The Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday proposed removing Endangered Species Act protections from the Gila chub, a desert fish that the agency has concluded is not a unique species.
Though the fish been listed as threatened since 2005, the Fish and Wildlife Service now says the Gila chub is taxonomically identical to other chub species that are not considered to be either threatened or endangered.
This unprotected species is known as the roundtail chub’s Lower Colorado River distinct population segment.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, a joint report from the American Fisheries Society and the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists concluded that the available evidence does not indicate that populations of Gila within the Lower Colorado River basin constitute more than one species.
