Feds decline to delist Klamath sucker fish, again

Protections for fish remain despite repeated attempts to remove listing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the Lost River and shortnosed suckers — two fish at the heart of water battles in the Klamath Basin — still deserve to be on the endangered species list.

The agency announced Friday that a new petition filed this year offered no new information to change a decision that it made in 2004 and reaffirmed in 2007 and 2008.

The suckers live primarily in Upper Klamath Lake, which is the main reservoir of a federal irrigation project that has had to shut off water to farms in times of drought to maintain habitat for the fish.

The service concluded that restoration projects have improved habitat in Upper Klamath Lake, especially at the mouth of the Williamson River, where The Nature Conservancy has brought together farmers, tribes and conservation groups to restore marshes essential for young suckers to survive.

Most of the lake's marshes were drained for farmland.

However, both species are still having trouble increasing their populations, the service concluded.

The petition was filed by water rights attorney James Buchal of Portland.

"The Service's determination shows that the political imperative to pillage the economy of the Klamath Basin drives the Service's decisions, not good science, since the Service rejected the opinions of its own scientists and its own status review that called for downlisting at least one species," he wrote in an e-mail.

"In fact, both species are in no appreciable danger of extinction, and the lakes and ponds of the Klamath Basin are filled with literally millions of listed suckers."