Contact: Brian Gorman FOR IMMEDIAT RELEASE
(206) 526-6613 (O) 3/10/95
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed listing steelhead trout from Cape Blanco south to California's Klamath River as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
Today's proposed listing reflects growing concern about sea- going trout populations, whose numbers have been dwindling over the past century, the result of a wide variety of human-caused factors and natural factors, such as El Nino.
William Stelle, director of NOAA's Northwest fisheries office in Seattle, said NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service will make a decision later next month about proposing to list several populations of Pacific coho salmon as either "threatened" or "endangered." By this summer, he added, the fisheries service will also have to make a similar decision about other Pacific steelhead populations.
The proposal to list steelhead as "threatened" within a region known as the Klamath Mountain Province was triggered by a petition filed in 1992 by the Oregon Natural Resources Council and 10 others to list native, naturally spawning Illinois River winter steelhead.
Most steelhead populations have been declining within the Klamath Mountain Province. The degradation of habitat as a result of logging, mining, farming and irrigation is believed to be one of the major reasons for the decline.
The petitions also request that the fisheries service designate part of the fish's habitat as "critical."
The fisheries service said it would make a separate designation later on critical habitat, when the agency's biologists had completed their analysis.
Under the Endangered Species Act, a species listed as "threatened" is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant part of its range; an "endangered" species is one that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.
Last year, NOAA proposed reclassifying two populations of Snake River chinook salmon from threatened to endangered because they are at risk of extinction.
The fisheries service has one year to make a final determination about today's proposed listing.