Feds May Face Suit Over Burbot Conservationists Want Agency To Consider Endangered Status

Environmentalists are threatening to take the federal government to court over Kootenai River burbot, a freshwater cod edging toward extinction in Idaho.

American Wildlands and the Idaho Conservation League filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in federal court on Thursday.

The two conservation groups last February asked the agency to decide whether Kootenai River burbot should be considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The government is supposed to respond to such a petition within 90 days. A decision is long overdue, the groups charge.

“It’s my understanding it’s already been written and they’re just sitting on it,” said Judi Brawer, an attorney for American Wildlands in Bozeman, Mont. “They don’t act on things unless prodded to do so with the threat of litigation.”

Government officials, however, say they are buried in similar requests.

Regional officials are working on a burbot decision, which could be released before the end of the year, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“We aren’t dragging our feet,” said Joan Jewett, regional spokeswoman for USFWS in Portland. “We’re just trying to keep our heads above water to deal with the volume of our workload and the limited staff we have.”

If the agency decides to consider a listing for burbot, it still has nine months to decide whether the fish merits protection as an endangered species.

The agency has dozens of listing petition cases working through the six-state Pacific region at any given time, Jewett said.

Local records show three commercial fishermen in the late 1950s caught more than 1,000 burbot one winter. Now Idaho fish biologists say fewer than 1,000 remain in Canada’s Kootenay Lake and the Kootenai River.

The “leopard of the Kootenai,” a drab freshwater cod mottled like the big cat, is one of only two freshwater fish that live in all of the most northern countries in the world.

The fish spawn in winter, often under ice.

Biologists blame a combination of fishing and the influence of the Libby Dam for the burbot’s downward spiral.

Idaho closed the burbot fishery in 1992. Canadian officials also have banned fishing for burbot, protected as “Red Listed” in that country.

The conservation groups want the Bonneville Power Administration and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to decrease winter flows at Libby Dam on the Kootenai River in Montana.

Right now, power-producing flows may be flushing burbot past the places they would otherwise spawn, state biologists say. The fish are notoriously weak swimmers.

But dam operators have said they struggle to balance flood control, power generation and fish needs. Water is already being released from the dam in spring and summer to help Columbia River salmon and Kootenai River sturgeon, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The environmentalists say a listing is needed to force changes in dam operations.

“The Bonneville Power Administration … refuses to change flows to aid burbot spawning,” said Jerry Pavia, a Bonners Ferry resident who is president of the Idaho Conservation League. “They told us unless the burbot is petitioned under the ESA, they are going to do nothing.”