CONSERVATION GROUPS TAKE FIRST STEP IN LAWSUIT TO PROTECT YELLOWSTONE CUTTHROAT TROUT

March 19, 2003

The Center for Biological Diversity, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Center for Native Ecosystems, Ecology Center and Pacific Rivers Council filed a formal 60-day notice today against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for illegally rejecting a petition to list the Yellowstone cutthroat trout as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The petition to list the cutthroat was filed by a coalition of groups, including Biodiversity Legal Foundation (now Center for Biological Diversity), on August 18, 1998, and rejected by Fish and Wildlife in a February 2001 "90-day finding."

In 1884, trout from Rosebud Creek, a southern Montana tributary to the Yellowstone River, were the first of now 14 recognized subspecies to be described as "cutthroat trout" because of their characteristic orange to crimson slashes underneath the jaw. Yellowstone cutthroat trout in Rosebud Creek were long ago replaced by brook, brown and rainbow trout.

"Yellowstone cutthroat trout are beset by a multitude of threats, including non-native trout, habitat degradation, population fragmentation, and disease," states Noah Greenwald, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "The Yellowstone cutthroat requires immediate protection under the Endangered Species Act."

Yellowstone cutthroat were once widely distributed throughout the Yellowstone River from its headwaters to the Tongue River, and the Snake River above Shoshone Falls, including portions of southern Montana, northwestern Wyoming, southeastern Idaho, and northern Nevada and Utah. They have been eliminated from most of this historic range by a combination of habitat degradation and replacement by non-native trout. Fish and Wildlife's finding, for example, concedes that pure Yellowstone cutthroat have been reduced to 10% of their historic range in Montana. Yellowstone cutthroat are still relatively common in Yellowstone Lake, but because of illegal introduction of lake trout, which are a voracious predator of the native, cannot be considered secure.

The Endangered Species Act specifies that a species shall be listed if it is endangered in a significant portion of its range. Although Fish and Wildlife admits the Yellowstone cutthroat trout has been eliminated from much of its historic range, they bizarrely never considered whether the species is endangered in a significant portion of its range. "The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has been reduced to a fraction of its former range and continues to decline," concludes Greenwald. "Such decline clearly indicates the trout merits listing as endangered and that Fish and Wildlife's finding is plainly illegal."