Fish Poison Politics

Neither an ecological conscience nor a refined taste in natural objects is more apparent south of the Canadian border. American sportsmen, flimflammed by special interests and deceived by their own media, are in a hissy fit about Montana's proposal to create a 77-mile sanctuary for westslope cutthroat trout on upper Cherry Creek—a Madison River tributary currently infested with brook trout and introgressed rainbows and Yellowstone cutts [see Short Casts, Jan/Feb]. Herewith, some brief background: Westslope cutts, petitioned for threatened status under the Endangered Species Act, have been eliminated from all but two percent of their historic range in the upper Missouri River system. The Montana Dept. of Fish, Wildlife and Parks-among the nation's more enlightened state resource agencies-has committed itself to a recovery plan whereby 10 healthy westslope populations will be established in five distinct drainages, each at least 50 miles long. "We'll keep monitoring for surviving fish, and if necessary, we'll do more treatments," says project leader Pat Clancey. "Right now we plan on doing treatments two years in a row." While the department hopes to avoid the expense and red tape of federal listing, its commitment to the project is based on the belief that saving this lovely and unique subspecies is simply the right thing to do.

Because of a 25-foot waterfall on its downstream end, the project area had been fishless until about 80 years ago, when it was first stocked with trout. So critics are correct when they say westslopes were never part of upper Cherry Creek's native fauna. On the other hand, westslopes belong in the Missouri watershed; rainbows, brookies and Yellowstone cutts do not; and there aren't many good barrier-equipped westslope sanctuaries available. The naturalized aliens now caught in the system evolved in lower, warmer, wetter conditions; a fish of 12 inches is a trophy. I've fished smaller streams where westslopes average 12 inches.

If you seek balanced perspective and accurate information on the project, don't read Outdoor Life, which, in June 1999, ran an article with the inflammatory and misleading title "Playing God on Cherry Creek." The text, also inflammatory, relies heavily on sources who lack scientific credentials (but not opinions) and recycles their rumors, often with no attribution. For example, it states that if a bear eats the poisoned fish, "it could become sick." Decades of scientific literature demonstrate that this is nonsense. "Both antimycin and rotenone will also exterminate the stream's aquatic insect populations," it asserts. But these chemicals kill very few insects, and populations that are reduced recover in a few months. It wrongly reports that "a lawsuit has been filed to halt the project on the grounds that it violates the federal Clean Water Act." Then in a grotesque mime of objective journalism, the editors invite readers to vote for or against the project. Surprise: 98 percent were opposed.

Readers of Range Magazine were served as badly. In the Winter 2000 issue the Forest Service, a partner in the project, is accused of "contradicting" the Wilderness Act; but the act provides for exactly this sort of management. The article asserts that if even one of the grayling that were once stocked in Cherry Creek (and never again seen alive) turns up dead, the project "would be illegal on its face, directly afoul of the Endangered Species Act." But grayling aren't even listed. Range reports that Fish, Wildlife and Parks failed to procure "a discharge permit that the Clean Water Act requires before any foreign 'pollutant' can be put into waters." But such permits aren't needed for chemical piscicides. Range reports that Cherry Creek "could be used as a natural hatchery, providing highly adapted eggs to help restore Yellowstone cutts to other, similarly demanding high-country environments." But the resident cutts are mongrels and don't belong in this part of the state anyway. When I asked Clancey why he hadn't explained all this to Range Magazine he said that no one from the publication had ever contacted him or anyone else in the department.

Instead, Range relied on rumors provided by the two maestros of opposition - William Fairhurst, president of the Public Lands Access Association, and attorney Alan Joscelyn, who represents Montana's cyanide, heap-leach mines. By filing an appeal with the state Board of Environmental Review, Fairhurst and Joscelyn managed to keep the project from proceeding on schedule in 2000; and, although the appeal was dismissed last September, the board has put a stay on restoration work so Fairhurst and Joscelyn can take their case to district court. If they do this, and apparently they intend to, they may delay restoration yet another year. Fairhurst is in a snit because something like 70 percent of the project area is on the ranch of media mogul and fish-and-wildlife restoration hero Ted Turner who, like many Montanans, doesn't invite the general public onto his land and who is picking up $343,350 of the project's $475,000 tab. Joscelyn has fleas in his shorts because Turner funds the environmental groups that keep suing the polluters he represents. Ted Turner, Fairhurst tells the press, is "playing God in Montana." He submits that westslope restoration on Cherry Creek is actually a plot keep the public out of the entire watershed.

Fairhurst recently joined the Montana Mining Association, which has come out against westslope restoration on grounds that the project supposedly will "poison a public water supply"-even though the association has successfully lobbied for weaker water-quality standards and even though its members have done plenty of water poisoning themselves. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Fairhurst told The Bozeman Chronicle. In July 1999, when Jill Andrews was the Mining Association's director, she revealed her outfit's real motive in a statement to The Montana Standard: "He [Turner] funds 350 of those [environmental] organizations. They oppose almost everything we try to do."

The entire quantity of chemicals from which Fairhurst, Joscelyn and the Montana Mining Association say they want to protect the public is 20 gallons of antimycin and 10 gallons of rotenone, to be delivered to the main stem and all feeder streams of the 77-mile-long drainage over the course of two years. The stuff breaks down in hours and isn't toxic to people. Chemical control of unwanted fish by professional managers has been happening in North America since 1934 without a single documented human injury.

Today most managers perceive the importance of native ecosystems, but when they try to restore them they often get lynched by the mob. In 1994 pike, unleashed by some bucket biologist, turned up in 4,000-acre Lake Davis, which supplies water to about 2,500 people in north-central California. The lake—extremely fertile and, in its shallow sections, full of aquatic plants - is the quintessential pike factory; and it connects to the San Joaquin and Sacramento River systems, where endangered races of chinook salmon and steelhead still cling to existence. Accordingly, the California Dept. of Fish and Game launched an expensive but practical plan to rotenone Lake Davis, after which it would stock rainbows that grow as fast in the lake as they do in the hatchery. This time sportsmen were on board, but from the way the general public reacted you'd have thought the state had proposed atmospheric nuclear testing.

As Fish and Game prepared to deliver the rotenone in October 1997, locals held protest marches and all-night candlelight vigils along the lake shore. "Burn in Hell, Fish & Game!" shrieked one placard. Some protesters wept; others cursed; still others donned wetsuits and swam out into the 52-degree water, where they chained themselves to a buoy. When Fish and Game agents unchained the swimmers, shore-based protesters shouted, "Shame, shame." For crowd control the state deployed 270 uniformed officers consisting of Highway Patrolmen, game wardens, Fish and Game biologists and technicians, and deputies from the Plumas County Sheriff's office. A two-man SWAT team took up positions on a water tank.

As frequently happens with big fish reclamations, not all the rotenone was neutralized as it flowed down the outlet, and some hatchery rainbows and browns expired along several miles of Big Grizzly Creek, which hadn't been fit for even stocked trout before the dam went in. It wasn't a big deal, basically a cost of doing business. But the Plumas County District Attorney filed criminal charges (promptly dismissed) against Fish and Game and three of its employees. The City of Portola filed a $2 million claim in preparation for a civil lawsuit alleging that the state deprived citizens of their right to safe drinking water. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board hit Fish and Game with a $250,000 administrative fine, which it was allowed to pay by stocking extra trout (many more than it had accidentally killed) and doing habitat restoration along Big Grizzly Creek. A sign over a Portola restaurant proclaimed: "We don't serve Fish and Game." Angry, grossly ill-informed locals pushed through a law stipulating that henceforth the Dept. of Health Services, not Fish and Game, would be in charge of any chemical treatment of drinking water."What we're hearing from sources inside the Bush administration is not good at all," comments Melinda Kassen, who runs TU's Colorado Western Water Project.