Save the Coho

Restoring Oregon's Fishing Jobs & Communities

The Oregon Coast coho salmon is once again listed as a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, following a favorable court decision in our case challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) failure to relist the coho, after the original listing was lost due to problems with the way NMFS accounted for hatchery fish in listing decisions. Decades of experience prove that federal listing brings new resources and promotes the social willpower needed to restore species that face exactly this kind of situation.

In the 1800s, Oregon’s coast and rivers teemed with over 2 million coho. Their numbers steadily declined throughout the next century. In the late 1990s numbers plummeted. Protection and recovery of the coho salmon can bring back to the West coast commercial and recreational salmon fishing industry some of the 72,000 family wage jobs lost over the last 20 years. Protecting coho salmon now is how we guarantee the future survival of the coho and restore Oregon’s coastal and river communities that depend on them.

In April of 2009, NMFS initiated a status review of the coho listing. Read our input on the status review. NMFS has reopened the public comment period for input on the new status review. Comments are due by August 18, 2009.

Recovery Planning for the coho

With a federal listing, NMFS is required to prepare a federal recovery plan. Oregon crafted its own recovery plan before the federal listing, but the plan will need to be revisited and improved to meet federal standards. Oregon's current coho recovery plan falls short in several areas because it:

Fails to cite specific actions for salmon recovery. The plan's goal is measurable recovery, but does not set out how this will get done;
Relies heavily on Oregon's current land use policies to restore the coho, even though these rules continue to allow degradation of salmon habitat;
Wrongly asserts that right now coho are currently sustainable, when the science shows that this is highly uncertain; and
Overly relies on voluntary efforts, eliminating oversight by state fish and wildlife agencies.