Lawsuit Targets Failure to Seek Endangered Status for Steelhead Trout : Environment: Coalition of conservation and sportfishing groups says federal agency should try to protect the fish, which spawns in local rivers.

Prodding federal regulators to swim upstream politically, conservationists today will sue the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to propose that the steelhead trout be protected as an endangered species.

A coalition of 22 conservation and sportfishing groups will file the lawsuit in hopes of gaining federal protection for the rapidly dwindling species of trout that lives in the ocean but swims up rivers to spawn.

The Santa Clara and Ventura rivers are two of few remaining steelhead runs in Southern California--a region that has witnessed a dramatic decline in the ancient species that is a distant cousin to the salmon.

“It is unfortunate that you have to take your government to court to get them to follow the law,” said Jim Edmondson, executive director of California Trout, a conservation group. “Unfortunately, that’s the only option.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service is already six months late on a Feb. 16 legal deadline to decide on the conservationists’ original petition to propose listing steelhead trout as an endangered species.

Agency officials said they want to proceed cautiously because of heightened scrutiny from conservative members of Congress and threats of lawsuits from loggers and water suppliers over any species newly proposed to be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“Our every move is being scrutinized by a whole range of people who are ready to leap on whatever we do,” said Brian Gorman, a spokesman for the fisheries service.

Congress has placed a yearlong moratorium on adding new creatures to the federal endangered species list--although the ban does not affect the proposal at this stage.

But the House of Representatives recently passed legislation that would forbid the fisheries service to spend any money to consider listing a new species during the upcoming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

The Senate is now mulling over that bill.

The fisheries service has spent the last 18 months studying the remaining steelhead populations that spawn in rivers in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It is the largest geographical area that the agency has ever tackled in a review of a rare species, Gorman said.

Gorman urged patience, and said the agency wants to make sure its decision is based on solid scientific evidence that will withstand any court challenge.

“Clearly, we are aiming at the same goal, which is to preserve the habitat of these fish and restore the runs, as far as humanly possible,” Gorman said.

Like the salmon, steelhead are born in fresh water. They look identical to rainbow trout and remain in freshwater streams for one to three years before swimming out to sea.

Once in the ocean, they take on a different color and their lower jaws become more pronounced. As adults, they return to their natal streams to spawn. Each of these stocks, or runs, of steelhead are those of a single species that emerge and return from the same freshwater spawning grounds.

So far, 23 of these steelhead runs are extinct and as many as 100 others are threatened with extinction, biologists say. They blame the decline on dams, development and pollution.

The Ventura and Santa Clara rivers once had thousands of steelhead, as did other Southern California streams and rivers. Now, Southern California stocks are limited to those two rivers and their tributaries, along with Malibu Creek in Los Angeles County and the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County.

“They tend to become more imperiled as you go south,” said Mike Sherwood, staff attorney with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Sherwood said he will file suit on behalf of the coalition of conservationists today in federal court in San Francisco.