{"id":109436,"date":"2015-09-17T19:46:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T01:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fish-survived-spill-but-trout-numbers-fall\/"},"modified":"2015-09-17T19:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T01:46:24","slug":"fish-survived-spill-but-trout-numbers-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fish-survived-spill-but-trout-numbers-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Fish survived spill, but trout numbers fall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jim
Jim White, an aquatic biologist with Colorado Parks & Wildlife, walks the raft through the shallow Animas River to survey fish populations last month. Results showed no mass die-off as a result of the Gold King Mine spill, but number of trout continue a steady decline.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In August and early September, Colorado Parks and Wildlife crews conducted a survey of trout numbers in sections of the Animas near Durango and Silverton.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it last year, and normally we skip a year,\u201d Parks and Wildlife spokesman Joe Lewandowski said at the time. \u201cBut because of the spill, our biologists decided it\u2019d be a good time to do it again, and see what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

A statement from the Parks and Wildlife on Tuesday said the survey did not show effects on fish from the mine spill, but the results did provide a \u201cmixed picture\u201d for trout.<\/p>\n

In Durango, officials saw an increase in the overall biomass of fish, but aquatic biologist Jim White said that\u2019s because Parks and Wildlife stocks about 40,000 fingerling trout every year.<\/p>\n

Two segments \u2013 from the La Plata County Fairgrounds to the Ninth Street Bridge, and from Cundiff Park to the High Bridge \u2013 met the \u201cGold Medal\u201d water status for biomass, a standard of 60 pounds of fish per surface area.<\/p>\n

But overall, the river did not meet the Gold Medal status.<\/p>\n

Fish greater than 14 inches improved slightly from 2014 \u2013 from nine to 11 fish per acre \u2013 but the Gold Medal standard is 12 fish longer than 14 inches or more per acre.<\/p>\n

Parks and Wildlife officials said the number of large fish remains low, and trout have shown little signs of natural reproduction, issues that wildlife experts have been combating for almost 10 years.<\/p>\n

White told The Durango Herald last month a number of factors \u2013 less water in the river because of irrigation and less snowfall, urban runoff and higher water temperatures \u2013 are the leading cause of the fish population decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

White, an aquatic biologist with Colorado Parks & Wildlife, walks the raft through the shallow Animas River to survey fish populations last month. Results showed no mass die-off as a result of the Gold King Mine spill, but number of trout continue a steady decline.Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file photo In August and early September, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6328,6313],"tags":[304,885,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-109436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-2-more-sports","category-sports-2","tag-animas-river","tag-fishing","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109436"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=109436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}