Montana Arctic Grayling Recovery Program: Annual Meeting

On Tuesday, 18 March 2008, I squeezed into into a room full of folks at the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks headquarters in Bozeman for the annual meeting of the Grayling Restoration Workgroup. [For three substantial highlights of this meeting, scroll down to the bold headings below.]

Also know as the "annual grayling meeting and sandwich eating club," the recovery program began in 1987 as a response to the decline of fluvial Arctic grayling in the Big Hole River. Though technically a 501(c)3 organization coordinated by Buddy Drake, the group serves to coordinate the efforts of Montana FWP and the US Fish & Wildlife Service and to communicate these efforts to the wider environmental community.

I've been attending the annual meeting off and on since the late 1990s. For many years, it seemed that the agency biologists got together and did a lot of hand-wringing, but nothing much ever came out of it. Yes, there were helter-skelter activities such as trying to reintroduce hatchery grayling into degraded, warm, and dewatered rivers such as the Beaverhead and Jefferson--but most of the agency administrators seemed to be there just for the free sandwiches. It took until 2002 for the group to even begin to address degraded habitat in the upper Big Hole--something that everyone knew was a problem at least by the early 1990s.

Things have changed, somewhat. The meeting consists of a lot more presentations (22 in 8 hours!) and a lot less discussion. While it is good that a broader range of folks -- presenters included representatives from The Nature Conservancy and NRCS -- make presentations (it used to be just agency biologists), letting the agenda get swamped by too many low-content presentations means that substantial discussion cannot occur. For example, various National Park Service folks made three interminable presentations about a potential grayling restoration project in Yellowstone; these could easily have been condensed into a single 10 minute presentation. Still, I can understand why NPS was given such a broad slot, since until now the Park has been opposed to native fish restoration.

For the most part, the meeting was full of bad news: grayling continue to decline in the Big Hole River watershed. Although a lot of work is going into the Conservation Candidate Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs), no postive population response is predicted until years 2011-2012. With upper river flows at or above minimal targets needed for graylng sustainability just 15% or so of the time in summer and fall, I wouldn't be too optimistic about grayling populations three or four years from now.

There were three presentations of special interest:

One: Habitat Restoration Does Not Help Fish When There is No Water in the Restored Stream
Yep, we're talking about the Big Hole Watershed Committee's highly touted "Rock Creek Reconnection Project." The WC invested about $100,000 on stream restoration, willow planting, and riparian fencing (not to mention overhead and indirects)--with much of the funding coming from the Orvis Company and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. How sad, to see a photograph of a dry streambed for this "investment." This is a problem that critics of the WC have pointed out time and time again: unless and until the committee is able to assure minimal instream flows, grayling will continue to decline. Solution: quit pretending ranchers are going to voluntarily give up enough water, and either go after it legally (Public Trust Doctrine) or start leasing it.

Two: There is a Small but Hopeful Sign that Grayling are Colonizing the Upper Ruby River Watershed
The use of Remote Site Incubators to hatch grayling eggs on-site in the Upper Ruby seems to be panning out. Last year, a number of 2+ year old Arctic grayling turned up in stream and angler creel surveys. The big test: these fish should spawn this spring. Note that the eggs came from Big Hole grayling broodstock that are held in the Axoltl Lakes and Ted Turner rearing ponds, so if there has not been too much genetic drift or bottlenecking, then this could be a healthy future population.

Three: The US Fish & Wildlife Decision Not to List Big Hole Grayling was Stupid and Wrong
Yeah, we all knew this was true. But just the same, it feels good to be vindicated once in awhile. Soon-to-be published genetic data indicates that Big Hole River grayling are genetically distinct from fluvial populations in Canada and lake dwelling/adfluvial populations in Montana. These results clearly contravene the recent US FWS service decision to revoke Distinct Population Segment status for Big Hole grayling.

Well, the sandwiches were tasty.

Endangered Species Act: the law of the land

[a version of this editorial by me was printed in the Montana Standard newspaper]

How sad, that we the people of the United States must sue our own government if we want the law of the land to be enforced. Whatever happened to the notion that America is “A nation of laws, not of men?” Under the Bush administration, we have become a nation where the executive branch rules with arbitrary and capricious power.

No one disagrees that the Big Hole River grayling (aka “Upper Missouri River Fluvial Arctic Grayling”) is on the verge of extinction. And yet the US Fish & Wildlife Service deemed Big Hole grayling insignificant— ignoring its own scientists, a peer-review by professional fisheries biologists, and the law. The Center for Biological Diversity, along with a group of plaintiffs including me, must sue the federal government to enforce the law.

Blame Julie MacDonald, the Bush appointee who dictated endangered species decisions – including the decision that Big Hole grayling are insignificant – at the Department of Interior. Though MacDonald resigned following accusations of politically bulldogging agency scientists, the damage lingers.

Mike Stempel, a Fish & Wildlife Service administrator, made several outrageous statements in a recent Montana Standard article.

Stempel stated there are 6,000 grayling in the Big Hole River. The truth is, Montana FWP biologists can’t even find enough grayling to estimate the population size. It has declined significantly from an estimate made several years ago of approximately 1,000 breeding age fish.

Stempel stated that the Endangered Species Act is “not the best tool” to protect grayling, and that Montana is doing just fine in restoring the fish. The truth is, Big Hole grayling have declined steadily under Montana FWP management ever since FWP “discovered” the fish were in trouble in the 1970s. At this point, the ESA is the only tool.

I admire the small handful of Big Hole ranchers that have made personal sacrifices in water use in order to help grayling. The simple fact is, however, that Big Hole irrigators (as a group) consistently dewater the river each year: year, after year, after year. Voluntary efforts have failed at maintaining minimal river flows needed to sustain Big Hole grayling.

How sad, that our children and grandchildren may have to venture to Alaska in order to catch a grayling. It is wrong that our government is willing to sacrifice our natural heritage. The Endangered Species Act works, as demonstrated by the success in recovering bald eagles and many other once-rare species.

Collaboration and the Path to Extinction

The French Vichy, the Norwegian Quislings, and other collaborators learned an important lesson that environmentalists should have learned: it is not always good to legitimatize ourselves by working with those who have radically opposed values.

“The radical center” was all the rage a few years ago. Groups such as the Quivera Coalition, led by charismatic individuals such as Courtney White, helped popularize the movement among environmentalists. At the same time, there was a rush to form watershed committees – what Peter Lavigne called “the buzzword of the 90s” – where environmentalists, developers, and ranchers would link arms and go skipping happily down the path to Oz.

A little fish has just taught us another humble lesson in the perils of collaboration. Recently, the US Fish & Wildlife Service announced that Upper Missouri River Fluvial Arctic Grayling, aka Big Hole River grayling, are no longer a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The Arctic grayling is an elegant and beautiful relative of the trout; it has iridescent sides and a large sail-like dorsal fin marked with purple spots. Montana fluvial grayling once thrived throughout the upper Missouri River watershed above Great Falls. Today however, it survives only in a small segment of the upper Big Hole River—less than 5% of its original range.

Last year, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks grayling biologist James Magee estimated that there were approximately 1,000 adult Big Hole River grayling. This year, Magee would not even hazard a guess at how many might be left. Fred Allendorf of the Montana Conservation Genetics Laboratory in Missoula believes that 1,000 to 2,000 adult fish is the minimum threshold population needed to insure viability. This makes it likely that Big Hole River grayling are what fisheries biologist Robert Behnke calls a “ghost species”—organisms that, although present in small numbers, are for all practical purposes already extinct unless extraordinary restoration measures are taken.

Given this situation, the FWS decision has outraged environmentalists, biophiliacs, and anglers everywhere. Rightly so, given the way Bush appointees such as Julie MacDonald have bullied the agency into making political decisions that ignore good science. But many of us – environmentalist, biophiliacs, and anglers all – are complicit in the demise of grayling.

It all began in 1991, when the decidedly non-Quisling group known as the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned FWS to list the fluvial Arctic grayling throughout its historic range. When the agency decided in 1994 that a listing was “warranted but precluded,” this hit Big Hole ranchers like a brick between the eyes. Along with pressure to list the Big Hole as a “chronically dewatered stream” under Montana law, business as usual was itself an endangered species.

The ranchers appealed to then-governor Mark Racicot, the Republican Party politician who went on to manage the Bush re-election campaign. Racicot facilitated creation of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, a multi-stakeholder consensus-based group that included representatives from ranching, outfitting, local government, the tourist industry, and environmental groups such as Trout Unlimited and the Big Hole River Foundation.

At first, all went well. Environmentalists participated in and praised the watershed committee. The group made real strides regarding issues such as land use planning, invasive weed control, and a drought management plan. These all seemed like good things. Attention to fishery management helped postpone a grayling listing year by year, and it kept the environmental members from pushing for a listing.

But grayling were not at the table and neither were grayling-advocacy groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Montana Wildlife Federation. These groups were explicitly excluded because there were “too radical” and “too environmentalist.” But without such advocates, grayling never had a voice. Or a chance.

Grayling continued to decline—despite or perhaps because of efforts by the watershed committee. Even the drought plan, which should have helped fish, did not. Fish need water that “belongs” to ranchers and fish populations decline sharply when flows slip below the lower inflection point for the wetted perimeter. Once flows drop below this level, the riverbed rapidly goes dry.

Like every decision made by the watershed committee, the drought plan was the product of political expediency and not science. Whereas the minimum wetted perimeter in a critical reach for grayling survival was 60 cubic feet per second, the plan allowed flows to slip to 20 cubic feet per second.

This, and other efforts for grayling recovery, were always “too little, too late.” Even now, with the FWS decision not to list, Big Hole Watershed Committee chair Randy Smith told a newspaper reporter, “With listing no longer imminent, ranchers will have more time to evaluate projects to ensure they’re the best for grayling.” Problem is, grayling have run out of time.

White-tailed Deer in southwest Montana

I read an article in the Montana Standard newspaper last week. While interesting, Nick Gevock’s article about white-tailed deer “taking over” contains serious historical inaccuracies and omissions. [See http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/22/outdoors_top/20070322_outdoors_top.txt]
White-tailed deer are not “recent migrants” to southwest and western Montana. Think of Deer Lodge, Montana, a town along the Clark Fork River just downstream of Butte. Deer Lodge got its name from, and was historically referred to by Native Americans as, “the lodge of the white-tailed deer.”

When Lewis and Clark led their infamous expedition through what is now southwest Montana, they saw many, many white-tailed deer—and relatively few mule deer. For example, consider Meriwether Lewis’ journal entry from 14 August 1805, made at the Three Forks of the Missouri River: “We have killed no mule deer since we lay here, they are all of the longtailed red deer [i.e. white-tailed deer] which appear quite as large as those of the United States.” The preponderance of white-tailed deer over mule deer continued as the expedition made its way up the Beaverhead River and over the Continental Divide to the Salmon River valley.

We must keep in mind that Lewis and Clark traveled primarily along rivers, and that white-tailed deer favor riparian habitat.

So why do old-timers tell us that white-tailed deer were scarce in southwest Montana until recently? It is because white-tailed deer were exterminated on the Montana frontier of the late nineteenth century. Ranchers’ cattle overgrazed the river bottoms, while miners and homesteaders shot everything in sight for food. For example, by 1871 Granville Stuart (located at what is now the Grant-Kohrs historic ranch near Deer Lodge) was outraged by the widespread slaughter of white-tailed deer and other native species, and he introduced legislation aimed at conserving wildlife. Despite Stuart’s efforts, the slaughter continued. By the 1890s, sportsmen’s groups petitioned the legislature to set hunting seasons and halt the sale of wild game. By 1900, there were virtually no deer or other game left in southwest Montana.

By the late1930s, thanks to the activism of groups such as the Montana Wildlife Federation and professional Fish & Game biologists, white-tailed deer and other game began to recover. Today, the alfalfa, wheat, and grass hay fields of our river bottoms provide abundant forage for white-tailed deer. Combined with the dearth of predators and the reluctance of some landowners to allow public hunting, this assures that the overpopulation of white-tails will continue—at least until something like Chronic Wasting Disease finds its way from game farms into our wild herds.

The article is an example of our tendency to see the world at the moment as if that is the way it has always been--irrespective of the huge changes that we have wrought even over very short time periods of a few human generations.