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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
NOVEMBER 7. 2011

Flies, and Their Lawyers, Keep Rare Trout From Going Home
Restoring the Fish to California Creek Could Harm a Bug's Life; Cutthroat Battle

By JUSTIN SCHECK

MARKLEEVILLE, Calif.-North America's rarest trout has human allies who want to give it back its ancestral
home.

California Department of Fish and Game
Battleground: Silver King Creek. in the Sierra Nevada
wilderness.
But the fish face an obstacle to their homecoming: bug
advocates.
Federal and state game officials want to restore the Paiute
cutthroat trout to the range scientists believe it occupied for
many millennia-a nine-mile stretch of the Silver King Creek in
the Sierra Nevada wilderness.
Yet there are also bugs in those waters-bugs that insect
advocates say will be threatened by the fish fans' proposal
The result has been a war of words and court challenges between
fish allies and bug allies.
"They're nutty people," says ichthyologist Robert Behnke, a retired Colorado State University professor and
expert on North American trout who calls the bug advocates "obstructionists."
Opponents allege the trout plan is a plot by anglers who just want to fish for rare species. "Part of the project is to
expand the population of fish so they can fish for them," says Nancy Erman, a retired University of California at
Davis insect researcher who raised early objections to the proposal. Ms. Erman studied caddis flies, whose larvae
live in cocoons of stream-bed debris.
"It's a fishing agenda cloaked in environmental language," says Ann McCampbell, a Santa Fe physician who sued
the federal government over the plan.
A bug's life could be endangered by the plan, there's little argument about that. A toxin called rotenone would
first exterminate non-native fish from the nine-mile creek section-an idea that rankles some local anglersunder
a proposal by state and federal biologists.
State officials say it would hurt individual insects, but not the population at large. Bug people say it could
massacre caddis and stone flies and other invertebrates.
"There's a lot of evidence of the Sierra Nevada being one of the world's great centers of endemic invertebrates,"
says Pete Frost, a lawyer for the insect camp.

There are no known rare bugs in the area, says Bill Somer, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and
Game who has been visiting the creek for more than 20 years as part of efforts to restore the Paiute trout. Mr.
Somer has overseen the use of rotenone in several other cases around the state where biologists killed non-native
fish and reintroduced native trout.
The Paiute trout's ancestry traces to about 10,000 years ago, he says, when waterfalls cut off part of Silver King
Creek.
Trapped in a nine-mile section between two waterfalls, Mr. Somer says the trout developed into a distinct
subspecies. Unlike the cutthroat trout in nearby waterways, the Paiute trout has no spots and has an iridescent
sheen that can appear purplish.
Loggers and Basque shepherds noticed over a century ago that Silver King Creek's trout were different from other
trout, historical records show.
Above Silver King's upper waterfall, the creek was fishless, Mr. Somer says. In 1912,a young shepherd named Joe
Jaunsaras wanted to fish the fishless upper creek, historical records show, so he carried some Paiute trout up in a
can. The fish still exist in that upper stretch of the creek.
He unwittingly saved the Paiute trout from extinction, says Mr. Somer. State officials later put other trout species
into the Paiute trout's old home. The more-aggressive new fish ate some Paiute trout and hybridized with others.
By the 1940S, Paiute trout were gone from the nine-mile stretch of creek.
There are now fewer than 2,000 adult Paiute trout, Mr. Somer says. The fish has been classified as "threatened"
on the federal Endangered Species List since 1975.
California's fish and game department started working on plans to restore the Paiute trout to their old range in
the 1990S.
Then Ms. Erman, the bug researcher, found out. At a water conference in Las Vegas around 2000, someone-she
doesn't remember who-mentioned a plan to use the rotenone toxin in Silver King Creek. Ms. Erman says she
knew there were few studies on whether that would kill rare insects. She talked to others who were skeptical of
using poisons in the wilderness.
Ms. Erman came to believe that angling enthusiasts were driving the plan at the expense of other species.
Mr. Somer ofthe state fish and game department says a recreational Paiute fishery could be a "benefit" of a
successful restoration, though he says the creek may never open to fishing.
The department has created a "Heritage Trout Challenge" program in which it awards certificates to anglers who
can prove, through photos, that they caught six of California's 11native trout varieties in their natural habitats.
(The upper stretch of Silver King Creek is closed to fishing to protect Paiute trout.)
Ms. Erman joined forces with environmental lawyers, who in 2003 sued in federal court to stop the trout plan
because of their concerns over using rotenone. The suit delayed the plan, but state officials got it back on track
until Ms. Erman and her allies in 2004 successfully lobbied a water board near Silver King Creek to halt the plan.
The state water board overturned the decision.
The following year Ms. Erman's allies at Californians for Alternatives to Toxics filed new state and federal suits.
They won a federal judgment forcing the state to modify the Paiute trout plan by doing more studies.
The trout plan was again on track in 2010, when the state and federal agencies completed final reports in
preparation of poisoning the creek.
But a wet winter caused delays and the insect allies kept litigating.Tn September, U.S. District Judge Frank
Damrell issued an injunction on the plan, in part because it "left native invertebrate species out of the balance."
The plan, wrote the judge, was "failing to consider the potential extinction of native invertebrate species."

Mr. Somer says the state is still hoping to find a way to restore the trout. "I never dreamed they'd drag it out this
long," he says. "I really thought that within my career we'd have the fish restored."
Bug advocates hailed the pro-bug ruling as a victory for under-appreciated animals. Insects need special
protection because they don't generate much sympathy, lacking the appeal of more alluring animals like trout,
says Mr. Frost, the anti-toxin lawyer.
"Invertebrates aren't sexy megafauna," he says.