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Trout Unlimited works hard to ensure that wild stocks of pacific salmon and steelhead receive the necessary protection to support their path to a more sustainable future.  In pursuit of this goal, our members and staff carry this effort not only in rivers and streams, but also in meeting rooms, around negotiating tables, in the halls of the state legislature, and sometimes in a courtroom.  Trout Unlimited will call upon the courts as a last resort to enforce legal protections afforded salmon and steelhead by statutes like the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and others.  Our legal actions related to salmon have been successful in part because we choose our battles wisely, and in large part because we have good trial attorneys from Earthjustice that represent us.  In all of our salmon cases, we are either plaintiffs or intervenors.  In other cases we have filed amicus curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs.  Below is a brief summary of Trout Unlimited’s salmon-related case docket and relevant court opinions.  For other filings for these cases, please email Kate Miller.

• Lake Sammamish Kokanee - The US Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the petition filed in July by TU and a broad coalition of fishing, conservation and governmental organizations to protect Lake Sammamish kokanee salmon under the Endangered Species Act carries sufficient information to merit a one-year review of the landlocked sockeye salmon's status. The USFWS will spend the next year gathering information to make its final listing decision. Lake Sammamish lies just west of Seattle. The kokanee are native to the lake, and their populations have plummeted to dangerously low levels in recent years due to loss of spawning habitat and development pressures.

• Hatchery Policy – This case was actually dismissed on procedural grounds but all of the issues were combined with the Upper Columbia River steelhead case described below.  As part of reaching the decision in that case, the judge found that the hatchery listing policy was illegal.  This case is under appeal to the 9th Circuit. 

• Upper Columbia River steelhead – This case was decided along with the hatchery policy case and resulted in a significant victory.  NOAA “downlisted” Upper Columbia River steelhead from endangered to threatened relying on hatchery fish to act as a hedge against extinction.  The court specifically rejected this decision and returned Upper Columbia River steelhead to endangered status.  This case is part of the appeal mentioned above.

• Ten steelhead listings – TU intervened in two lawsuits brought by farm and irrigation groups to remove steelhead from the list of protected species because of the presence of rainbow trout, as well as the manner in which they were listed.  Initially two separate cases (Modesto Irrigation District and California State Grange), the court has combined the cases and will issue one decision.  We are anxiously awaiting a decision on this case, which could have major impacts.

• Salmon listings – Property rights advocates and others filed a lawsuit filed before Judge Hogan in Oregon challenging NMFS’ decision to list salmon runs under the Endangered Species Act using the Hatchery Listing Policy.  This case is a “cousin” of hatchery listing cases above.  The plaintiffs alleged that if the Hatchery Listing Policy were applied properly, hatchery and wild salmon should not be distinguished at all in the listing consideration and as a result, the sixteen salmon listings are illegal.  TU and a variety of groups intervened to protect the listings.  In August 2007 the court granted summary judgment for the federal defendants and dismissed plaintiffs’ claims challenging the listing decision, confirming that the ESA is intended to protect wild populations of fish and the habitats on which they depend.  The case has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit. 

• Oregon Coast coho – The non-listing of Oregon Coast coho was a point of pride for Oregon, a demonstration that reevaluating the science could show that the fish were really healthy and the Oregon Plan was sufficient to continue protecting them into the future.  The magistrate found otherwise; in the rather devastating language of the law, she wrote that the decision not to list the coho was “arbitrary and capricious.”  The Oregon Governor’s office and the state fish and wildlife agency believes that having a species on the endangered species list discourages cooperation with landowners.  TU’s experience in other states, particularly in California and Washington, is that ESA listings encourage collaboration and provide funding for collaborative projects. TU will increase our efforts to “walk the talk” of collaborative, volunteer recovery projects through our Oregon Council and Portland-area chapters, as well as in conversations with the state to identify local candidate projects for cooperation.