Grayling ESA suit filed

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

Conservation and angling groups filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to force the federal government to install Endangered Species Act protections for the fluvial arctic grayling, one of North America's rarest fish and a species that survives only in a stretch of the drought-hammered Big Hole River.

“The Montana fluvial arctic grayling is on the brink of extinction in the United States,” said Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups filing the lawsuit.

He noted that the federal government ruled in 1994 that grayling merited protection, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had more pressing matters at the time.

Since then, the Big Hole drainage has suffered from seven years of drought while irrigation has increased from the river and its tributaries, Greenwald said.

During summer months, parts of the upper Big Hole shrink to a trickle.

In April, the wildlife service refused to list the grayling, declaring that there are plenty of them in Alaska and northern Canada and the loss of the Big Hole population “would not result in a significant gap in the range” of the species as a whole. That decision was made under the tenure of Julie MacDonald, an appointee of the Bush Administration who resigned a few days later under accusations of politically based meddling with decisions made by the wildlife service's scientists.

It was a “politically tainted decision,” Greenwald said.

He provided a wildlife service memo referring to a “rewrite” of the grayling decision that also said the “call was made from the highest level of management.”

“I would say there was a disagreement at various levels (inside the agency) about what to do,” said Doug Peterson, a biologist in the wildlife service's Helena office. “We wrote something and sent it up and it changed significantly.”

If the plaintiffs win in court, the case will be handed back to the wildlife service for reexamination. Listing the grayling would focus more money and energy on the fish's recovery, Greenwald said.

Other changes could include better irrigation practices, screens to keep fish out of ditches and an examination of some irrigation on federal land, Greenwald said.

A listing had been widely expected for years, and many ranchers in the Big Hole area had entered into what is known as a “candidate conservation agreement with assurances,” which allows individual ranchers to work out conservation measures with state and federal officials. If they do so, they are guaranteed no further burdens will be placed upon them.

People are continuing to sign up for that program, Peterson said, but “it will take a few years for the fish to respond and the habitat to respond.”

It remains unknown how much territory an eventual listing would include.

Grayling were once common in the upper Missouri River and most of its tributaries.

While their lake dwelling, or adfluvial, cousins remain fairly common, the fluvial grayling population is so small that its size is difficult to estimate with conventional fisheries management methods, Peterson said.

The other plaintiffs include the Grayling Restoration Alliance, the Federation of Fly Fishers, the Western Watersheds Project, and George Wuerthner, a writer and conservationist.

Scott McMillion is at scottm@dailychronicle.com

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