“There have been a number of biologists very excited at these meetings where we’ve been making these presentations, including the one in Kansas City,” Schill said Tuesday.

He and his colleagues aren’t aware of anyone else in the world who has built a similar broodstock for this purpose, though researchers in New Zealand have launched a project.

“I don’t think that anyone’s this far along,” Schill said. “It’s just exciting to be part of this first effort to see if this technique — which up until now has been entirely theoretical, and based on mathematical modeling — trying to put it on the ground.”

Brook trout — a species native to eastern North America but deliberately introduced in the West in the 1800s — frequently overpopulate here and “stunt” in lakes and streams, which means fish are too small for most anglers to be interested. And where brook trout range overlaps with the West’s native cutthroat trout, biologists usually see marked reductions in cutthroat numbers.