Plight Of Cutthroat Protested Fisheries Petition Targets Dams, Logging, Farming And Overfishing

Conservationists are blaming hydropower dams, logging, farming and overfishing for the demise of another Northwest fish, the sea-run cutthroat trout, in a petition to declare it an endangered species.

The dwindling, oceangoing trout occupies a narrow band along the West Coast from California to Alaska.

It’s the worst off along parts of the Columbia River and Oregon’s Willamette River, environmentalists and fishing groups said in a petition filed here Friday with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service.

Stocks in the Lower Columbia River have declined an estimated 99 percent and may total only a few hundred fish in the Siuslaw River in Oregon, the petition says.

“We are obviously at the crossroads between driving wild sea-run cutthroat trout to extinction and according this species much-needed protection,” said Ken Rait of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, one of the petitioners.

Populations are depressed in Washington state as well.

Environmentalists say the cutthroat may be even worse off than a related subspecies - the Umpqua cutthroat trout - which the fisheries service declared endangered more than a year ago.

Rob Jones, a spokesman for the fisheries service in Portland, said Friday the agency will have 90 days to decide whether the petition provides enough information to warrant a formal review of the status of the fish. If so, it will have another year to decide whether to list the species as endangered.

In this case, however, Jones said the agency is already reviewing the status of all West Coast salmonids, including oceangoing trout, and is scheduled to complete that review sometime next year.

Hydropower dams have devastated several sea-run cutthroat trout populations, the petition said. Loss or alteration of freshwater and estuary habitats, overharvest especially in recreational fisheries and competition from hatchery fish also have contributed to the decline.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: OCEAN-GOING FISH The sea-run cutthroat trout gets its name because the young smolts migrate to the ocean, then return to their home streams to spawn before dying, in the same manner as the region’s salmon.