Activists Push to Get Coho Back on Endangered List

Environmentalists hope that the history of restoring wolves to Yellowstone National Park will help them put Oregon coho salmon back on the threatened species list.

"The (Endangered Species Act) allows for experimental populations to be listed as threatened when the main population is endangered, or they could even be treated as not listed at all," said Patti Goldman, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental public interest law firm. "A recent case on that was the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone."

Attorneys for Earthjustice will ask U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan today to allow them to intervene in the case, so they will have legal standing to file an appeal of his ruling. The wolf argument would be cited in the appeal.

They will also ask Hogan to restore Endangered Species Act protection to the coho while they appeal his ruling.

At stake are Endangered Species Act listings for 20 groups of salmon and steelhead in the West vulnerable to the same legal arguments as Oregon coastal coho, as well as a dozen federal timber sales that had been suspended due to the coastal coho listing, but have since been released.

The ruling also could affect the fight over sharing water between farms and fish in the Klamath Basin, where the listing of Klamath River coho as a threatened species tipped the balance allocations on a federal irrigation project in favor of fish.

Hogan ruled Sept. 13 that the National Marine Fisheries Service made a mistake when it lumped hatchery fish and wild fish together in the same group, known as an evolutionarily significant unit, under the Endangered Species Act.

Hogan found that NMFS was arbitrary and capricious when it extended protection only to wild fish, when it had included hatchery fish in the same ESU. Finding no genetic difference between individual wild fish and those from hatcheries, he sent the listing back to NMFS for reconsideration in light of his ruling.

NMFS has yet to decide whether it will appeal the ruling, or reconsider the listing under Hogan's instructions, said spokeswoman Janet Sears.

Environmentalists have said they are worried the Bush administration will not appeal the ruling, as it chose not to appeal an Idaho case that dissolved a Clinton Administration action putting millions of acres of national forest off limits to logging.