Redband Trout and the Endangered Species Act

Abstract.—Redband trout Oncorhynchus mykiss and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been linked since 1982, when the fish first appeared as a candidate species. Petitions to list populations of redband trout under the ESA were filed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in 1994, 1995, and 1997. USFWS found that the listing action requested in the first two petitions was not warranted; therefore, they received no further processing. Action on the 1997 petition to list redband trout in the Great Basin was held up for over 2 years because of a backlog that was created by a 1995 budget cut. It has since been reviewed, and a decision that listing was not warranted was issued in 2000. A series of budget and policy decisions in 1995 and 1996 resulted in changes to the procedures and catego-ries used to assign a species to the status of candidate for listing as threatened or endangered under the ESA. Federal legislation in 1995 rescinded $1.5 million in the USFWS budget that was to be used for listing activities and created a large backlog of pending listing actions. Subsequently in 1996, USFWS eliminated several categories under which a species could be assigned candidate status. The remaining category for candidate status is used for species that are judged to warrant listing as threatened or endangered, but the listing is precluded by higher priority needs. Five populations of redband trout (four in Oregon) had been assigned to Category 2 status (insufficient information to proceed with a proposed rule) by USFWS in their published candidate lists from 1982 to 1994. When the policy was changed in 1996, 23 fish species in Oregon were dropped as candidates for listing, leaving bull trout Salvelinu