Temporary Plan Shields Trout Fish Strategy Protects Habitat While Studies Are Conducted

By June, the U.S. Forest Service expects to have in place a temporary plan to protect bull trout.

Some environmentalists think the Inland Native Fish Strategy is a lastminute effort to avoid an endangered species listing for the big trout. Timber industry officials worry it will be as restrictive as PACFISH, a plan to protect salmon spawning streams that limits nearby logging.

But Forest Service biologist David Cross said the native fish strategy is just a way to protect habitat for 18 months, when two massive, regional environmental studies will be done.

“The native species developed over the last 10,000 years with each other and the environment surrounding them,” Cross said. “There’s a need to develop an aquatic strategy, or a holistic ecosystem strategy, to look at all of them.”

Bull trout need cold water and deep pools. Many streams are unshaded and stripped of logs that could create those pools, Cross said. The trout’s decline in many areas is blamed on a combination of factors: erosion from logging and road building, dams, excessive fishing, and the introduction of non-native fish that interbreed and compete for food.

The Native Fish Strategy will also cover such species as cutthroat trout. It will affect federal land in parts of five states: Idaho Washington, Oregon, Montana and Nevada.

The strategy won’t be site-specific, meaning the same rules will apply everywhere. The timber industry objects to that. Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association also questions the need for special protection for bull trout.

“I haven’t seen any published studies or data to substantiate that it’s extinct over half its range,” said Kohli.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies and other conservation groups have sued the Forest Service for failing to protect bull trout. They insist it deserves endangered status, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is widely expected to give it this year.

An environmental assessment will be written before the fish strategy is released at the end of May. The Forest Service will develop a screening process by which to measure all forest activities to ensure they won’t harm bull trout habitat.

David Wright, supervisor of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, leads the Inland Native Fish Strategy Team. Until April 26, comments can be sent to the team at 3815 Schreiber Way, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Andrus’ topic Spotted owl, Snake River salmon … bull trout? Former Gov. Cecil Andrus sees both conflict and opportunity in the big native trout. He’s chosen it as the topic for the first major conference sponsored by his new Andrus Center for Public Policy on June 1 and 2. “The challenge of conserving and protecting the bull trout can either be a model of how we handle an important wildlife resource or it could easily become the Northwest’s next polarized legal and political battle,” he said Monday. Andrus now chairs the policy center, based at Boise State University. Information on the regional conference is available from P.O. Box 852, Boise, ID 83702, phone 208-385-4218. Julie Titone