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PORTLAND, Ore. - Two Montana conservation groups have filed a lawsuit demanding the Bush administration restore cutbacks in critical habitat for the bull trout, a threatened species whose demands for clean and cold water conflict with logging and mining.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Friends of the Wild Swan.

It is the latest development in a seven-year struggle over how to rebuild populations of the bull trout in five Western states.

At stake is how many miles of waterways the government will regard as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act for the bull trout, a type of char that was designated a threatened species in 1999 due to loss of habitat.

The lawsuit argues that when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cut bull trout critical habitat by nearly three quarters in 2002, the agency left the fish without enough protected waterways to carry out its spawning migrations, and ignored the advice of its own scientists.

"The best chance that bull trout have for survival and recovery is to ensure that these fish can migrate," said Arlene Montgomery of the Friends of the Wild Swan. "This rule does not provide that connectivity."

At the time, Fish and Wildlife said the critical habitat did not need to be so extensive, because large areas were already protected under other federal land designations, such as the Northwest Forest Plan.

Agency spokeswoman Joan Jewett said the agency doesn't comment on pending lawsuits.

The Endangered Species Act demands that critical habitat be designated for all threatened and endangered species. The Bush administration has been slow to make the designations, and has been cutting back critical habitats already in existence, arguing that critical habitat is less important for restoring a species than designation as threatened or endangered.

If any federal action is proposed within critical habitat, such as a timber sale or approval of a mining claim on a national forest, federal biologists must be consulted on whether it will jeopardize the survival of the species. If the action would harm the species, it cannot go forward.

Five populations of bull trout are protected in the Columbia and Klamath river basins, around Puget Sound in Washington, in Montana and in the Jarbidge region of Nevada.

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