Feds look at listing coaster brook trout as endangered

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Feds look at listing coaster brook trout as endangered

 

John Myers, Forum Communications Company

Thursday, March 20, 2008

 

 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday announced it is considering placing the beleaguered coaster brook trout on the federal endangered species list.

 

Agency officials said a petition by conservation groups to list the trout has merit and that the agency now will closely evaluate the status of the fish that’s found only in the Great Lakes and their tributaries.

 

The Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter and the Huron Mountain Club sued the government to force the issue. Under a settlement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now has until Dec. 15 to make a final decision whether to list the fish as endangered.

 

A federal listing could place new restrictions on harvesting brook trout in and near Lake Superior and may affect some human activities near the trout’s traditional spawning areas. And it could attract additional federal funding to help recover the population.

 

Coasters were once a fairly common form of brook trout found often near the mouth’s of rivers that flow into Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan. At one time, coaster brook trout were reported spawning in at least 50 Lake Superior streams on the U.S. side of the lake.

 

Now, there are only four viable, self-sustaining coaster populations on the U.S. side Lake Superior – one in the Salmon Trout River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which has fewer than 200 coaster brook trout, and three in Isle Royale streams.

 

Marvin Roberson, forest ecologist with the Michigan Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the group wants brook trout restored across as much of its former range as possible. Roberson said federal protections could be especially critical in restricting mine development planned for the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River near Marquette.

 

“Sulfide mining often leads to sulfuric acid runoff, and coasters are extremely sensitive to pH levels,’’ Roberson told the News Tribune. “If we can’t keep our one remaining population, it won’t look good for any other restoration.’’

 

Coasters are considered a unique type of brook trout because they spend part of their life in rivers and part in Lake Superior.

 

Efforts have been underway for years to restore coaster populations through stocking, habitat repairs and regulations. State, tribal and federal natural resource agencies have worked cooperatively, with limited success, to restore the trout.

 

For example, anglers are allowed to keep only one brook trout in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Ontario waters of the lake in a coordinated effort to keep more fish in the lake.

 

But experts say it will take decades for the fish to recover, if they ever do.

 

Coasters are highly susceptible to changes in water quality and habitat. And they are not wary fish, making them easily caught by anglers and subject to over-fishing. While low levels of brook trout survive in upper rivers, they aren’t doing so in any sustaining levels near the big lake.

 

Moreover, experts aren’t even certain what makes coaster brook trout different, if anything, form their stream-staying cousins.

 

Dennis Pratt, area fisheries biologist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in Superior, said damage to streams from logging practices in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s may have irrevocably damaged the ability of coasters to reproduce.

 

Despite stocking millions of brook trout in Lake Superior streams in recent years with hopes the fish would move in and out of the lake, few have done so.

 

The DNR counted only 8 brook trout migrating up the Brule River in 2006 and only 2 last year, Pratt said. Brook trout in the upper Brule are not making the trip to the lake.

 

“The only place we’ve seen any real success with coasters is on the Canadian side of the lake, in Nipigon Bay, where you had both suitable habitat and a remnant population of (wild) fish, and where very restrictive angler limitations were in place early,’’ Pratt said. “In places where habitat was destroyed beyond where the fish could reproduce, it’s just not happening.’’

 

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s finding on the petition to list the coaster brook trout as endangered appears today (Thursday) in the Federal Register.

 

Comments and information about the coaster brook trout should be submitted to the Service by May 19 and sent to www.regulations.gov or to: Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R3-ES-2008-0030; Division of Policy and Directives Management; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; 4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 222; Arlington, VA 22203.

 

For more information on the coaster brook trout, go to www.fws.gov/midwest.