Feds say landowners won't be burdened by recovery plan

The federal government released a draft plan Thursday designating 3,319 miles of streams and 217,577 acres of lakes and reservoirs in western Montana as critical habitat for bull trout, a native char that went from abundance to near-extinction over the past century as the West was mined, logged, dammed and subdivided.

But agency officials were quick with reassurances that neither the critical habitat designation nor the accompanying bull trout recovery plan will change the way private land is managed.

Regionally, the proposals would place the critical habitat mark on 18,468 miles of streams and 537,722 acres of lakes and reservoirs in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon - all in hopes of protecting and restoring populations of the threatened fish.

"We don't want to end up in a place where we don't recognize what we've got until it's gone," said Wade Fredenberg, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's lead fisheries biologist for bull trout recovery in Montana.

But Montana is better positioned for restoration than any other state, both because it has colder and cleaner streams and because the state "has done a tremendous job over the years of protecting these resources," Fredenberg said. "Fundamentally, people in Montana put a higher value on resources than do people in other places."

All of the critical habitat reaches in Montana already have populations of bull trout, albeit not in high enough numbers to guarantee the species' survival.

Proposed as bull trout critical habitat are Flathead Lake, the entire mainstem Clark Fork River, the upper Flathead River and its forks, the Jocko River, Blackfoot River, Rock Creek, Bitterroot River, St. Regis River, the entire mainstem of the Kootenai River, Lake Koocanusa, Bull and Sophie lakes, and 37 other lakes, reservoirs and smaller bull-trout spawning streams.

All of the lakes and streams have the physical and biological characteristics needed to conserve and recover bull trout, Fredenberg said.

The mere designation of critical habitat provides "very little added protection," said Diane Katzenberger, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service's regional office in Denver. "The benefit is that it alerts the public and other federal agencies to the importance of those streams and to the need to take those species into account."

But the only obligation the Endangered Species Act places on private landowners is that they not injure or kill a protected species, said Ann Vandehey, a biologist in the Fish and Wildlife Service's Helena office. Bull trout were added to the list of threatened species in 1998.

"We don't expect there to be much change at all, and we don't think there will be any noticeable change for people who look on the map and see their farm or ranch is next to an area that's proposed as critical bull trout habitat," said Mark Wilson, the agency's field supervisor in Montana.

The only exception will be private development or building projects that require federal approval, permits, licenses or funding, he said. Even then, the responsibility for protecting bull trout will fall on federal agencies, not private individuals.

Critical habitat designation, Vandehey said, requires federal officials to ensure that any activity they fund, carry out or authorize will not destroy or damage habitat critical to the survival of bull trout. By consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency can usually minimize or avoid damage - while still carrying out the work.

More likely to cause noticeable change is the draft bull trout recovery plan, which lists hundreds of stream-specific, drainage-specific projects throughout the Northwest.

"What we are doing is laying out a blueprint for people to look at to determine the kind of actions needed for this species to be recovered," said Fredenberg, who works out of the Creston Fish Hatchery. "We've identified tasks we feel must be accomplished and have named various collaborators who we feel are going to be involved with this work."

"In Montana, the long-term philosophy has been to protect the best of the best first," he said. "Habitat is No. 1. Then come issues of water quality and quantity. Then comes the non-native fish issue. Taken together, those three areas encompass hundreds of tasks we have outlined." Bull trout recovery is complex and confusing, Fredenberg said, because the species is vulnerable to so many changes in its environment. "They're not like wolves," he said. "From a biological standpoint, we know the one limiting factor for wolf recovery is human tolerance. With bull trout, there are a multitude of factors. In the upper Clark Fork, it's the effect of mining on water quality. In the Bitterroot, it's stream flow. In the Flathead, it's lake trout."

"Bull trout are Montana's salmon," said Wilson. "Lake Pend Oreille is like the ocean. The fish come up all these streams - bull trout are highly migratory - and there are lots of threats along the way. It's not just one thing."

Many populations of bull trout spend part of their life in larger rivers or lakes, then return to the smaller streams where they were born to spawn and die. (Some populations spend all their life in the same stream.)

Every stream presents its own circumstances, for good or bad, Fredenberg said. In the Bitterroot, bull trout are isolated in small headwater pockets and tributary streams.

The lower tributaries and mainstem Bitterroot are "a pretty hostile environment for bull trout," he said. "There's total de-watering in most of the tributaries, primarily because of irrigation or some natural situation that was exacerbated by land-management activities. And the water is warm enough in the mainstem river that bull trout are not likely to thrive there."

"It's a pretty tall order to try and correct those things," Fredenberg said. "But we have identified particular streams where populations are strong, and hope to piece some of the healthy sections back together."

In the upper Clark Fork, the challenge will be to rid the drainage of mining pollution and to give bull trout a reliable way around Milltown Dam, Wilson said. "Our requirement is that we restore connectivity for bull trout in that area, and there are several ways to accomplish that goal."

"The way Milltown Dam is positioned couldn't be worse for blocking the migration of bull trout in the Clark Fork drainage," he said. (He would not, however, say whether the agency wants Milltown Dam removed or fish to be given passage around the dam.)

At Flathead Lake, the issue is nonnative lake trout, Wilson said, "and that could end up being the most difficult issue of all. We'll have to make decisions about what kind of fish populations we want in our streams. Do we want the fishery to resemble the historic condition? Can the public accept the trade-off? Where do we want to make a change, and where do we want to leave things be?"

"The real issue," Fredenberg added, "is involved more with trying to stem the tide of expansion that we are seeing with lake trout and brook trout and others continuing to show up where they did not previously exist. We don't have any good solutions to the non-natives now."

If the Blackfoot River is a model, though, the message is that "where overall watershed health is improved, native species automatically increase in numbers," he said. "Bull trout and westslope cutthroat are adapted to those cleaner conditions. If we give them cold, clean water, they come back."

Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.

If you're interested...

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will take public comment on its draft recovery plan and critical habitat designations for bull trout for 90 days after their publication in the Federal Register.

Comments on the draft recovery plan should be mailed to:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Snake River Basin Office
Attention: Robert Ruesink
1387 W. Vinnell Way, Room 368
Boise, ID 83709

or faxed to (208) 378-5262

or e-mailed to fw1srbocomment@fws.gov

Comments on the critical habitat designation should be mailed to:

John Young, Bull Trout Coordinator
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
911 N.E. 11th Ave.
Portland, OR 97232

or faxed to Young at (503) 231-6243.

Comments may also be submitted on the agency's bull trout Web site at species.fws.gov/bulltrout.

Maps, fact sheets, photographs and other materials on the proposals may also be found on the bull trout Web site.

Public hearings will be scheduled throughout the region in January. One session already is on the agenda for Jan. 7 at the KwaTaqNuq Resort in Polson. An informational meeting will run from 1-3 p.m., with a formal public hearing from 6-8 p.m.

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