Agency Faces Lawsuit Over Rio Grande Cutthroat Trout Listing
By WES SMALLING
The New Mexican 10/25/2002Environmentalists filed a 60-day notice with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday, saying they intend to sue the agency for not listing the New Mexico state fish as endangered.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Alliance, Carson Forest Watch, Center for Native Ecosystems, Pacific Rivers Council and Albuquerque architect and rancher Michael Norte plan to file a lawsuit in an attempt to overturn the agency's June 11 decision that the Rio Grande cutthroat trout did not warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"The Rio Grande cutthroat trout is highly imperiled and clearly merits listing," said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The cutthroat is one of two trout that are native to New Mexico. The other, the Gila trout of southern New Mexico, is an endangered species.
Environmental groups petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the cutthroat in 1998, but the agency denied the petition a year later. In 2001, the groups filed a 60-day notice of their intent to sue over the denial, but to avoid litigation, the agency agreed it would take a second look at the cutthroat's status.
In June, the agency supported most of its earlier findings, saying the cutthroat still did not require federal protection although several factors continue to threaten it - habitat degradation, hybridization with non-native trout and the isolation of its remnant populations.
Environmentalists are again challenging the agency's decision.
Greenwald said federal agencies under the Bush Administration are "stonewalling" the listing of endangered species. The "Fish and Wildlife (service) is playing politics while this beautiful fish spirals towards extinction," he said.
Biologists believe Rio Grande cutthroats are gone from at least 95 percent of their historic range, and those that are left survive in 13 unconnected populations in small headwater streams of New Mexico.
"It's been reduced to a tiny fraction of its range. Even those 13 populations aren't secure" from wildfire, drought or freezing streams, Greenwald said. "Any one of those 13 pops that they consider secure could be wiped out by any one of those things.
" Livestock producers and recreational fishermen have voiced concerns over a federal listing. Many cattlemen worry it could reduce livestock numbers on some public-lands grazing allotments, and some anglers worry it could limit recreational fishing opportunities.
"No ethical sportsman would place his or her fishing pleasure above the continued existence of a native species," said Norte, an angler who is one of the potential litigants.
The fish would be more likely to receive a second-tier "threatened" listing rather than an endangered one if added to the Endangered Species Act list, Norte said. A threatened listing would not necessarily limit fishing, he added.
The state enforces a two-fish limit for cutthroat trout, and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish raises Rio Grande cutthroats at one of its hatcheries. But Norte said state recovery efforts for the cutthroat have fallen short, and federal help is needed. Norte said the state is endangering native cutthroats by stocking streams with non-native rainbow trout, but the state contends that man-made or natural fish barriers are protecting the purest populations of Rio Grande cutthroats.
Norte said the fish barriers don't always work, and the department stocks too many rainbows. "If for every Rio Grande cutthroat you produce, you're producing three rainbows - you're taking one step forward and three steps backward," Norte said, adding that crossbreeding with rainbows is one of the most serious threats to cutthroats.
The Rio Grande cutthroat is named for the orange- or pink-hued slashes in the gular folds beneath its lower jaw, and it once occupied much of the Rio Grande and Pecos River drainages.