ENDANGERED SPECIES: FWS seeks to expand critical habitat for bull trout

Thursday, January 14, 2010
Patrick Reis, E&E reporter

This story first appeared in E&ENews PM.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to add nearly 20,000 miles of streams and almost 400,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs to designated "critical habitat" for bull trout.
The proposal brings total designated trout habitat to 22,679 miles of stream and 533,426 acres of lakes and reservoirs in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Nevada.

The move represents a significant expansion over the George W. Bush administration's 2005 critical habitat declaration, which was challenged by environmental groups in court and eventually abandoned by Fish and Wildlife after the Interior Department's inspector general found the designation tainted by political interference. The 2005 proposal included fewer than 3,900 stream miles and 144,000 acres.

The draft plan is open to public comment until March 15 before it is sent to Interior for final review.

Under the Endangered Species Act, FWS must review any action connected to the federal government on critical habitat for possible harm to endangered species. Interior is under orders from Judge Robert Jones of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon to finalize a designation by Sept. 30.
Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the agency's Pacific region, said the proposal rolled out this week is similar the one agency biologists proposed to Bush administration officials in 2004.

The service estimated that the regulations associated with the habitat proposal could cost between $5 million and $7 million annually, including more than $2 million to make hydroelectric dams safer for fish.

Industry groups that had backed the Bush designation said they doubt more trout habitat would mean better conservation.

"In 2005, [FWS] determined that the way that the federal lands were being managed provided sufficient protection for the bull trout," said Ross Mickey, the Western Oregon manager for the American Forest Resource Council, a timber group. "The ways the lands are being protected are the same. The only thing that has changed is the administration. It seems to be a politically motivated move rather than a biologically motivated move."
Environmentalists said the proposal shows the Obama administration is letting science drive its endangered species decisions.

"We are thrilled that the Obama administration and the Fish and Wildlife Service followed the recommendations of their own scientists," said Michael Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Bull trout belong to the Salmoninae subfamily, a collection of species that spend much of their lives in oceans before swimming upriver to spawn. A popular sport fish, bull trout are also prized by conservationists as an indicator of environmental health because they depend on cold, clean waterways.