Groups Sue Federal Agency Over Habitat for Small Southland Fish

Four environmental groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday, arguing that the federal agency violated its promise to protect waterways crucial to the Santa Ana sucker, a fish found in four Southern California waterways.

The American Fisheries Society, California Trout Inc., the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the River filed the suit in federal court in San Francisco. It alleges that the federal wildlife agency violated a court-approved settlement that required it to act by January 2001 to protect waterways crucial to the survival of the threatened species.

“The Bush administration’s failure to protect this species’ river habitat flies in the face of conservation and our legal process,” said David Hogan, rivers program coordinator for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The sucker, which uses its little mouth and large, thick lips to vacuum algae and invertebrates from stream beds, used to be found in clear creeks and bodies of water throughout the Southland. But development, the paving of streams, competition from nonnative species, water pollution and other factors have pushed it out of 75% of its historical range. The small, threatened bottom-feeder is currently found in small stretches of the Santa Ana, San Gabriel and Santa Clara rivers and Big Tujunga Creek.

After a six-year legal battle, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated the fish as “threatened” in April 2000. At the time, Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the service’s regional office in Portland, Ore., said, “The species is in trouble and it’s headed on a trend that could lead toward extinction.”

In November 2000, to settle a separate lawsuit, the wildlife agency agreed to designate critical habitat by January 2001, Hogan said.

Jewett disagreed with Hogan over Wednesday’s lawsuit, saying her agency had never agreed to a specific deadline. “Basically, we contend that we are not in violation of the court order,” she said. “The court order never bound us to any specific date for designating critical habitat.”

One of the most controversial provisions of the Endangered Species Act, critical habitat is a category of protected land in which building and other activity can be limited or even barred to ensure survival of rare plants and animals.

The act requires that land or waterways essential to an imperiled species’ survival be protected when the creature is listed as endangered or threatened. The wildlife service has long balked, arguing that the process of delineating habitat is expensive and time-consuming, and the designation affords little extra protection.

But the courts have disagreed. Environmentalists have repeatedly sued and won, resulting in court orders mandating hundreds of critical habitat designations in the service’s Pacific region alone. Still, critical habitat has been designated for less than 12% of all species listed as threatened or endangered, Hogan said.

Additionally, the Bush administration has asked the courts to invalidate several existing critical habitat designations, including plans for the coastal California gnatcatcher and the San Diego fairy shrimp.