Volume 16, Number 3
Fall 2004

New Round of Bull Trout Critical Habitat Proposals are a Mixed Bag of Science and Politics
By Mike Bader

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently published in the Federal Register a Proposed Rule for the designation of critical habitat for the bull trout Salvelinus confluentus in the Coastal-Puget Sound, Jarbidge and St, Mary-Belly River regions. The proposal was mandated as part of the Consent Decree agreement between the FWS, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan.

On the positive side, the proposal contains proposed critical habitat covering 2,290 miles of steams, 985 miles of coastal shoreline, and 52,540 acres of lakes in the Coastal-Puget Sound region of northwest Washington and the Olympic Peninsula. It also proposes 131 miles of streams in the Jarbidge River Basin in northern Nevada and southeast Idaho and 88 miles of streams and 6,295 acres of lakes in the St. Mary-Belly River drainage in north-central Montana.

There is also an improved definition of the Primary Constituent Elements of bull trout critical habitat, including cold water temperatures, low fine sediment levels, bank stability and channel morphology, and connecting corridors for migratory movements. But this proposal limits the critical habitat designation to the stream beds themselves, which is inadequate protection according to the Montana Bull Trout Scientific Group.

Moreover, the new proposal repeats many of the same errors made in the earlier proposal for the Columbia and Klamath River Basins, and in the USFWS approach to the critical habitat provisions in general. For example, the Proposed Rule contains three subsections of unprecedented language protesting the proposed action. Much of the language is from an Interior Department press release.

Despite rulings by the 5th, 9th and 10th U.S. Courts of Appeal that critical habitat designations must meet the needs for both survival and species recovery, USFWS still maintains it can limit critical habitat designation as long as it won't cause extinction. And in further defiance of the courts, they continue to insist they may substitute HCPs, voluntary forest practices agreements and other management plans for critical habitat designation; even when these industrial forest and state forest lands are managed for intensive timber production.

Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Friends of the Wild Swan have submitted detailed comments on the proposal and will continue to follow developments closely, to ensure the bull trout receive the legal protection they require to recover to healthy levels once again.