Another lawsuit with implications to Southeast Alaska commercial salmon fisheries was filed last month by the Wild Fish Conservancy, claiming that hatchery programs on the Lower Columbia River are harming the recovery of wild fish runs.
The complaint was filed April 17 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma by Washington state-based Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler, based in Portland. The suit is filed against the National Marine Fisheries Service, and state biologists and fishery managers in Washington and Oregon.
Matt Donohoe, Alaska Trollers Association president, said the lawsuit is a threat to Southeast. “It will definitely affect Southeast Alaska,” he said. “We catch Lower Columbia River hatchery fish.”
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a petition with NMFS earlier this year to list chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and claiming that the state of Alaska isn’t doing enough to protect the salmon.
The nonprofit said on its website announcing the most recent lawsuit that the hatchery programs on the Lower Columbia River are harming the already threatened and endangered chinook, coho and chum salmon, “as well as steelhead and southern resident killer whales whose survival depends on the protection and long-term recovery of wild salmon populations.”
“That’s not accepted by the experts,” Donohoe said.
He said he was not surprised by the latest lawsuit, because the nonprofit has been active in more than three dozen lawsuits, either as plaintiffs or intervenors, since 2006.
In 2020, the Wild Fish Conservancy sued the National Marine Fisheries Service claiming that Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fisheries were contributing to the decline of the southern resident killer whales in the Puget Sound area by taking salmon that comprise a major food source of the whales.
The lawsuit nearly prevented the summer Southeast troll season from opening in 2023, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the order of the U.S. District Court of Western Washington, and the Southeast fishery was held as usual.
A March 2 update from the trollers association attorney, Douglas Steding, said the organization expects that the appeals court will hold oral arguments later this year. “An opinion on the appeal likely will not be issued by the 9th Circuit until the end of 2024, at the earliest,” he said.
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