Thanks to Dick Burge for sending this my way!! Now you can all see it

This is an interesting arcticle as I've recently been told that their is some belief that a number of Sol Duc steelhead spawn with resident rainbows in the upper river ... boy, things get even more compicated now, don't they


Trout review questions protection for steelhead


JULIE JACOBSON / Associated Press file


Environmentalists fear that the steelhead's status on the
endangered species list will change depending on whether
rainbow trout will join the list.

JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press
January 13, 2003

GRANTS PASS — Federal fisheries biologists are considering
whether rainbow trout that live their entire lives in rivers
should be treated under the Endangered Species Act as
genetically identical to steelhead that migrate to the ocean.

National Marine Fisheries Service officials say they are
trying to consider the best science available. But
environmentalists, distrustful of the Bush administration,
fear the review may lead to taking West Coast steelhead off
the endangered species list by boosting their populations with
rainbow trout.

“It has all the earmarks of another end-run around” the
listing, said Alan Moore of Trout Unlimited.

Property rights advocates endorsed the review, saying they
hoped it would lead to lifting protections that have blocked
development.

“It’s long overdue,” said Russell Brooks, an attorney for the
Pacific Legal Foundation. The foundation won a federal court
ruling declaring Fisheries Service cannot treat hatchery
salmon differently from wild salmon if they are in the same
population.

Brooks said he will file a lawsuit challenging Endangered
Species Act protection for four steelhead populations in the
Columbia Basin based on the argument that they are genetically
identical to rainbow trout.

The Fisheries Service review traces its roots to the ruling by
U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, who found the service could
not impose Endangered Species Act protection for wild coho
salmon in the Alsea River if it did not protect genetically
identical hatchery coho in the same population, known as an
evolutionarily significant unit.

Based on that, service officials decided to review the
Endangered Species Act listings of 19 of the 25 different
units of West Coast salmon and steelhead that include hatchery
fish.

In the Dec. 31 Federal Register, officials said the service
would expand that review to include Snake River sockeye salmon
and the Southern California evolutionarily significant unit of
steelhead.

In addition, it would review the connections between rainbow
trout and steelhead, an issue raised in a lawsuit brought by
the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological
Diversity.

The lawsuit sought expansion of protection of steelhead in
Southern California to include those trapped behind dams.

“It became clear to us there is a problem, and it’s best if we
go ahead and do a review from top to bottom of all those ESUs
and make new determinations using all the same frameworks to
do so,” said Garth Griffin, the branch chief of the Protected
Resources Division of the service. “We’re not predetermining
anything here.”

Results are scheduled in November, with final determinations
following public review scheduled for spring of 2004.

Steelhead and rainbow trout are the same species, Oncorhynchus
mykiss, but have different life histories.

Steelhead are born in fresh water and migrate to the ocean,
where they mature before returning to their native streams to
spawn. Rainbow trout live their lives in fresh water.

“It’s a reasonable concern that the anti-environmental Bush
administration might be seeking an opportunity here to remove
endangered species protections for steelhead,” said David
Hogan, the rivers program coordinator for The Center for
Biological Diversity. “But de-listing can’t be justified
because extinction of the anadramous fish means the extinction
of native resident rainbows.”

According to the service’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Quarterly, research indicates steelhead and rainbows in
Oregon’s Deschutes River do not generally interbreed, but in
at least one British Columbia river, they do.

The lab has launched a research project on southeast Alaska’s
Sashin Creek.

Robert J. Behnke, a professor emeritus at Colorado State
University in Fort Collins and author of the book Trout and
Salmon of North America, said service biologists would make a
“horrendous mistake” lumping the two together.

In California’s Sacramento River, as an example, where
rainbows are plentiful but steelhead are threatened, there
would be no way to protect the steelhead, Behnke said.

“There are no genetic differences by the technique used to
define that genetic difference,” he said. “But there are
obviously genetic differences that determine this migratory
behavior. Very slight, but real.”

He noted that the inner ear bones of steelhead contain the
chemical element strontium from living in the ocean, while the
ear bones of rainbows do not.

Tests on 30 Deschutes River steelhead showed all had mothers
that were steelhead and 28 rainbows showed all had mothers
that were rainbows.

Behnke added that steelhead raised in hatcheries were more
likely to interbreed with rainbows than wild steelhead.