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ODFW will try to keep fish off list By Mark Freeman Oregon fish managers today will get one last chance to persuade their federal counterparts not to order threatened species status for wild steelhead spawning in Northern California and Southern Oregon streams, including the Rogue River basin. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists will meet in Seattle with members of the National Marine Fisheries Service before the federal biologists sequester themselves and hash out their opinions about listing the steelhead under the Endangered Species Act. NMFS has proposed threatened status for wild steelhead spawning in streams from Port Orford south to the Klamath River basin, saying the steelhead in the so-called Klamath Mountains Province are declining and risk extinction. The deadline for public comments on the proposal was Monday. A decision on the fish�s status is due by the end of March. ODFW biologists have lobbied hard against a listing, arguing that Southern Oregon sports some of the most abundant and robust populations of wild steelhead in Oregon. Bob Hooton, ODFW steelhead program leader, said new studies show strong numbers of juvenile steelhead and a better-than-expected ratio of wild to hatchery-raised fish on spawning grounds. While the surveys cover just two years � a veritable blip in a species� historical timeline � Hooton said the data suggest that the steelhead are not declining, as NMFS biologists previously declared. "The status of the fish hasn�t changed," Hooton said Monday. "It�s that the information confirms our original conclusion that (the steelhead) are not at risk of extinction." The ODFW has made these and other arguments against listing in written form, but biologists hope today�s face-to-face meeting with NMFS will stave off a listing. "We�re going to take our best shot," Hooton said. Whether the ODFW arguments will sway the NMFS team remains the big question on all sides of the debate. "I think it is substantive, new stuff � the kind of information we were hoping to get," NMFS spokesman Steve Stone said Monday. "But what will our scientists think? I don�t know." Conservation groups that want the steelhead declared threatened will get no last shot at NMFS biologists today, because only "co-managers" � the ODFW, the California Department of Fish and Game, and two Klamath Basin Indian tribes � are invited to the meeting. Barbara Ullian of the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, whose lawsuit forced the wild steelhead review, called the ODFW�s new data too flimsy to suggest that steelhead are healthier now than when a similar NMFS scientific review team in 1998 called for listing the steelhead. "I don�t necessarily feel that face-to-face meetings will impact that, one way or the other," Ullian said. "But it certainly would have been nice to be included, as a stakeholder, in those meetings." The review team is made of several fisheries scientists working for the agency, which reports to the Department of Commerce. After the NMFS team wraps up its internal review and debate Wednesday, members will take about a week to write up their findings, Stone said. Those findings usually result in written majority and minority opinions, unless there is scientific consensus. Those opinions will be forwarded to Donna Darm, NMFS acting regional administrator in Seattle, Stone said. Darm will make a recommendation on the steelhead, and that will be sent up the NMFS chain of command and through the new Bush administration before the decision is announced in the Federal Registry. Stone said he did not know exactly who will serve on the new NMFS review team, how many of them were involved in the 1998 decision or how many scientists will actually take part in the review. In previous cases, ODFW biologists have met with only one or two review team members, instead of the entire team as promised today. "We�re hoping that, with the larger mix of people there, we�ll find a bigger mix of opinions and reads on our data," said Russ Stauff, an ODFW biologist who will join Hooton at the meeting. "We�re hoping they�ll take the information, we�ll have some discourse on it, then maybe go decide in our favor," Stauff said. Despite its own biologists� opinion that the steelhead are heading toward extinction, NMFS chose not to list Klamath Mountains Province steelhead in 1998 because a state salmon-recovery plan was helping reduce threats to wild steelhead and their habitat. The Siskiyou Project and several other groups successfully sued, and a federal appeals judge ruled last October that the government had until March 31 to revisit the listing proposal. That led NMFS to propose threatened status for the steelhead last month. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.