Animal activists ask Huntsman to 'pardon' the cutthroat trout

Saying fish feel pain, PETA is calling for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. to declare the state fish, the Bonneville cutthroat trout, off-limits to fishing.

The organization, based in Norfolk, Va. — full name, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — said it had sent a fax to Huntsman's office with the request. The fax says recent studies demonstrate fish are intelligent animals "who feel pain.

"We should protect Bonneville cutthroat trout in a manner appropriate to a state symbol," it adds. That means "ensuring that they don't suffer needlessly at the hands of anglers."

Scientific studies show fish are as intelligent as dogs and cats, it adds. The note cites a study saying fish can learn to escape from a net and retain that ability 11 months later.

Oxford University research has determined that fish can carry out tasks too complicated for dogs, it adds.

Contacted by the Deseret Morning News, Karin Robertson, manager of PETA's Fish Empathy Project, said the group has been sending similar letters to every state with a state fish, and that's most of them.

Fish are "just as intelligent and just as able to feel pain as the family dog or cat," she said.

Why doesn't the group advocate no fishing at all, rather than simply the protection of the Bonneville cutthroat trout?

Robertson said she thinks that will happen in the next few years. For now, she said, "we're asking the governor to extend just a gesture of compassion toward fish by pardoning the state fish."

Besides any issue involving pain, Bonneville cutthroat trout were the subject of an effort to ban fishing. In February 1998, a group called the Biodiversity Legal Foundation petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the species threatened or endangered, which would have made it off-limits to fishing, according to the agency.

The F&WS determined cutthroat trout lived in 852 miles of streams and 70,059 acres of lake habitat. The agency decided that the fish, found in Utah and parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada, "does not warrant listing as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act."

Asked if PETA is concerned about hunting as well as fishing, Robertson said hunters can claim that they are trying to help deer avoid a long and painful death from starvation.

"But fishing is just sadism called sport," she said. "At the very least, the very least, the state fish should be off-limits."

So far, she added, none of the governors addressed on the state fish issue has responded.

However, when contacted by the Deseret Morning News, Huntsman's office had a response to the request.

"We have an active sports fishing program in our state," said Mike Mower, the governor's deputy chief of staff, "and the Bonneville cutthroat trout is an important part of that."

---

E-mail: bau@desnews.com