Salt Lake City Helps Endangered Species Recovery Project in City Watershed

May 16, 1998

Don Duff explains Embrace-a-stream grant.
The Utah Council of Trout Unlimited was successful in obtaining a grant under the Embrace-a-stream program to restore stream bank and instream habitat to recover the Bonneville cutthroat trout with Salt Lake City’s municipal watershed.

On May 16, 1998 Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt “waded into the shallows of Little Dell Creek …to help place a low-tech, high-yield fish incubator – what he calls ‘planting the seeds of hope’ in the Wasatch watershed.”  Surrounded by representatives from project partners Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Goshute Tribe, Utah Reclamation Mitigation and Conservation Commission, Deep Creek Mountain Ranch, Native Utah cutthroat Association, US Fish & Wildlife Service and Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, Don Duff introduced Dr. Fred Eales inventor of the refrigerator incubator used to hatch the native Utah fish.  Along with Secretary Babbitt, Dr. Eales placed the incubator in Dell Creek, perhaps 100 yards from historic Mormon Trail where the early Salt Lake settlers passed in 1847. At that time the Bonneville cutthroat was plentiful, but today the numbers have dwindled to a point where some want the fish put on the Endangered Spices list. “Not necessary,” said Babbitt, “as long as these kind of efforts are underway to recover the species.”

Secretary Babbitt holds open fish incubator in Dell Creek.
Dell Creek is part of Salt Lake City’s water supply flowing through a protected watershed, providing in part drinking water to 400,000 Salt Lake County residents. Pure strains of the disappearing species were found in the Parleys Canyon drainage streams. In 1996, Salt Lake City Public Utilities employees provided facilities to help grow 1,200 Bonneville cutthroat that were released into Lambs Creek on October 30. Paul Dremann, conservation vice president of Trout Unlimited praised the Department and its employees for their support and help in the project.

Under the grant, Salt Lake City Public Utilities will provide $14,000 of in-kind contributions to the project. LeRoy W. Hooton, Jr. Department Director, said “the Bonneville cutthroat recovery project is totally consistent with the City’s watershed protection program and the stream stabilization efforts will benefit water quality.”