A couple of federal agencies have said they intend to put the brakes on a controversial plan to introduce threatened bull trout in Gunsight Lake in Glacier National Park at least for the time being.
A declaration from a National Park Service director said the agency identified “substantial concerns” regarding environmental effects on bull trout and it relied on a biological report that was inadequate.
In September 2024, conservation groups Friends of the Wild Swan and the Council on Wildlife and Fish filed a lawsuit over the Gunsight Lake Project.
The groups allege it would have illegally taken bull trout from donor streams, placed them in an isolated lake, and potentially harmed the entire population as a result.
Gunsight Lake was originally fishless, but humans stocked it with nonnative rainbow trout decades ago. The Gunsight Lake Project would have cleared the lake of those fish and stocked it with bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, and mountain whitefish instead.
Conservationists had said the idea was akin to “playing God” and rife with potential environmental hazards, but a park scientist said it was intended to give bull trout a fighting chance by putting them in a cold lake as the climate warms.
In the lawsuit, the groups had sued the National Park Service, the superintendent of Glacier, the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the federal agencies, alleging numerous missteps in approving the project.
In court filings this month, the federal agencies said they themselves “identified substantial concerns with the environmental analysis underlying the project” and decided to reconsider it.
Arlene Montgomery, with Friends of the Wild Swan, said a judge signed off on the voluntary withdrawal, and her organization is glad to see the “ill-conceived” project rescinded.
In a phone call on Thursday and a statement last week, she said the outcome shows the importance of the public’s involvement with the work of federal agencies.
“It was an experiment to create an isolated bull trout population without determining the true impacts to them, both in Gunsight Lake and in the streams where they were taking bull trout from,” Montgomery said.
A spokesman for Glacier said the park does not comment on projects that are still in litigation.
The federal agencies said they will voluntarily rescind documents that underpin the project, a Finding of No Significant Impact from the National Park Service, which allows the project to go forward, and a Letter of Concurrence from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“To ensure that it has properly documented its environmental analysis and to conserve the resources of the court and the parties, NPS and FWS are reconsidering the challenged agency actions in this case,” the federal agencies said in a court filing.
The Gunsight Lake Project had a couple of phases. The first phase to remove the rainbow trout was completed, according to the federal agencies, and it was not challenged in the lawsuit.
However, the federal agencies said they have not started the second phase, which involves translocating mountain whitefish, westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout into Gunsight Lake.
“After reconsidering the project, NPS would only move forward with phase two after it completed new or revised analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, FWS and NPS finalized new or revised analysis under the ESA, and FWS issued any new permit,” the agencies said.
Montgomery said her organization has questions about how successful the removal of rainbow trout was and filed a records request to learn more information.
She said she doesn’t know if the plan to stock the lake with bull trout will emerge again after more environmental review, but her group will continue to pay attention.
“It shows the importance of public participation and public oversight over what agencies are doing,” Montgomery said.
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