PRC Challenges Weakening of Steelhead Protection on Basis of Unscientific Hatchery Policy

Pacific Rivers Council today joined fellow conservationists Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, Native Fish Society and others in filing a lawsuit which objects to NOAA Fisheries' January decision to downgrade Upper Columbia steelhead from "endangered" to "threatened" on the basis of hatchery-produced fish. This decision weakens legal protection for steelhead because it increases the government's authority to allow harmful activities that would be prohibited outright if steelhead remained "endangered."

"Scientists told us that the Hatchery Listing Policy announced last year would open the door to political manipulation of listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act," explained Mary Scurlock, Senior Policy Analyst for Pacific Rivers Council. "NOAA Fisheries walked through that door when it downgraded Upper Columbia steelhead from endangered to "threatened" - leaving good science at the threshold."

"The policy applied here requires inclusion of hatchery fish in listing determinations, ignoring conclusive scientific evidence that hatcheries don't restore wild salmon and steelhead, and are actually more likely to impair their recovery."

"The Endangered Species Act requires that listings be determined by the "best available scientific information," emphasized Dr. Chris Frissell, salmon research ecologist and Senior Staff Scientist with the Pacific Rivers Council. "This decision ignores a large body of science and a century of management experience affirming that wild fish recovery depends primarily on how we manage habitat and fishing. Counting fish that originated from hatcheries is an ecological delusion - it has always masked what is really happening to wild salmon populations and the rivers they depend on to survive."

Upper Columbia Steelhead, first listed in 1997, occupy streams in the Columbia River Basin of Northwest Washington upstream from the Yakima River at Pasco, Washington, to the U.S.-Canadian Border - encompassing the cities of Wenatchee and Chelan. (62 FR 43937; 8/18/97). Although steelhead rely heavily on federal public land managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, with 49% of their habitat in federal ownership, state and private lands comprise the balance. (See map at http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/ESA-Salmon-Listings/Salmon-Populations/Maps/upload/Steelhead%20UCR%20map.pdf ; critical habitat http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/ESA-Salmon-Listings/Salmon-Populations/Maps/Steelhead-ESU-Maps.cfm). Wild steelhead currently occupy only a fraction of their historic habitat, and already are extinct in the the Spokane and Pend Oreille River Basins. The current fishery is entirely reliant on hatcheries. Key habitat problems requiring attention relate to water quality impacts from logging, grazing and agriculture, water quantity impacts from irrigation, and problems associated with hydroelectric dam operation.

PRC is represented in this case by attorney Patti Goldman, of Earthjustice, Seattle.