Judge halts fish poisoning plan proposed in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness

A federal judge has halted a proposal to poison a remote creek in the Absaroka Mountains as part of a trout introduction project, writing that the plan runs counter to the Wilderness Act.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy of Missoula directed the U.S. Forest Service to scrap its plans to apply rotenone across a 46-mile stretch of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness to make way for the introduction of Yellowstone cutthroat trout. Rotenone kills aquatic life, including fish, amphibians and insects.

The plan was part of an initiative by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to establish a “secure population of nonhybridized Yellowstone cutthroat trout” in Buffalo Creek in response to climate change. Warming streamflows are “constricting the amount of habitat suitable for Yellowstone cutthroat trout within their historic range,” FWP wrote in its draft plan.

To carry out the plan, the agency collaborated with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service to eliminate the area’s existing population of rainbow trout, which had been introduced to Hidden Lake the better part of a century ago. 

Wilderness Watch, a Missoula-based group, pushed back on the plan on the basis that Yellowstone cutthroat trout aren’t native to that area and that the proposal would have left a heavy human imprint in a remote wilderness area. Prior to the introduction of rainbow trout, the Buffalo Creek drainage was a fishless basin due to the presence of waterfalls along the creek’s path. 

In a press release issued by Wilderness Watch when the lawsuit was filed, George Nickas, the organization’s executive director, described FWP’s plan as “an attempt to play God with species and habitat manipulation” to create an “artificial reserve of Yellowstone cutthroat trout.”

In March, Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto sided with the Forest Service, ruling that FWP has some discretion regarding the appropriate level of government intervention in managing wilderness areas. Molloy reversed that ruling, however, writing in the 20-page opinion he issued Oct. 23 that the project “diminishes wilderness character on almost every level” and is therefore inconsistent with the Wilderness Act’s directive that wilderness areas “are administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness.”

In a press release issued late last week, Nickas with Wilderness Watch described the outcome as “one of the most important rulings for protecting the integrity of the Wilderness Act in the law’s 60-year-old history.”

“The idea that managers can substitute their desired conditions for what Nature provides in these wild places threatens to destroy the profound values that set Wilderness areas apart,” he said. “Judge Molloy’s thoroughly reasoned Order spells out precisely why the agency’s misguided aims are fundamentally at odds with the law. Every manager who oversees Wilderness needs to read and understand it.”

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The Buffalo Creek project was authorized by the Custer Gallatin National Forest in August 2023 at the behest of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which seeks to expand Yellowstone cutthroats in waters beyond their native range to create a climate refuge for the fish as the waterways they’ve historically inhabited warm.

by Amanda Eggert 11.13.202311.14.2023

The Forest Service didn’t comment on the ruling, citing the ongoing federal government shutdown and its policy of refraining from commenting on litigation.

FWP spokesperson Greg Lemon didn’t directly comment on the judge’s order, but said the department’s work to support Yellowstone cutthroat trout will proceed.

“We will continue to look for opportunities to restore native species, like Yellowstone cutthroat trout,” Lemon wrote in an email to MTFP. “These projects are often multi-year efforts that include many partners. However, the effort is worth it as restoring and protecting native species is one of FWP’s key mandates.”

The ruling comes as federal and state wildlife and land managers grapple with other complicated ethical balancing acts amid a changing climate that’s accelerating ecological shifts across much of the West.

A proposal to kill half a million barred owls over a 24-million-acre area of the Pacific Northwest to restore populations of a similar species, the northern spotted owl, has come under scrutiny in recent years. The northern spotted owl is considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act and is outcompeted for prey and nesting spots by the barred owl. 

Closer to home, land managers are grappling with the expansion of water-hungry vegetation such as pinon-juniper, which has historically existed across most of the western half of Montana but is expanding its range eastward and consuming some of the water that has historically sustained other vegetation regimes such as sagebrush steppe and grasslands.