June sucker maker inroads on Provo River

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In the 1980s, the June sucker was on the brink of extinction, with only 300 to 500 left in Utah Lake.

But last week, officials working to save the fish said it is showing signs of a comeback.

Michael Mills, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District's June sucker recovery program coordinator, said the endangered fish was spotted beyond the Fort Field Diversion on the Provo River, which was recently modified to allow the suckers to swim past that point during their annual spawning run in June.

"It's been a pretty good year on the Provo River with the spawning run," said Mills, who estimates the June sucker population at between 30,000 and 70,000.

"It is a good sign," said Larry Ellertson, Utah County commissioner and chairman of the Utah Lake Commission. "I hope with what they are doing ... we can get the June sucker back."

But there is still a ways to go before the fish, which once thrived in Utah Lake, can be considered safe from extinction. The fish still need places where their larvae can grow without being eaten by predator carp, and habitat that provides food to the immature fish.

And the carp that threaten the June sucker need to be destroyed -- or at least culled to the point where they are no longer a threat to the lake's native species.

The June sucker is indigenous to Utah Lake and played a big role in Utah history. They were plentiful enough that they fed Utah pioneers during cricket infestations that ruined crops. They were even used to pay Mormon tithing, says historian D. Robert Carter.

But the fish were threatened when non-native carp were introduced into the lake. The carp quickly took over and destroyed the underwater plants that the suckers relied upon to find food and protect their young.

Today, 7 million carp make up 90 percent of the fish population in the lake.

Despite its uses in the past, people were not enamored with saving the June sucker in recent years. Critics questioned why the state was spending so much time and money to save a "garbage fish."

But Mills and Ellertson said people are starting to realize that the effort is not about saving a fish, but a lake. The sucker, they say, is a barometer for the lake's ecological health. Restoring the June sucker is one of the elements in the Utah Lake Master Plan, a document drafted by the commission -- which represents the cities along the lake, Utah County, the state and other entities that use the lake.

The best example of the changed attitude came when the commission conducted its final hearing on the master plan, and a man from Idaho suggested killing off the suckers and putting in a better fish to take its place. Then-chairman Lewis K. Billings said then the fact that the commissioners didn't erupt into a chorus of "amens" showed that the sucker's role was being recognized.

Among the steps taken to save the sucker are an aggressive hatchery program to build up the population, as well as restoration of the area where Hobble Creek empties into Utah Lake, creating a new spawning area for the suckers.

That area was completed in late 2008, with help from the Utah Transit Authority that used the project to replace wetlands destroyed to make way for the FrontRunner commuter railroad. While biologists were expecting the fish to take a few years to come back into that area, Mills said the suckers quickly discovered it and have made two spawning runs already.

Mills said the Fort Field diversion, four miles upstream from Utah Lake, is another step in getting the fish back into their native habitat. Like the Hobble Creek project, Mills said the suckers were found a lot sooner than experts had predicted, which he said is a good sign for the sucker recovery.

However, the fish is not out of danger just yet.

Mills said the hatchery fish are the ones making spawning runs, not wild suckers.

"We still have yet to find the fish that has made the jump to 3-4 inches [long] from a microscopic larvae," Mills said.

The problem: Channeling and carp have destroyed the "nursery" areas of the river. The larval suckers need shallow, warm water and plants to go grow into fish that can fend for themselves in the open lake. Now, the larvae find themselves in deep cold water, where there is little food, too many predators and nowhere to hide.

One effort to fix that is to create a new delta for the Provo River, eliminating the current channel that empties the river into the lake.

While that work is going on, the state is contracting with commercial fishermen to remove carp from the lake. The goal: Harvest 5 million pounds a year. In the past 18 months, the effort -- done in the fall and winter, when the carp are easier to locate -- has netted 3 million pounds of the predator.