For Immediate Release, May 5, 2008:
Contact:
Marvin Roberson (906) 360-0288

The Sierra Club today chastised the US Fish and Wildlife Service for changing their
mind on holding hearings on the proposed listing of the Coaster brook trout as an
endangered species. The Sierra Club is one of two organizations petitioning the federal
agency to list the Coaster brook trout under the federal Endangered Species Act .
The Sierra Club and the Huron Mountain Club filed this petition with the USFWS in 2006
to declare the Coaster Brook Trout, a large, very rare trout which reproduces in only one
stream on the south shore of Lake Superior, as Endangered. March 20 of this year, the
USFWS published a notice in the Federal Register noting a positive preliminary finding
on the petition, asking for comments by May 19, and asking for requests for a public
hearing by May 5.
Dozens responded asking for a hearing. However, May 2, 2008, the USFWS released a
letter “To Interested Parties” claiming that the offer of a hearing was “in error”, and
stating that there would be no such hearing.
According to Marvin Roberson, Forest Ecologist with the Sierra Club, “We call on the
US Fish and Wildlife Service to make good on their offer of a hearing on this matter.
While it may have been made “in error”, whatever that means, it was in fact made, and
many groups and individuals responded in the manner and time specified in the Federal
Register Notice”.
Roberson further noted that there is no prohibition which would keep the USFWS from
holding the hearing they offered, and further noted that this letter claiming the offer had
been made “in error” came over 40 days after the original Notice, and only after
numerous written requests for a hearing.