Groups Sue Glacier Park Over Gunsight Lake Trout Conservation Project
Arguing that the park’s proposed introduction of an “experimental population” of bull trout into an alpine lake that was historically fishless violates the Endangered Species Act, two environmental organizations on Sept. 16 filed a complaint in federal court
By Tristan Scott
Two environmental groups on Sept. 16 filed a lawsuit challenging a multi-year conservation strategy underway in Glacier National Park, where fisheries managers last summer exterminated an invasive population of rainbow trout in Gunsight Lake with plans to replenish the remote alpine basin with genetically pure, locally adapted strains of westslope cutthroat and bull trout, effectively establishing a native fish reserve.
The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Missoula comes from Friends of the Wild Swan and the Council on Wildlife and Fish. In their complaint, the groups argue that federal agencies overseeing the conservation project — the National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) — violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) because they failed to consider the consequences of collecting and propagating drainage-specific bull trout, precluding public comment.
“Removing bull trout from small donor lakes would commit resources irreversibly and irretrievably without taking a hard look at the consequences,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also asserts that federal agencies failed to assess how a $100 million Bureau of Reclamation project to rebuild the St. Mary Diversion Dam, the failure of which occurred a year after initiation of the Gunsight Lake project, would cumulatively affect local bull trout populations. And they say NPS violated NEPA by failing to issue a supplemental environmental assessment when it “drastically changed the project” to include the introduction of mountain whitefish into Gunsight Lake.
“By following the money instead of the science, policy, and the law, the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife are arbitrarily and capriciously introducing threatened bull trout in Gunsight Lake,” the lawsuit states. “Reclamation is addressing the main recovery obstacle with the Dam Project, so the Gunsight Project may not even aid bull trout recovery.”
The lawsuit was filed before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto and names as defendants Katharine Hammond, intermountain regional director for NPS; Dave Roemer, the superintendent of Glacier National Park; and Martha Williams, director of FWS. The Beacon contacted representatives from both agencies seeking comment but did not hear back; however, per NPS and FWS policy, neither agency typically comments on pending litigation.
At the center of the lawsuit is the plaintiffs’ contention that the ESA prohibits creating experimental populations of endangered and threatened species outside their current and historic range except “by regulation.” Because Glacier Park has proposed moving bull trout from other lakes in the St. Mary watershed, where bull trout currently live, and planting them in Gunsight Lake, where bull trout have never lived — likely because waterfalls downstream from the alpine lake serve as barriers preventing upstream fish migration — the project as proposed violates the ESA, according to the legal challenge.
But defenders of the project say the lawsuit is misguided and fails to account for the years of pioneering research establishing a framework for native fish translocations, which they say have become an important tool for the long-term conservation of fish threatened by human stressors, including the introduction of invasive species, habitat loss and climate change. For fisheries managers who have dedicated their careers to preserving native fish species in and around the park, as well as for ecologists working to support the projects through more than a decade of peer-reviewed scientific evidence, the Gunsight Lake project presents a unique opportunity to bolster bull trout populations in one of their last best strongholds.
“Establishing conservation populations through translocation is increasingly being used as a strategy to recover and preserve imperiled species in the face of climate change, invasive species, and habitat loss, which aligns with the intent of the Endangered Species Act — to recover them,” Clint Muhlfeld, an aquatic biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the research arm that helps inform federal management and recovery of native species, told the Beacon earlier this summer. “This project represents cutting-edge science to conserve imperiled species and entire communities.”
Muhlfeld has spent years working to identify suitable recipient sites for translocation in Glacier National Park, including the Logging, Camas and Lincoln Creek drainages west of the Continental Divide, and the St. Mary River on its eastern flanks.
As the last drainage east of the U.S. Continental Divide to support native bull trout, the St. Mary River drainage is a rarefied ecosystem that has experienced dramatic declines of its native fish populations. Today, all but one of its remaining westslope cutthroat trout populations have some level of hybridization with either non-native rainbow or Yellowstone cutthroat trout, and researchers say that without proactive management intervention their long-term persistence hangs in the balance. A tributary of the South Saskatchewan River drainage, the St. Mary River drainage now supports hybrid species that lack the genetic and behavioral adaptations that native species have adopted over the course of millennia.
Because the genetically impure populations radiate outward from infested lakes, including Gunsight, they have compromised the entire watershed.
According to Arlene Montgomery, with Friends of the Wild Swan, the fact that translocations are becoming more common as a conservation strategy supports her argument that federal agencies must follow their own regulatory guidelines by designating the new population “experimental.” The groups argue that introducing bull trout in Gunsight is “experimental” because it creates a population outside the species’ current range, and “outside any overlap with already existing populations.”
But if Gunsight Lake falls outside of the historic range of bull trout, researchers say it’s only by dint of the natural fish barriers preventing them from migrating upstream from the St. Mary River; although those same barriers, including St. Mary Falls, don’t prevent stocked invasives from traveling downstream. Moreover, given Gunsight Lake’s high elevation, researchers say it has strong potential to sustain the cold-water habitat necessary for bull trout and westslope bull trout to persist in a changing climate.
“When working on these projects, there’s always been a fair amount of debate over what the word ‘range’ means,” Wade Fredenberg, the FWS’ former bull trout recovery coordinator for the region. “If you draw a circle around bull trout range in the St. Mary drainage, it includes Gunsight Lake; but if you use a fine-scale interpretation and go water-by-water, then you can make the argument that it doesn’t include Gunsight Lake.”
Now retired from FWS, Fredenberg is the Flathead Valley chapter president of Trout Unlimited, advocating for the recovery of native fish species in northwest Montana, including through conservation measures such as the removal of invasive species and the translocation of native trout. According to Fredenberg, the range of bull trout in this case should be defined to include Gunsight Lake.
“It’s disappointing they are forcing biologists with Glacier National Park to expend energy and effort to fight frivolous lawsuits when we could be working together to recover the species,” Fredenberg said.
Chris Downs, the former aquatic and physical science programs leader for Glacier National Park, said earlier this summer before he left that position that he could not comment on the pending litigation; however, last year he told the Beacon that the conservation value of the Gunsight Lake preservation project far outweighs the value of maintaining the status of an historically fishless body of water.
“I understand the ecological value of having fishless waters on the landscape, because fish do modify ecosystems. But this ecosystem has already been modified by the introduction of nonnative trout more than a century ago,” Downs said a year ago. “And the consequences of those introductions are even more serious today.”