Feds want to protect steelhead

The steelhead that ply the rivers feeding Puget Sound face so many hazards — from development, dams and logging to cross-breeding with hatchery fish — that they are at risk of extinction, a federal agency announced Wednesday.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has proposed protecting Puget Sound steelhead under the Endangered Species Act.

The decision would have to be finalized next year. But if so, the steelhead, which work their way back from the ocean to the steepest, fastest portions of Northwest streams, would join chinook salmon, bull trout and Hood Canal chum salmon on the growing list of endangered fish in area rivers. Orcas that spend part of their lives in Puget Sound were listed as endangered last year.

"It's just one more thing that drives home the fact that we've got a situation here in the Sound," said Mike Sato, spokesman for the environmental group People for Puget Sound. "Things are not well."

The listing proposal reverses its 1996 decision that suggested that steelhead — particularly runs in the Skagit and Snohomish rivers — did not warrant protection. Since then the health of those once-strong runs has declined.

"What made the difference? Probably death by a thousand cuts," said Scott Rumsey, an NMFS biologist.

The factors vary from dams and other barriers that block access to spawning areas to habitat issues in estuaries and unfavorable ocean conditions. There are also conflicts between wild and hatchery fish, which state officials have tried to address by manipulating the timing of hatchery steelhead runs.

It's too early to say what kinds of changes a steelhead listing could trigger. Much of the recovery work would likely piggyback on efforts to restore chinook salmon in a proposal now under review.

"My hope is that a lot of the things that we're doing under the chinook plan are going to be beneficial to the steelhead," said Jim Kramer, executive director of Shared Strategy, the nonprofit that has led the creation of the chinook-recovery plan.

But Sam Wright, a former state fisheries biologist who petitioned NMFS to list the steelhead, noted that steelhead habitat is much more extensive than that of chinook and bull trout because steelhead swim into smaller parts of rivers than other species.

Steelhead are biologically complicated. They are essentially rainbow trout, except steelhead migrate to the ocean and return to spawn while rainbows never leave fresh water. Yet steelhead can produce rainbow trout as offspring — and vice versa.

Steelhead are prized by anglers for their size, beauty and ferocity. So the fishermen are perhaps as leery as anyone of what a listing will mean.

"Steelheading is a way of life — it's almost a genetic thing," said Jeff Koenings, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "You have to understand that for some people this is the Northwest fish. Period.

"What I fear is any sort of a knee-jerk reaction that fisheries are the problem — even though [NMFS] lays out that fishing is not the problem."

Still, even Koenings acknowledged that hatcheries threaten to hurt native steelhead by introducing genetic strains that didn't evolve to meet the demands of particular rivers.

Koenings and several Northwest tribes have been working for years on hatchery-reform proposals that they hope will ultimately forestall federal protections for steelhead. They hope to put together a complete management package for the federal government before a final listing decision is made.

That could even keep steelhead from being placed on the endangered-species list at all, said Brian Gorman, spokesman for NMFS.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com