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Data suggests steelhead revival ODFW hopes it keeps fish off threatened list By Mark Freeman Oregon fish managers are banking that new data showing widespread production of infant wild steelhead in Southern Oregon rivers will help persuade federal biologists not to list steelhead as a threatened species along the Oregon/California border. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife surveys in the Rogue River basin and nearby coastal streams show that young wild steelhead are hatching and rearing in strong numbers and in most of the freshwater habitat available to them, an ODFW biologist said Friday. These surveys have been conducted in the two years since the National Marine Fisheries Service last looked at whether to list the region�s wild steelhead. The surveys help suggest that wild steelhead, which are born and reared in freshwater before heading to sea, may not be in as dire straits as earlier thought, said Mike Evenson, an ODFW fish biologist in Central Point. "If a species is threatened, one of the things you�d expect is not to see fish throughout their range," Evenson said. "The thing is, you find steelhead just about everywhere you look, everywhere they can get, in the Rogue and south coast basins." A federal appeals court judge Tuesday ordered NMFS to reconsider its March 1998 decision not to list wild steelhead as threatened in Southern Oregon and Northern California under the Endangered Species Act. The ruling, which affects all steelhead from Port Orford to the Klamath River, including the Rogue River, forces the agency to make a new decision by March 31. NMFS is considering an appeal. Garth Griffin, a NMFS biologist in Portland, said these new steelhead surveys are one snapshot in a collage of material needed to understand just how the region�s steelhead are faring. "To me, personally, whatever information we can get that allows us to understand what�s going on, is great," Griffin said. "But significant? I don�t know, in an ESA context, what to say." NMFS biologists must look at the overall health of wild steelhead in the entire region, not just one or two rivers, to determine whether the fish deserve threatened status. "People need to remember," Griffin said, "that this is not just about the Rogue River." Equally unclear is whether a listing would lead to a ban on sport angling for steelhead, even on runs like the Rogue�s winter steelhead, which is considered one of the healthiest steelhead runs on the West Coast. The agency previously has permitted sport fishing on runs with listed fish in them if the run�s hatchery fish outnumber the wild fish. But that scenario does not exist for the Rogue�s winter steelhead run, which is about 80 percent wild fish, far above the old 50-percent threshold. If the steelhead are listed and the 50-percent standard is used, then anglers could be banned from even catch-and-release fishing during the healthy Rogue winter steelhead run, Evenson said. But, he said, angling likely would be permitted during the summer steelhead run, which is dominated by hatchery fish and whose wild fish are considered depressed. "It�s difficult to speculate if (NMFS biologists) could come up with a way to have a fishery on the Rogue�s winter steelhead or not," Evenson said. Griffin said a winter steelhead fishing ban on the Rogue is far from a foregone conclusion. NMFS recently has permitted sport angling on listed wild steelhead on the mid-Columbia River and on coastal coho salmon without mentioning the 50 percent hatchery/wild threshold used in the past, he said. "I don�t know how it�s going to play out," Griffin said. Barbara Ullian from the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, which is one of the groups that has sued NMFS over steelhead protection, said sport angling is not the main culprit to wild steelhead survival. However, management agencies use it as a red herring to turn people against listing steelhead. The problems rest more on the backs of land and water managers who allow damage to steelhead habitat as well as on negative impacts from hatchery fish, Ullian said. "I can�t imagine anyone who really loves wild steelhead not trying to protect the habitat and address hatchery practices," she said. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.