearing techniques to keep the fish wild. In the spawning season of 2014 the fish were spawned for the first time, which resulted in over 5,000 fish being returned to the wild in October 2014.