Cottonwood-Fire Fish Rescue
Fish and aquatic biologists from Fishlake National Forest (NF), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) team up to rescue Bonneville cutthroat trout from a stream in the potential path of the Cottonwood Wildfire in Utah. (Forest Service video by Virginia McDaniel)
Fish and aquatic biologists from Fishlake National Forest (NF), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) team up to rescue Bonneville cutthroat trout from a stream in the potential path of the Cottonwood Wildfire. From left to right: BLM aquatic ecologist Jake Stout, Utah DWR Southern Region aquatics program manager Mike Hadley, BLM water resource technician Jake Johnson, and Fishlake NF fisheries biologist Jens Swensen.
In early July 2026 Forestry Technician Virginia McDaniel was out on a wildfire assignment near Beaver, UT. She had the opportunity to document the rescue of Bonneville cutthroat trout, a Forest Sensitive Species, from a stream in the path of the Cottonwood Wildfire and made a short documentary. It was a collaborative effort with the Fishlake National Forest, the Bureau of Land Management, and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
The Bonneville cutthroat trout is a Forest Sensitive Species on the Fishlake National Forest. When areas burn in a wildfire, fish populations are at risk from ash flow, sedimentation, and flooding. While fire is a natural process and fish are adapted to it, their habitats aren’t connected like they used to be due to water diversions and the introduction of non-native fish species; thus recovery after a fire is harder. That’s where aquatics biologists step in! The fish collected will be taken to a fish hatchery to preserve the genetics of this special population and assure they will be available to repopulate local streams in the native range of Bonneville cutthroat trout after they recover from the wildfire.