California irrigators lose court battle against wild steelhead protection

SAN FRANCISCO, California, August 20, 2010 (ENS) – An attempt by irrigation districts to strip federal protected status from wild steelhead trout in California’s Central Valley was rejected in a ruling today from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This Endangered Species Act case is a challenge to the decision of the National Marine Fisheries Service to list the steelhead, a type of Pacific salmon, as a threatened species in California’s Central Valley. … Six irrigation districts whose operations in the rich agricultural valley are impeded by the listing argued that the listing violated the Endangered Species Act because steelhead and rainbow trout interbreed, and the statute therefore requires NMFS to treat them as a single species. The irrigators filed this lawsuit in an attempt to win the right to withdraw more water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems in the Central Valley. … All parties agreed that the steelhead population is in decline in the Central Valley. Steelhead once returned from the ocean in the millions every year to the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems in the Central Valley. Today, these fish have disappeared from 95 percent of their historic habitat, and they continue to face threats from unchecked water use, blockage by dams, urban sprawl, and polluted rivers, warn the conservation and fishing groups. … The court’s ruling comes after a report issued earlier this month by the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) which found that greater flows and less water diversions were needed to restore the estuary and its imperiled fish populations. … 

California’s Wild Steelhead Win, Irrigators Lose Court Battle