A study from 2006 showed that trout found in the shallow waters of Yellowstone National Park is no longer threatened by extinction, refuting claims of environmental organizations that have tried to force the inclusion of the fish in the Endangered Species Act.

Yellowstone cutthroat trout are "holding their own" in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, and are not seriously affected by habitat loss, hybridization with other fish species or diseases.

The conclusion comes from a study conducted in 2006 under the supervising of Wade Fredenberg, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, confirming and supporting the federal authorities’ decision not to include cutthroat fish in the list of endangered species protected by ESA.

"The rate of decline in recent years has slowed, and there's good evidence of that," Fredenberg said. "Things aren't going to hell in a hand basket."

Wade Fredenberg, regional fish coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, declared that he could not provide specific numbers about Yellowstone cutthroat populations, because it is exceedingly difficult to count them- much harder than counting the Northwest’s salmon or Yellowstone’s wolves and grizzlies.

In a 2003 study, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated occupied habitat covered 6,352 miles. Yet the stronghold of the species- Yellowstone Lake- clearly continues to lose ground to the nonnative  lake trout. Yellowstone cutthroat in Yellowstone Lake have dropped from 3 million or 4 million in 1979, to 1.2 million to 1.7 million in the 1990s, to an indeterminate hundreds of thousands today.

Biologists that have petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1998 and again in 2005 are skeptical about the recent study’s conclusion.

Steve Kelly, with Montana Ecosystems Defense Council, called the new study an example of "government double-talk."

"The government likes to play this numbers game with population numbers," he said. "You're still declining and you've only slowed the rate and the habitat is in terrible shape."

“There’s really no solid trend information that’s available,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity. He also dismissed Fredenberg’s claims about the lack of accumulative analysis and said the upshot of the data is that there is only a small number of populations that are free of threats.

“If I had to make a prediction, we’ll see a continual decline, especially when you factor in global warming” and the impact of less and warmer water for this cold-water fish, Greenwald said.

Scott Bosse, a fisheries expert with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, found several flaws with the report.

“Yellowstone Lake is in free-fall,” he said, “and is disproportionately important to the fate of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout.”