Utah Division of Wildlife Resources reports increased populations in formerly endangered June sucker fish
SALT LAKE CITY () — A formerly endangered Utah native fish, the June sucker has been downlisted to threatened status, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR).
The June sucker is a fish species native to Utah, inhabiting Utah Lake and using tributaries in the Provo River and Hobble creek among others to spawn. It is an omnivore that can live for 40 years and grows several feet in size.
In an interview with ABC4.com, Native Aquatics Project Leader at DWR Keith Lawrence said, 'A few decades ago, it was believed that the population [of June suckers] was down to only a few hundred individuals, maybe as many as a thousand.'
Now, however, through conservation efforts, the June Sucker population has recovered, to numbers 'estimated today to be in the tens of thousands, probably somewhere between 30 and 50,000 fish,' according to Lawrence.
'It's important to understand that Utah Lake has undergone many changes over the decades since Western settlers arrived. And many of them have not necessarily been good for the June sucker, at least, and other native fishes that lived there previously. The June sucker is one of the few that remain.'
Keith Lawrence, Native Aquatics Project Leader at DWS
Lawrence explained that the June sucker is not a predator, but as an omnivore it feeds on invertebrates and zooplankton, so it plays a role in the ecosystem as a mid-level omnivore.
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The recovery program for the June sucker has been a large undertaking that began shortly after the species was listed as endangered, Lawrence said. Alongside partners, DWR has taken a myriad of measures to protect the species, including non-native management, water conservation especially in the Provo River, public information and outreach, habitat improvement, and a 'very aggressive' stocking program.
As part of the stocking program, conservationists took some of the remaining individuals and propagated them, mostly at the Logan Hatchery in northern Utah, Lawrence said. They are raised in these hatcheries and then they are stocked into the lake. Lawrence told ABC4.com that there have been 'hundreds of thousands' of June suckers stocked into the lake over the years.
Lawrence stated that while the recovery has been very successful, there are still threats to the June sucker population, including 'all the non-native potential predators and competitors that we have in the system.'
Additionally, water flow continues to be a major threat.
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'At one time, the Provo River ran completely dry, you know, during the summer,' Lawrence said. 'Memory of the summers that that did happen, and so obviously that's not good for the fish, and so the program has spent tens of millions of dollars to try to purchase money and provide those flows when the fish need them.'
Lawrence stated that they are monitoring the spawning run into the Provo Delta and Oville Creek, using PIT tag antennas, which passively detect tags put into some of the fish. June suckers are most vulnerable after spawning.
'They're very vulnerable, as you might imagine, when they're small,' Lawrence said, and he described getting them from the larval stage to 'age one' fish as a 'bottleneck.' The research to figure out how to get over that bottleneck is key, he said.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources reports increased populations in formerly endangered June sucker fish
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