Flies, and Their Lawyers, Keep Rare Trout From Going Home

Restoring the Fish to California Creek Could Harm a Bug's Life; Cutthroat Battle

By JUSTIN SCHECK
WSJ

MARKLEEVILLE, Calif.—North America's rarest trout has human allies who want to give it back its ancestral home.

But the fish face an obstacle to their homecoming: bug advocates.

Federal and state game officials want to restore the Paiute cutthroat trout to the range scientists believe it occupied for many millennia—a nine-mile stretch of the Silver King Creek in the Sierra Nevada wilderness.

Yet there are also bugs in those waters—bugs that insect advocates say will be threatened by the fish fans' proposal.

The result has been a war of words and court challenges between fish allies and bug allies.

(More here.)