They traveled in buckets, passed hand to hand from truck bed to lakeshore, before being carefully upended just above the surface by proud biologists. With each splash, another batch of young greenback cutthroat trout slid into the glassy waters of Zimmerman Lake – back into their native range high in Colorado’s South Platte River Basin.

Located at the bottleneck of North America’s central flyway, Nebraska’s Platte River faces significant challenges. Key groups like the Audubon Society’s Rowe Sanctuary and federally-mandated Platte River Recovery Implementation Program, along with many other organizations, are working to protect the river and conserve habitat for the endangered whooping crane, least tern, and threatened piping plover through conservation and education.