On November 8, 2023 Wilderness Watch filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), challenging the agency’s unlawful decision to poison more than 45 miles of Buffalo Creek in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness at the behest of Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks.

Styled as an effort to expand Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations, the project would involve a decade’s worth of helicopter landings plus the use of other motorized equipment to poison and kill fish, amphibians, and insects in numerous lakes, ponds, and wetlands and nearly fifty miles of high-mountain streams. After the poisoning is completed, the State of Montana would stock the naturally fishless lakes and streams with the trout.

The project area within the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness was naturally fishless prior to human introduction of rainbow trout in the 1930s. Our lawsuit challenges managers’ plans to continue intensively engineering the aquatic ecosystem through poisons and the exchange of one non-native stocked fish species for another. It also challenges the extensive use of helicopters and other motorized equipment where motorized vehicles and equipment are generally banned. We assert in its complaint that both the ends and the means of the Forest Service’s project violate the provisions of the Wilderness Act, which provides protection to this area.

Our legal challenge points out several key flaws. Fundamentally, as our complaint says, “the importance of Wilderness designation was to remove the human hand from shaping the landscape and safeguard the untrammeled, wild ecosystems into the future.” Our complaint points out that the agency’s rationale for artificially stocking the Wilderness with cutthroats has no support in the law and that the Forest Service’s own internal policies acknowledge the species’ “exotic” status in this location.

Furthermore, the heavily-motorized means with which the agency plans to implement the poisoning and fish stocking do not meet the narrow exceptions in the law for such prohibited activity. As our complaint explains, “[a]n anthropogenic imprint on the landscape at such a technologically facilitated scale is exactly the sort of impact that the Wilderness Act serves to protect designated areas against.” We point to the Forest Service’s own internal analysis of how the project will degrade the Wilderness. 

Additional Resources:

• Copy of press release (11/8/2023)

• Copy of the complaint (11/8/2023)

• FAQ: Lawsuit over Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness fish poisoning and stocking project (11/8/2023)

 
News Articles: 

• Lethal Rotenone Plan Aims to Trade Wilderness Rainbows for Cutthroat (Mountain Journal, 12/5/2023)
• Wilderness Watch files lawsuit to stop efforts to relocate cutthroat trout to a formerly fishless creek (Hatch Magainze, 11/28/2023)
• Group sues the Forest Service to halt trout replacement project in wilderness area (Montana Free Press, 11/13/2023)
• Conservationists sue over lethal plans to swap trout in Montana waterways (Courthouse News, 11/8/2023)
• Lawsuit challenges Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness fish poisoning project (Billings Gazette, 11/8/2023)
• Wilderness Watch sues Forest Service over Buffalo Creek trout poison project (Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 11/8/2023)
• Group sues in attempt to block Absaroka-Beartooth trout poisoning, restoration project (Daily Montanan, 11/8/2023)
• Conservationists sue over lethal plans to swap trout in Montana waterways (Courthouse News, 11/8/2023)
• Hitting reset: Forest Service approves rainbow trout removal project in Buffalo Creek (Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 8/7/2023)
• Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness fish poisoning project OK'd (Billings Gazette, 8/3/2023)
• Wilderness trout removal project stalls pending review (Billings Gazette, 5/26/2021)
• Advocacy group decries cutthroat trout project in AB wilderness  (Helena Independent Record, 4/30/2021)

Photos: Buffalo Plateau on the border of Yellowstone National Park and the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. The east side of the plateau drains into Buffalo Creek. Photo by Howie Wolke.