Home Opinion A little bit fishy

A little bit fishy

Written by Baker City Herald Editorial Board January 25, 2010 11:00 am

The federal government thinks the bull trout needs a lot more help if the struggling species is to survive.

We don’t dispute that.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first listed the bull trout as a threatened species in 1998.

According to fish biologists, the bull trout’s plight has in general worsened in the ensuing 12 years.

As a result, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed earlier this month to add thousands of miles of streams in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Nevada to the current roster of “critical habitat” for bull trout. That list includes more than 200 miles in Baker County.

Sounds logical so far.

But the story gets a little sketchy for us when we read that of 251 miles of the Powder River and its tributaries proposed as critical habitat, almost one-third — 76 miles —harbor not a single bull trout, according to the FWS.

Now we understand that in some cases it’s defensible to protect habitat for a species even when there’s no evidence that species lives there.

Terrestrial animals can cover a lot of ground, after all.

The lynx, for instance, hasn’t been confirmed as a resident of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest for decades. But there are thousands of acres of suitable habitat for lynx on the forest, and it’s reasonable for the forest to try to preserve that habitat because lynx could return.

Fish, of course, are considerably more restricted in their movements.

But federal officials say it’s necessary to designate as critical habitat streams where bull trout are absent because those streams are connected to ones where bull trout do live.

A report from FWS puts it this way: “Much unoccupied (by bull trout) habitat proposed for protection. . . is intended to ensure connectivity among existing, currently isolated bull trout populations.”

That sounds all right in theory. Except the FWS report fails to explain why the isolated bull trout populations in the Powder River system aren’t connecting, as it were, to the streams that have suitable habitat.

What troubles us even more is that the agency admits it doesn’t know much at all about bull trout in the Powder River basin — including rather vital matters such as how many of the fish live here.

The FWS report: “abundance is unknown; the last estimate made in 1991 was 500.”

To be clear, we’re neither opposed to the agency’s proposal, nor concerned about its effects. The Wallowa-Whitman has for more than a decade treated potential bull trout habitat as though the fish actually swim there.

But the government risks its credibility when it claims a species is in peril yet can’t answer questions about the species that the public should, and probably will, ask.