Enviros plan to challenge FWS decision not to list Yellowstone cutthroat

Three environmental groups are planning to mount a legal challenge to the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision not to list the Yellowstone cutthroat trout under the Endangered Species Act.

In a formal 60-day notice of intent to sue filed Tuesday, the environmental groups charged the agency with failing to consider the magnitude of threats facing the cutthroat, which has been eliminated from more than 90 percent of its historic range. While acknowledging that management measures cannot completely halt the spread of the principle threats to the fish -- including disease, displacement by lake and brook trout, and hybridization with non-native rainbow trout -- the groups said these threats are exacerbated by habitat degradation from livestock grazing, mining, logging, road building, dams and flow diversion.

The Yellowstone cutthroat trout is a large fish found in Yellowstone National Park and other areas of the northern Rockies. Photo courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Despite numerous threats to the species, FWS decided in February that the cutthroat trout appears to be stabilizing and does not merit federal protection. FWS officials said that while some populations are faring poorly, others are thriving, suggesting that overall, the species may have stabilized in recent decades (Land Letter, Feb. 23).

Much of the information that led to that conclusion came from an updated status report on the fish that FWS compiled with the help of wildlife officials in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, said FWS spokeswoman Diane Katzenberger.

"That assessment found the population is stable and self-sustaining and widely distributed throughout its historic range," Katzenberger said. "So, based on the criteria set forth in the Endangered Species Act, the yellowstone cutthroat trout is not in danger of going extinct in the near future."

But Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the decision not to list the fish did not take into account the current science on the species.

"There's no evidence the populations are stabilizing," Greenwald said. "In fact, there's been recent documentation of dramatic declines in the populations."

For example, Greenwald noted that whirling disease, an exotic trout parasite, decimated Yellowstone cutthroat trout in Pelican Creek, the principal spawning tributary of Yellowstone Lake, home of the largest remnant populations of Yellowstone cutthroat. The creek supported as many as 30,000 fish in the 1980s but now supports less than 1,000, he said.

Greenwald said the decision not to list the trout is part of a pattern of denying federal protection to imperiled species under the Bush administration. To date, the Bush administration has listed 41 species, compared to 512 in the Clinton administration and 234 under the George H.W. Bush administration, he said.

In addition to the Center for Biological Diversity, Pacific Rivers Council and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance signed on to the notice of intent to sue.