Fishing Shop Donates Proceeds To Help Save Greenback Cutthroat Trout
By Stan Bush
EVERGREEN, Colo. (CBS4)- Even the best anglers may not recognize the greenback cutthroat trout, a species native to Colorado that is teetering on a cliff of survival. State wildlife officials are trying to save it. So is a shop whose success relies on catching fish.
"We've got more and more people in the country and our wild places are becoming less and less and we have to do something to protect those," says Erik Myhre, owner of Basin & Bend, a fishing goods retailer in Evergreen.
Myhre is giving 11 percent of all of his revenue to conservation efforts. Right now, he's focused on preserving greenback cutthroats in Rock Creek, a drainage in Park County that serves as one of the last homes for the threatened species.
Conservationists are trying to fund a repopulation of the greenback cutthroats and a way to keep invasive species out of their traditional breeding grounds.
Myhre say he left a job at one of the biggest outdoor manufacturers in the world in part because they were not doing enough to protect the great outdoors they were profiting from. He says the 11 percent donation is now a permanent aspect of his own shop.
"After a decade of this we're going to see a map of the whole nation with places we have impacted," says Myhre.
Stan Bush is a general assignment reporter at CBS4. His stories can be seen on CBS4 News at 10. Read his bio and follow him on Twitter @StanBushTV.