Species Spotlight: Redband Trout

Chances are, if you come across a native trout in a river east of Oregon’s Cascades, it’s a redband. The gorgeous Great Basin redband trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss newberrii sspp., are a tough subspecies of native rainbow trout. They evolved in a harsh and changing environment, developing unique strategies to contend with challenging conditions on the way to their modern distribution. Today, this species is remarkably adapted to the high desert, but they will need our help to continue to survive as a cherished icon of Oregon’s dry side.

As the name suggests, these fish exhibit a rosy red swath along their sides, with orange and yellow tints along the belly. Prime trout habitat is clear, clean and cold, with a complex array of riffles and pools and abundant streamside vegetation.

Once upon a time, around the end of the last ice ages, there was a lot more water in the Great Basin—the large, arid geographic region of the middle western United States with no outlet to the ocean, which includes Oregon’s high desert. Huge lakes filled most of this expansive basin, fed by and feeding hundreds of rivers and streams, with virtually all these waters populated by redband trout.

Over eons, changing climate and drought increasingly isolated redbands, spurring them to develop traits suitable for desert survival: smaller size, tolerance of warmer temperatures and alkaline waters and changes in coloration. During wet cycles, trout re-colonize streams, expanding distribution. But during drought years, distribution constricts as streams dry and become uninhabitable. Many landlocked basins, like those in Oregon’s high desert, have become so dry that redband trout are isolated in remaining streams at higher elevations, no longer connected to lakes, rivers or other fish.

This increasing isolation produced the many redband populations now inhabiting Oregon high desert waterways, such as the Chewaucan River, Greater Hart-Sheldon creeks and lakes, streams flowing off Steens, Pueblo and Trout Creek mountains into the Alvord basin, and McDermitt Caldera creeks connecting to the Quinn River.

Today, redband occupy less than 45% of their original range, and all remaining populations are known to be sensitive or threatened, indicating a risk of further decline due to habitat loss. Oregon Natural Desert Association has been working for decades to protect, defend and restore the high desert’s most vital fish and wildlife habitat, and new protections gained for millions of acres in the Owyhee and Hart-Sheldon offer new hope for this iconic and beautiful desert fish.