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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday the review by a
panel of biologists found that one species in the upper basin,
the short nosed sucker, is still at risk of extinction and
should remain protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The
Lost
River
sucker is not at risk of extinction in the foreseeable future, so it
should be reclassified as a threatened species, the agency said.
A panel of 12 scientists representing government agencies and
interest groups reviewed various sources of information about
the fish and made the recommendations to the fish and wildlife
service.
The review was prompted by a petition from a group called
Interactive Citizens United to take the fish off the endangered
species list. There is no specific timetable for when the agency
might act on the recommendations, spokeswoman Alex Pitts said
from
Sacramento
,
Calif.
Joe Kirk is chairman of the Klamath Tribes, whose members once
caught and preserved the fish for winter fare. The tribes hold
an annual ceremony honoring the fish, once a staple for them.
Kirk said the fish and wildlife service was correct to keep
legal protections for the fish in place.
"We have not seen significant recovery of any
fisheries," he said in statement. "In fact, it should
have continued both species as endangered."
The
Klamath
Basin
spans southern
Oregon
and northern
California
.
One of the leading threats to the fish now is poor water
quality, which is not likely to improve any time soon, the
review found. It is not clear why one fish is doing better than
the other.
Greg Addington of the Klamath Water Users Association, which
represents farmers, said the improved condition of Lost River
suckers showed that habitat restoration was paying off, but more
work needs to be done with federal agencies and the Klamath
Tribes to find lasting solutions.
Court battles over how to divide scarce water between farms and
fish continue.
But farmers, Indian tribes, conservation groups and
California
commercial fishermen say they
hope to have a deal worked out by November to settle many of the
issues, including whether to remove four dams on the
Klamath River
to increase salmon spawning
habitat.
The suckers were protected as an endangered species in 1988
after their numbers plummeted from loss of habitat from draining
lakes and marshes to create farmland, and to overfishing.
That protected status led the federal government to shut off
irrigation water to most of the 1,400 farms of the Klamath
Reclamation Project in 2001 to ensure enough water for the
suckers in
Upper Klamath Lake
, the irrigation system's
primary reservoir.
The move was also meant to help the threatened coho salmon in
the
Klamath River
.
A U.S. House panel holds a hearing next Tuesday to look at what
role Vice President Dick Cheney played in a decision to restore
irrigation, which was followed by the deaths of some 70,000
salmon in the Klamath River in 2002 due to low water levels.
Pitts said that since 2001, the federal government has been
spending about $85 million a year on various fish habitat and
water conservation projects in the basin.
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