KMZs and other files showing the distribution of California Golden Trout and Little Kern Golden Trout are available from the download system.

Golden Trout are the "state fish" of California.  Two variants survive: the so-called "California Golden" (distribution shown as the yellow polygon in the interactive map) and the "Little Kern Golden" (the magenta streams, in the Little Kern River basin, west of the California Golden range).

View CA Golden Trout in a larger map

Source: Range - UC Davis for the Nature Conservancy. Features - described in the Conservation Assessment and Strategy for the California Golden Trout, jointly created by the California Department of Fish and Game, USDA Forest Service, and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. KMZs by WildTroutStreams.com .

California Golden

The CA Golden's "native waters" are currently quite restricted, essentially the drainages of two streams: the appropriately named "Golden Trout Creek", from its headwaters to the "falls", and the South Fork of the Kern River.  Historically, the original range of the California extended well south of the current area, but predation by brown trout, and interbreeding by rainbow trout has greatly restricted populations south of the Schaeffer Barrier.  Brown and rainbow trout managed to invade north of the Schaeffer Barrier and even upstream of the Templeton barrier, so the purest populations are most likely found either in Golden Trout Creek or in the headwaters of the South Fork Kern River, above the Ramshaw Barrier

Little Kern Golden Trout

Little is written about this obscure species, found only in a few streams within the Little Kern basin.

Downloads

There are three KMZs in the download system which you may find useful, all used in the interactive map you see above.

The present range of the Golden Trout and Little Kern Golden Trout were compiled by Dr. Peter Moyle and his graduate student Paul Randall of the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Conservation Biology at UC Davis for the Nature Conservancy as part of their Hexagon Project. The lines and points were extracted by WildTroutStreams.com from the Conservation Assessment and Strategy for the California Golden Trout, jointly created by the California Department of Fish and Game, USDA Forest Service, and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The complete document is also in the download system.