Agency Ordered To Re-Examine Bull Trout 3 Populations Of Fish Were Kept Off Protection List

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its decision not to list all populations of bull trout for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones may force the agency to explain why it chose to recommend protection for two distinct populations of the fish and not three others.

“This is a great legal victory for the bull trout,” said Michael Bader, executive director of the Missoula-based Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

Environmentalists have been battling the federal government for years over the bull trout, which has been adversely affected by logging, grazing and developments that dump silt into streams and rivers.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1994 decided not to list any of the five populations of the bull trout for federal protection. After the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and another Montana group, Friends of the Wild Swan, filed a lawsuit, the Fish and Wildlife Service recommended in June the listing of the bull trout in the Columbia River Basin as a threatened species, and Klamath River Basin trout as endangered.

Conservationists want similar protections added for the three other populations - in the Puget Sound and other areas of the Washington coast, in the Jarbridge River area of northern Nevada, and in the Saskatchewan River region that extends from northern Montana into Canada.

Jones said the Fish and Wildlife Service should re-examine why the remaining runs weren’t listed.

If the agency reaffirms that listing of the entire range of runs isn’t warranted, it must explain how it arrived at that decision, Jones ruled. The agency would then have to take yet another look at the run in Washington state.

Finally, the agency’s review may not delay the current process for listing the populations in the Klamath and Columbia rivers, Jones said.

Susan Saul, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Portland, said agency lawyers were looking over the judge’s opinion to decide what to do next about the trout. Saul said the Klamath and Columbia proposals would go ahead as planned.

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