10/11/2001 1052

BONNEVILLE CUTTHROAT TROUT DENIED ESA PROTECTION

On 10-9-01, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a decision to not protect the Bonneville cutthroat trout as a federally endangered species. One of many declining western cutthroat trout species, the Bonneville has disappeared from streams throughout its range in UT, WY, ID, and NV. The Fish & Wildlife Service, however, declared that the 291 remaining populations (occupying 852 stream miles and 70,000 acres of lake habitat) are not threatened with extinction.

As in its politically motivated decisions to not list the Rio Grande, Yellowstone, and Westslope cutthroat trout, the Service tallied up every possible population without taking into account their precarious status. It ignored a recent doctoral dissertation which concluded: "the majority of isolated populations do not have adequate space for long-term persistence."

The Bonneville cutthroat trout was petitioned for federal protection by the Desert Fishes Council and American Fisheries Society in 1979, the Desert Fishes Council and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in 1992, and the Biodiversity Legal Foundation in 1998.