- [Narrator] The spring-fed waters of Sun Creek
are cold and clean.
The perfect home for bull trout.
Crater Lake biologist, Dave Hering,
is tagging bull trout here in the Park,
so he can track their movement downstream.
- New fish, doesn't hold previous tag.
We've been working in the National Park
to restore Sun Creek bull trout for 25 years.
Just going to make a small incision.
- [Narrator] The stretch of Creek,
where Dave is tagging fish is significant.
It was here in 1989 that scientists found an isolated
and distressingly small population of bull trout.
The last remaining native fish in Crater Lake National Park.
In fact, this fish is a direct descendant
of those last surviving 150 bull trout.
- We can scan it through the bucket.
Let me see.
It's tag number three six two nine
nine two one one one, catchy.
- [Narrator] Bull trout numbers crashed here because
of competition with Brook trout like these.
Non native brook trout were brought
to Oregon from the East coast
and stopped in Sun Creek as early as 1912.
- [Dave] Brook trout are kind of like weeds in my view.
They spread out rapidly and will quickly recolonize streams
after they've been removed,
if a physical barrier doesn't prevent them from doing so.
- [Man] Tonight on Oregon Field Guide,
saving the bull trout of Sun Creek.
- [Narrator] When Oregon Field Guide last visited
the bull trout of Crater Lake,
the Park was removing Brook trout from Sun Creek
and putting up barriers to keep them downstream.
Park ecologist, Mark Buktenica
was at the center of the work.
- If I do nothing else in my career,
besides saving this one unique population of fish.
If we're successful in this project,
I will be satisfied that when I retire
that I've accomplished something.
- [Narrator] In the time Mark has been working
on the project, the population of bull trout
has grown from the original 150 in 1989 to 600 in 1999.
And it's only continued to grow.
- And we have nearly 4,000 bull trout all the way down
and tracked in some of the irrigation ditches.
But for the longterm recovery of the species,
we really have to have a connection to
the lower water shed again.
- [Narrator] Sun Creek starts high up
on the Southern flank of Mount Mazama,
running down towards Oregon Sun Pass State Forest.
Through ranch land, where it should connect
to the Wood River and the rest of the Klamath Basin.
But more than a century ago,
Sun Creek was diverted for irrigation.
- [Mark] Sun Creek has been isolated from the Wood River
for over 150 years by irrigation practices.
- [Narrator] And now the stream looks less like this,
and more like this.
- [Mark] This is the terminal end of Dunn Creek today.
This is a ditch.
- [Narrator] Now Mark and a project team,
led by Trout Unlimited are focused on reconnecting Sun Creek
and all the bull trout that lived there with
the rest of the basin.
A local rancher sold part of his irrigation water to keep
the stream flowing all year.
And granted permission for Sun Creek to be reestablished
along its original path on his property.
And then fenced off.
- Sun Creek will be the first tributary entering
the Wood River again, after 150 years.
- [Narrator] It's a major engineering feat to get it done.
One that'll require a lot of digging.
- [Tommy] I fished my whole life.
I know what Creeks look like with the current trees, rocks,
a little bit of everything.
- [Narrator] Local contractor Tommy Evans,
has been charged with digging nearly three miles
of new channel through forest and pasture.
- I dug everybody a fishing hole,
like whoever was there that day, I dig them fishing hole.
Alright, there you go.
I got fishing holes.
I let the crew dig their own fishing holes.
We had fun with it.
- [Narrator] Growing up
on a ranch like this one in the Valley,
Tommy knew and fished Sun Creek often.
He says the fish were plentiful.
- It'll be like that again.
Tell my kids that we're going to go fishing here one day.
- [Narrator] Backup stream about a mile.
More than a century ago, Sun Creek was redirected to
the irrigation ditches of the Wood River Valley.
Now, after more than three years of work,
things are about to change again.
- [Tommy] We're gonna divert Sun Creek down the new channel.
- [Narrator] Tommy blocks off the old irrigation channel
and then digs out the entrance to the new Sun Creek.
As Mark watches on.
Working outside of Crater Lake National Park
in order to save the fish within.
- [Mark] Pretty excited.
- [Narrator] And then with the turn of a screw,
the full flow of Sun Creek is directed down the new channel.
- [Mark] Our bull trout have been restricted to
the Park for over 150 years.
They're migratory fish.
They wanna migrate.
- [Narrator] And as the water of Sun Creek
cuts and carves its way along it's rediscovered course,
it completes a promise made by Mark three decades back.
- [Mark] There hasn't been a bull trout caught
in Wood River over a hundred years
but I think we could catch one any day.
- [Narrator] It's a promise that 150 nearly forgotten
bull trout in Crater Lake National Park would survive.
And their offspring would one day swim
the same path of their ancestors.