In Idaho, much of the available salmon habitat is in wilderness with little room for improvement. But the upper Salmon River watershed includes many tributaries that have been designated as critical salmon habitat under the Endangered Species Act. With the suit, the two groups hope to raise the profile of surface water mismanagement that affects the listed fish species, Marvel said. They hope federal and state agencies will bring a halt to dewatering, habitat degradation and unscreened diversions in these streams. In the past, enforcement priorities on these public and private lands have hit a political brick wall.
Illegal practices continue to eliminate habitat, kill imperiled fish, and dewater our streams.
One of those streams is Fourth of July Creek in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The creek is mostly dewatered during the summer and fall, the notice says. The diversions in the creek also are operated without fish screens. Without screens, irrigation diversions may suck endangered fish into irrigation ditches, leaving them to die on fields or stranded in shallow ditches, their reproductive process interrupted or prevented. In addition, the diversions on Fourth of July Creek physically block passage of the endangered fish, raise water temperature and degrade salmon habitat, the notice says.