Judge says no to fish poison in Montana wilderness
Edvard Pettersson
(CN) — A federal judge this week rejected a plan approved by the U.S. Forest Service to drop poison over Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in an effort to eradicate invasive rainbow trout and replace them with Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
Instead, Senior U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in Missoula granted summary judgment to Wilderness Watch, an environmental advocacy organization that had sued the Forest Service in 2023 under the U.S. Wilderness Act.
In doing so, the Bill Clinton appointee rejected the recommendations of a magistrate judge who sided with the Forest Service after oral arguments last December.
Under the so-called Buffalo Creek Project, helicopters and boats planned to disperse retenone, a fish poison that kills all gill-breathing organisms, into the wilderness area’s watershed. The project would have lasted for up to five years, with camps and other infrastructure also built.
Molloy agreed with conservationists that the plan conflicts with the Wilderness Act’s mandate to protect the free flow of natural processes.
In an amended decision Friday, Molly also noted that Buffalo Creek was historically free of fish. Just like rainbow trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout were introduced by humans. As such, he said protecting Yellowstone cutthroat trout was not valid under the Wilderness Act.
“It is unclear how the elimination of one those species in favor of another, in a stream neither originally inhabited, preserves either the primeval wilderness character or the baseline wilderness character,” Molloy wrote. “Rather, as argued by Wilderness Watch, this is not ecological restoration — it is continued manipulation.”
Wilderness Watch welcomed the ruling, saying it clarifies uses of the Wilderness Act.
“This is one of the most important rulings for protecting the integrity of the Wilderness Act in the law’s 60-year history,” Wilderness Watch Executive Director George Nickas said in a statement.
Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department, which defended the Forest Service in the litigation, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness was created from federal lands in 1978. It consists of around a million acres of remote, mountainous terrain and features watersheds that connect to the Custer, Gallatin and Shoshone national forests.
The Forest Service argued that timeline was a critical component of the case: Though the area may have been historically fish-free due to a waterfall that prevents travel upstream, there were fish stocked in the waterways by 1978.
“Congress made a determination at that time, that even though there were stocked fish in this area, it still met the definition for designation as a wilderness area,” Justice Department attorney Shaun Pettigrew argued in December.
The biggest threat to Yellowstone cutthroat trout comes from interbreeding with introduced trout species, Pettigrew previously argued — helping convince a magistrate judge in March to recommend a ruling for the Forest Service.
The Forest Service says Buffalo Creek is the main source of nonnative rainbow trout that are spreading downstream and hybridizing with native Yellowstone cutthroat trout. The species is already hindered by predatory lake trout introduced to Yellowstone Lake illegally in the 1980s.
Pettigrew argued that the Forest Service’s plan would enhance the Yellowstone cutthroat trout population and preserve the wilderness area by providing dedicated areas for genetically pure species.
Wilderness Watch says the agency didn’t properly consider less intrusive alternative plans. Brister pointed to the agency’s minimum requirement decision guide, which scored alternative options numerically. He said the plan chosen by the Forest Service chose scored lowest among all the plans in terms of impact on wilderness character.