Tuesday May 5, 2026
Sierra Club —
Mountain meadows serve as a key habitat for many inland native trout species across the West. Unfortunately for California’s inland trout populations, some sixty percent of meadow habitat in the Sierra Nevada—home to eight distinct native trout species—is considered impaired.
For the California Golden Trout, whose native range sits above 7,500 feet in elevation and encompasses less than 600 square miles, populations are small fractions of their historic numbers due to compounding threats of hybridization and introgression with non-native rainbow trout, predation by non-native brown trout and habitat degradation. Most degradation of high-elevation meadows derives from legacy uses such as excessive grazing, logging, mining, and off-road vehicle use, which cause meadows to lose much, if not all, of their water storage and habitat function by turning them into a series of gullied streams disconnected from the floodplain.
In mountain ecosystems, healthy meadows act like sponges, storing runoff as groundwater and gradually releasing that water back into streams later in the season when it’s most critical for trout and other aquatic species. By holding cold water on the landscape, healthy meadows act as safe havens for trout against drought, catastrophic wildfire, and rising air temperatures.