Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protections

The Bush administration on Tuesday proposed dramatically rolling back protections for salmon and steelhead trout streams from Southern California to the Canadian border, saying the rare and endangered fish are sufficiently protected in other ways.

The revised plan, which was prompted by a lawsuit from the National Assn. of Homebuilders, could exclude 80% to 90% of the "critical habitat" that the National Marine Fisheries Service designated four years ago as necessary to keep West Coast salmon and steelhead populations from going extinct and to allow their depleted populations to recover.

Streams and rivers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County would be withdrawn as protected habitat because the military argued that the protections would delay training exercises and space launches and diminish military readiness.

In addition, streams that run through millions of acres of national forests stretching from northwestern California through western Oregon and Washington would be excluded as critical habitat for the fish. Federal officials said they did not want to impose another layer of restrictions on areas already subject to protections for the northern spotted owl.

The new plan also drops protections on private land where developers have struck conservation deals with government officials.

By removing all of these areas, "We would get down to excluding around 90% of the critical habitat that had been [previously] identified," said Jim Lecky, an assistant regional administrator for the Fisheries Service.

The new plan, released late Tuesday, was immediately applauded as "a very large improvement" by Christopher Galik, an environmental policy analyst for the National Assn. of Homebuilders.

But environmentalists and fishermen said it failed to meet the agency's own scientific criteria for what is needed for the once-abundant fish to return to healthy population levels.

"None of this is defensible," said Chris Frissell, a fisheries biologist with the Pacific Rivers Council. "There is no way it would come anywhere close to helping these fish recover."

All sides in the battle are predicting more lawsuits over designating critical habitat, arguably the most powerful tool under the federal Endangered Species Act to control development, timber harvesting and farming practices that can degrade healthy streams and rivers.