Conservationists file suit to protect Yellowstone cutthroat

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

Environmentalists filed a lawsuit Tuesday trying to force the federal government to list the Yellowstone cutthroat trout as an endangered species.

"The Yellowstone cutthroat trout is beset by a multitude of threats, including non-native trout, habitat degradation, population fragmentation and disease, and requires immediate protection under the Endangered Species Act," said Noah Greenwald, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Portland, Ore.

The suit, filed in federal court in Denver, reignites an issue that's been on the table at least since 1998, when green groups first sought listing for the fish.

After some legal skirmishes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the fish in February 2001.

That decision came because the request for protection contained "glaring inaccuracies," according to Lynn Kaeding, a FWS biologist in Bozeman.

The petition for listing overlooked significant populations of the trout as well as important conservation projects, Kaeding said.

The new lawsuit -- filed by Greenwald's group, the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, the Ecology Center and Pacific Rivers Council -- asserts the government "utterly failed to consider the magnitude of threat facing" the fish.

Those threats include lake trout in Yellowstone Lake, which is the biggest reservoir of Yellowstone cutthroats, whirling disease, the predominance of non-native fish like rainbow trout in many waters, and ongoing habitat loss.

An endangered listing won't eliminate whirling disease or non-native fish. "They aren't going to go away," Greenwald said.

However, a win in court could have big affects on the logging and ranching industries in parts of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and northern Utah and Nevada, the fish's historic range.

Grazing permits could not be renewed without FWS approval, for example, Greenwald said. Likewise for water diversions or timber harvests.

There are a number of Yellowstone cutthroat recovery projects, but a federal listing would force a recovery team to be formed and take a "big-picture approach," Greenwald said.

Yellowstone cutthroats have been eliminated from 60 percent of their historic range and pure strain fish are found in only 10 percent of their range, the groups said.

However, that alone is not enough to warrant a listing, Kaeding said.

For a species to be declared endangered, it must face a likely risk of extinction in the foreseeable future, Kaeding said, and the groups haven't demonstrated that.

"They provided no evidence whatsoever that this subspecies was headed toward extinction," he said.

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