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Outdoor groups challenge plans to build diversion pipeline in Red Rocks Wilderness – Daily Montanan [1]

['Darrell Ehrlick', 'More From Author', '- June']

Date: 2023-06-28  

Four groups have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, challenging its plan to construct and operate a water-diversion pipeline within the Red Rock Lakes Wilderness Area in southwestern Montana.

The groups are asking U.S. District Court Judge Dana L. Christensen to halt the project on both a temporary and permanent basis, saying it violates federal law and would destroy a wilderness area designated by Congress.

The pipeline plan, which the USFWS says will help oxygenate Upper Red Rock Lake, is critical to the imperiled arctic grayling, a species of fish some environmental groups have called on for listing as endangered, something the federal government has declined to do.

The Red Rock Lakes Wilderness is a “swath of wetlands and large, shallow lakes at the high end of a sweeping valley in remote southwestern Montana.”

It has also been an area that was designated by Congress to help with the survival of the trumpeter swans decades ago.

The Fish and Wildlife Service argues the 14-inch pipeline will feed oxygenated water from a manmade lake into Upper Red Rock Lake to help boost arctic grayling numbers, which have been declining. Arctic grayling exist only in the Upper Missouri River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. They were once also found in the Great Lakes, but have been “extirpated” or become extinct there, leaving the small population in the Rocky Mountain West as the only group in the lower 48 states.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said the pipeline will help oxygenate the water during the winter season, and thus help the species survive.

However, the four groups challenging the suit – Wilderness Watch, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Gallatin Wildlife Association, and Yellowstone to Uintas Connection – allege the proposal is an illegal shortcut to bypass a much larger, more intensive plan to save the species. Moreover, the groups argue in the court filing that the Fish and Wildlife Service is violating federal protections for a wilderness area in order to avoid the more cumbersome burdens of protecting arctic grayling through the Endangered Species Act:

“Artificially bolstering the Upper Red Rock Lake grayling population in this way accommodates FWS’ logic for rejecting the long-requested regulatory approach of Endangered Species Act listing, which would encompass a host of other conservation requirements more targeted at (man-made) source of harm. If the agency can point to the stability of Centennial Valley grayling population, as it has previously when rejecting Endangered Species Act petitions, then it can stave off the more substantive and challenging requested action of mitigating human impacts that damage grayling habitat on and off the refuge.”

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

“Red Rocks Lake is not Disneyland. It is a congressionally designated wilderness area,” said Mike Garrity, the executive director for the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “The best way to stop overfishing of grayling is to restrict fishing until the population rebounds, not illegally put machines in a wilderness area.”

The groups contend that the federal Wilderness Act’s sole purpose is to ensure that areas designated by Congress as “wilderness” remain that way.

“Such activity contravenes the strict legal protections provided in the Wilderness Act. (It) provides for protected natural areas like Red Rock Lakes a freedom from human manipulation and a prohibition against such structures and installations.”

The groups argue that the Wilderness Act “places paramount its mandate of wilderness preservation, requiring that all activities in designated wilderness be conducted in a manner that ‘preserves wilderness character.’”

The groups cite part of the federal code that also prohibits no temporary motorized equipment, as well as no mechanical transport and no installation or structure, which is likely to encompass pumps and generators.

The lawsuit also contains passages from the FWS’ manual about wilderness areas: “In wilderness, we do not adjust nature to suit people, but adjust human use and influences so as not to alter natural processes. We strengthen wilderness character with every decision to forego actions that have physical impact.”

The groups also said they’re seeking court action because the agency said it intends to carry out construction of the pipeline during the 2023 summer, and is already soliciting contractors.

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