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I I we found tremendous brown trout populations there. So the fish will move when there is water. MR. FORD: That's true. Now, there is only one other thing I noticed. You have the headwaters of Spring Creek as Johnson Springs. Johnson Springs happens to flow to the San Miguel drainage instead of the Uncompahgre drainage, if you know Jqhnson Springs. It has its headwater up in Johnson Park, but not Johnson Springs. MR. WEltER: Well, that's one of our many errors. MR. BURR: Mr. Chairman! I would like to ask him a question. Two meetings ago, you made 1t a point to say that the fish were being endangered and it was a rare specimen in this Ricardo Creek. And there is no place in the state of Colorado that we don't have them. Now you are coming up with maybe they do have them in other places in the state. But you were putting pressure on the Board at that particular time and I was wondering why you were doing that? MR. KOCHMAN: Clarence, I guess I ought to answer that one. I made thos~ statements, but I am not so sure I made them in the context that you a~e saying now. Maybe we can talk about the endangered fish species situation. We said that we thought we had in Ricardo Creek a rare species. At the time we thought it could potentially be the Arkansas River, Greenback Cutthroat, which is an endangered species. I think I said we were going to collect some of these fish and have them iden- tified and respond back to the Board. We are in a position to dQ that now and answer just about any detail you want to mention. We thought we had a.pretty unique fish in Ricardo Creek and we couldn't respond to the Board at that time. But I think we can now. MR. STAPLETON: Why don't you have that specialist come up !;lOW. MR. LANGLOIS: Dave. Langlo~~,Division of Wildlife. In December and January of 1975, early 1976, a total of twenty-one specimens of trout were collected in Ricardo Creek arid' examined. 'The,~potting~patterni coloration and the rest of the characteristics of these trout ideal y represent the original Rio Grande Cutthroat trout. It's not an endangered species. It's considered a threatened species. It's not considered by the U. S. Department of the Interior, but it is con- sidered threatened by the Division of Wildlife. This is the only known population of Rio Grande Cutthroat. No pure populations are known in any other public waters in Colorado. So there is a great deal of value in using these trout to restock areas in which they formerly occurred. This is an ideal source of trout. In addition to that, no trout are known to be native to the Canadian River system, and here we are finding Rio Grande Cutthroat trout in the Canadian River system. There is some question as to how they originally got there. There is a great deal of scientific value associated with these trovt in learning more about the origin of the Rio Grande Cut- throat trout. For that reason, I would urge the Board to try to find some solution to this water decree from Ricardo Creek. In the final solution, let's try to make plans to try to keep the Rio Grande Cutthroat -29-