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Fish riding on the back of a horse might seem like something whimsical out of a Dr. Seuss book, but that's what happened Monday afternoon when Utah Division of Wildlife Resources workers moved cutthroat trout out of a Beaver County stream threatened by a growing wildfire.
The lightning-caused Briggs Fire, reported Aug. 9, started near the bank of Briggs Creek in southern Utah and prompted wildlife managers to relocate the native Bonneville cutthroat trout inhabiting the stream as a precaution.
Crews "electrofished," or temporarily stunned, and netted about 140 fish in Briggs Creek — loading them into water-filled buckets on horse saddles or backpacks — and moved them about three miles downstream, where the creek flows into the larger south fork of North Creek.
"In some cases, the fires go through and don't get as big as they think, they don't burn as hot as they think and there isn't any damage to our streams or to the fish," said Richard Hepworth, a regional aquatics manager with the Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR). "[But] sometimes these fires are so big and so hot that once you get a rainstorm, it causes really big ash flows, mudslides and flash flooding that can wipe out a whole population of trout."
Ash flows happen once a fire has burned through an area and rain washes the ash into streams, raising the acidity of the water.
"Fish just can't deal with it," Hepworth said. "It poisons them."
The scorched ground after a blaze, often lacking trees and other vegetation, also is more susceptible to mudslides and flash floods, which change the flow and contents of a creek.
The Briggs Fire, zero percent contained and encompassing 1,171 acres as of Wednesday night, might not damage the stream ecosystems in Fish Lake National Forest, said fire spokeswoman Kayli Yardley, but U.S. Forest Service officials believe there was enough of a risk to merit the fish removal.
The trout relocation fit into plans the DWR already had, but it put more urgency on the project. Wildlife managers have been removing the competitive, invasive rainbow trout from North Creek for the past two years — having finished the day the Briggs Fire started — and planned to plant some of the cutthroats from Briggs Creek there in late September in a $7,000 effort to repopulate the species.
The DWR expedited the cutthroat move because of the fire danger, pushing it forward a month sooner than anticipated, Hepworth said.
"We had to speed that process up to make sure we protected and saved those fish," he said, later adding: "They should be protected there, but when you're dealing with wildfires, there are a lot of unknowns."
The agency also planned to move just a "handful" of the cutthroat to North Creek, Hepworth said, but it relocated as many as possible because of fear that the entire population could be lost. Some of the trout might be transferred back to Briggs Creek, though, once the stream is deemed safe, which could take up to four years.
The alternative of not moving the fish had previously played out in Beaver County with grim results. In 2010, the county lost 40 miles of stream — as well as most of the trout therein — when the lightning-sparked Twitchell Canyon Fire burned through the area and smoldered more than 48,000 acres, Hepworth said.
The Briggs Fire is following a similar pattern and burning much of the same land. A few backcountry roads and trails near the blaze were closed indefinitely Tuesday while crews worked to contain the blaze, but Yardley said fire resources are slim in Utah as state firefighters were sent to aid efforts in California and Idaho.
Twitter: @CourtneyLTanner