"In a way," historian D. Robert Carter said, "the June suckers from Utah Lake helped build Salt Lake City."

On Monday, Utah officials made the latest installment on repaying that debt.

Department of Natural Resources workers introduced the first of 43,000 hatchery-bred suckers at Utah Lake State Park as part of a recovery plan to pull the species back from the brink of extinction.

But Reed Harris, recovery-program director, said there is more to this effort.

"We're not talking about saving fish," he said, "but saving an ecosystem."

The June sucker, which can reach 18 inches long and is indigenous only to Utah Lake, joined the endangered-species list in 1986, when its numbers fell below 1,000 after years of dumping sewage and habitat-harming carp into the lake.

Today, that population hovers at 10,000, boosted by past efforts to increase the suckers' ranks and decrease the carp count.

Kris Buelow, a coordinator for the recovery project and an employee of the Central Utah Water Conservancy District, said the June sucker's isolation in Utah Lake made it vulnerable to the invasive carp.

"Here the June sucker didn't have to compete," Buelow said.

But the carp seized on that and destroyed underwater vegetation, where the suckers would look for the small marine animals that make up their diet.

Buelow said diversifying the fish population - carp account for 90 percent of total weight of living creatures in the lake - will help balance the ecosystem.

The June suckers, raised from a breeding stock taken years ago from the lake, were brought down from Logan by truck in aerated tanks. They then were transferred to a boat, which dropped the 8-inch-long fish into the lake far from predators.

Officials hope the hatchery fish will breed with the wild population and build up the June suckers' numbers. The water conservancy district also is adjusting flows into the lake through the Provo River to aid sucker spawning in early summer.

Harris said eliminating sewage dumps has gone a long way toward making the lake more habitable for June suckers.

Another important battle in the effort is public relations. The June sucker is, to quite a few people, a garbage fish, hardly worth saving.

That wasn't always the case.

Carter, the Springville historian, argues June suckers played as vital a role in Utah history as California gulls.

The suckers once were an important foodstuff and commodity. They saved early settlers when crickets, drought and frost threatened crops. When Salt Lake City was evacuated during the Utah War of 1857-58, they helped feed the refugees.

In recent years, the recovery effort drew fire when repair work on a bridge in southwest Provo and an attempt to dredge part of Utah Lake to accommodate a triathlon were delayed because they would have interfered with the fish's mating activities.

However, Harris said, perceptions are changing, especially as Utahns realize the recovery not only saves the fish but the lake as well.

That is especially important, Buelow noted, for water users who rely on Utah Lake and its tributaries. The lake serves as a reservoir for water users in Utah and Salt Lake counties, and is the primary source of the Jordan River.

Then there are the carp - up to 8 million in the lake - that are exceptionally good at reproducing. Harris said the recovery project is formulating a plan to eliminate them from the lake. But it will take time.

dmeyers@sltrib.com