1-11 IAN Bull Trout Habitat

 The Obama Administration recently expanded protections for waterways critical to the restoration of threatened bull trout. www.journal net . com reports that this action  makes it tougher for agencies to approve logging, mining and livestock grazing across a large swath of federal land in the West. The final rule issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service represented a major expansion of the streams, lakes and reservoirs protected as critical habitat for the fish, primarily on federal lands in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada, and a reversal of Bush administration policy on endangered species. The new ruling protects 19,000 miles of streams, which is five times more than the 2005 rule, and 490,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs, which is more than three times greater than previously ordered. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Ted Koch explains the necessity for protections on bull trout: “Bull trout have the most specific habitat requirements of any trout or salmon native to the Pacific NW.”

The bull trout is not a trout, but a char. Its numbers have declined about 60 percent, and it has disappeared from about half its historical range due to logging, mining, dam construction, and livestock grazing that have warmed and muddied the water it lives in