U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon on Dec. 19, 2025, released his order that sets the date for oral arguments in the case for the afternoon of Feb. 6 in Portland.
Slightly more spill, restrictions on flow fluctuations at federal Columbia and Snake River dams, more habitat projects, along with more predator management of sea lions, sea birds and fish are among changes the Northwest Power and Conservation Council is proposing as amendments to its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.
Most Pacific Coast salmon and steelhead stocks listed under the federal Endangered Species Act have increased in abundance over a 25-year span, but most still remain far under their recovery goals, according to a recent study by NOAA Fisheries scientists.
The scientists found that a majority of 28 distinct population segments of Northwest and California salmon and steelhead that were listed under the ESA from 1989 to 2007 and protected as threatened or endangered increased in abundance. None of the groups became extinct and groups protected by the ESA increased in abundance faster than unprotected populations of the same species, the study says.
During the 25 years studied (1995 to 2020), considerable efforts had been made to recover these populations, the study says, but no distinct population segment (DPS) has increased sufficiently to be delisted. A DPS represents specific geographic areas and genetic characteristics and are the smallest units that can be listed under the ESA.
“At the time of the salmon listings, there was a path toward recovery and a path toward extinction,” said Michael Ford, lead author of the research published in Fish and Fisheries. Ford recently retired as a research scientist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “So far, we have avoided extinction and even succeeded in moving many populations in the right direction, but most are still far from complete recovery.”
Geographically, over the 25-year study period, ESA-listed populations in the Northwest trended to be higher in abundance than those in California, likely because California salmon are closer to the southern edge of their range and exposed to greater climate stress, the study says. Of the protected populations, Chinook, chum and sockeye trended higher than coho salmon and steelhead.
For most DPS, whether listed or unlisted, trends in harvest rates and hatchery releases were relatively stable during the 25-year time period. However, trends in indicators related to freshwater and marine climate were generally negative for salmon.
“Our results suggest that salmon recovery actions may have helped to stabilize and increase protected DPS, but most remain far below their recovery goals,” the study says.
The study, “Abundance Trends of Pacific Salmon During a Quarter Century of ESA Protection,” was published in Fish and Fisheries (Abundance Trends of Pacific Salmon During a Quarter Century of ESA Protection – Ford – 2025 – Fish and Fisheries – Wiley Online Library).
Authors are Steven Lindley, Brian Spence, David Brouton, Heidi Fish, Michael O’Farrell, Nathan Mantua, Rachel Johnson, William Satterthwaite and Thomas Williams of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, LA Jolla, CA; Ford, Katie Barnas, Andrew Shelton, Laurie Weitkamp, Damon Holzer, Elizabeth Holmes, James Myers, Chris Jordan, Martin Liermann of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, WA.
The scientists noted that West Coast states’ populations had grown by nearly 10 million people during the same 25-year period, adding pressure on water use and other resources. In addition, with a changing climate, stream flows are dropping while stream temperatures are rising.
“The findings suggest that the region’s focus on improving habitat and involving communities in salmon recovery has proved successful,” the study says.
However, that success has its limits. The study found that for most salmon and steelhead populations, “the road leading to increasing abundance and recovery has not been travelled very far. To be sure, abundance increases in a few DPS have been dramatic.”
Examples of success are a higher abundance for threatened Snake River fall Chinook, endangered Snake River sockeye and unlisted Okanogan River sockeye. All increased more than 10-fold in abundance from 2016 to 2020 over their abundances between 1995 to 1999. Snake River fall Chinook had been at an extremely low abundance in the mid-1990s, “a factor clearly contributing to some of the positive trends.”
Some of the increases in abundance were uneven, the study says. Coastwide, only five steelhead DPS increased (four listed, one unlisted), whereas nine decreased. Considering all species, eight of the 10 DPS in California had declining trends, and trends for Chinook and steelhead were correlated with latitude coastwide (i.e. lower abundance in California streams).
The study concludes that the listed population groups have yet to recover to the point where they no longer need protection even though, some – Snake River fall-run Chinook, Hood Canal summer chum and Oregon Coast coho – have increased “dramatically” since their listing.
“These trends indicate that these listed population groups are on the path to recovery. Recovering salmon populations to self-sustaining levels is critical to restoring the great economic and environmental benefits they once provided, when millions surged up West Coast rivers every year,” a NOAA press release says.
The scientists also looked at the impacts of hatchery releases and harvest on abundance of salmon and steelhead, noting that over 100 million juvenile salmon are released from West Coast hatcheries every year and most are harvested or return to their hatchery of origin. These fish, the study says, are not counted toward ESA recovery goals. However, some hatchery fish spawn in streams and are included in spawner counts that NOAA uses in its abundance trends. Their presence on spawning grounds can provide benefits to natural population conservation, as well as ecological and genetic risks, the study says.
The study also found that harvest rates were generally lower on listed population groups than on unlisted groups. Hatchery releases support commercial, tribal and sport fisheries and some from conservation hatcheries also help restore naturally spawning populations of threatened and endangered population groups, such as increases in the abundance of Snake River fall Chinook.
However, hatchery fish can also undermine natural populations by diluting the adaptations that help them survive. Nearly all listed population groups retain at least some populations made up mostly of naturally spawning fish that remain free of hatchery influences, the research found.
Some threats to salmon and steelhead persisted and increased during the study period, the study says. They are:
— Predation by marine mammals (pinnipeds, such as sea lions);
— Reduced stream flows and snowpack levels; and
— Increasing stream temperatures.
Still, the researchers say, they saw increases in many salmon population groups despite these trends and that shows that “local salmon recovery efforts have improved local conditions for salmon.” They also confirmed that changing ocean conditions impact the survival of adult salmon.
The research demonstrates that protection under the Endangered Species Act combined with investments in restoration can turn declining salmon population groups around, Steve Lindley, co-author of the research who recently retired as research scientist at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center, said in NOAA’s press release. However, he said, “It takes time to reverse the accumulated damage to salmon habitats, and progress can be prevented or temporarily reversed by prolonged periods of poor environmental conditions, such as with populations in California that have experienced severe droughts in the last decade.”
For background, see:
— CBB, December 15, 2024, NOAA Status Review Of Four Northern California/Southern Oregon Salmon/Steelhead Species Says All Should Remain ESA-Listed, NOAA Status Review Of Four Northern California/Southern Oregon Salmon/Steelhead Species Says All Should Remain ESA-Listed – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, February 23, 2024, NOAA Status Review Says Sacramento Winter-Run Chinook Remain Endangered, Serious Threats From Climate Change, Disease, NOAA Status Review Says Sacramento Winter-Run Chinook Remain Endangered, Serious Threats From Climate Change, Disease – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, February 17, 2023, NOAA Fisheries To Conduct Status Review Of Olympic Peninsula Wild Steelhead To Determine If ESA Listing Warranted, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/noaa-fisheries-to-conduct-status-review-of-olympic-peninsula-wild-steelhead-to-determine-if-esa-listing-warranted/
— CBB, June 2, 2016, NOAA Status Review: None Of 28 ESA-Listed Pacific Salmon/Steelhead Stocks Warrant Status Change, NOAA Status Review: None Of 28 ESA-Listed Pacific Salmon/Steelhead Stocks Warrant Status Change – Columbia Basin Bulletin
A 2022 petition to list Oregon Coast and Northern California Coastal Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act was denied by NOAA Fisheries this week.
In its status review, NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle determined that the two evolutionary significant units are not currently in danger of extinction, nor are they likely to become so within the foreseeable future.
The original August 22, 2022 petition to list the ESUs was initiated by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity and Umpqua Watersheds. They had asked that the ESUs be considered by NOAA for listing, along with a designation of critical habitat at the same time.
In its December 9, 2025 Federal Register notice, NOAA said: “Based on the best scientific and commercial information available, including the status review report, and taking into account efforts being made to protect the species, we have determined that the OC and SONCC Chinook salmon ESUs do not warrant listing.”
“This decision ignores the agency’s own science and wastes an invaluable opportunity to avail the federal resources and leadership needed to set Oregon’s coastal Chinook salmon on a pathway to recovery,” said Mark Sherwood, Native Fish Society’s Executive Director. “We will continue to pursue recovery for these iconic native fish and the coastal communities, cultures, and ecosystems they hold together.”
In 2022, the petitioners gave as an alternative to separate out the spring run of OC and SONCC Chinook ESUs from the fall run of the fish, but on Jan. 11, 2023, NOAA said that option was not warranted.
At the same time, the federal fisheries agency said that the “petition presents substantial scientific information indicating the petitioned action to list the OC and SONCC Chinook salmon ESUs may be warranted …” and proceeded with a status review to “to determine whether the petitioned action to list the OC and SONCC ESUs is warranted.”
In the recent extinction risk assessment for OC and SONCC Chinook published in the Dec. 9 Federal Register, NOAA concluded that both ESUs are at low risk of extinction due to similar factors.
“They both have high overall abundance, with numerous, well-distributed spawning populations,” the notice says. “Additionally, their high productivity allows them to maintain abundance even in the face of relatively high exploitation rates. In evaluation of the threat factors identified in section 4(a)(1) of the ESA, we concluded that the factors do not contribute substantially to rangewide extinction risk now or in the foreseeable future.”
The Science Center status review of the two ESUs was actually completed more than a year ago in January 2024 (Biological Status of Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon/Northern California Coastal Chinook Salmon : Report of the Status Review Team).
Chinook salmon are anadromous fish, returning from the ocean to the freshwater streams where they were born to reproduce. The Oregon and California Chinook salmon populations contain both early and late-run variants, otherwise known as spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon.
Spring-run Chinook salmon enter coastal rivers from the ocean in the spring and migrate upstream as they mature, holding in deep pools in rivers through the summer, and spawning in early fall in the upper reaches of watersheds. Conversely, fall-run Chinook enter the rivers in the fall and spawn shortly thereafter.
Spring-run Chinook in Oregon and Northern California suffer from chronically low abundance. These fish have specific habitat needs, and there are numerous unaddressed threats to every population and their habitat in Oregon and Northern California.
The current OC and SONCC Chinook salmon ESUs were identified by NOAA in the late 1990s, and include fall- and spring-run Chinook salmon spawning in rivers on the Oregon and northern California coasts, the status review says.
Identifying the freshwater range of OC Chinook, the status review says it includes rivers on the Oregon coast south of the mouth of the Columbia River down to and including the Elk River, located near Port Orford. The range of the SONCC Chinook extends from Brush Creek (just south of the Elk River) in the north to the lower portion of the Klamath River at its confluence with the Trinity River in California.
NOAA summed up the status of all OC Chinook populations, saying that the natural-origin abundance of the fall-run fish was between 100,000 and 200,000 spawners, and the spring-run natural-origin populations combined were between 2,500 and 5,000 spawners. The populations ranged from 100,000 to 500,000 in the 19th century.
“Trends were variable among populations, with some populations experiencing unusually low recent abundances,” the status review says. “Among fall-run populations, about half of the populations have increased over the past 15 years and about half have declined. The two spring-run populations have declined over the past 15 years, but total spring-run abundance remains higher than it was prior to 1960. The spring component of the predominantly fall-run populations is not well monitored, but the available data did not indicate any obvious downward or upward trends.”
For SONCC Chinook, NOAA found spawning abundance data for one spring-run and six fall-run populations, but together they made up the major SONCC Chinook spawning populations.
“Data for the Smith River, an apparently sizable population, were insufficient to evaluate trends. Summed across the ESU (excluding the Smith River), total abundance of fall-run Chinook salmon during the period 1990–2022 typically ranged from 30,000 to more than 125,000 natural-origin spawners. Several estimates for the Smith River from 2010 to 2021 were between 10,000 and 20,000 fall-run Chinook salmon,” the status review says.
The only major spring-run Chinook population was in the upper Rogue River. Between 1990 and 2022 the population ranged from a few thousand to more than 10,000 natural-origin spawners, along with similar numbers of hatchery-origin spawners. NOAA estimated the population of the spring-run fish between 1940 to the late 1980s to be 30,000 to 50,000 fish.
“Trends over the past 15 years for the fall-run populations were generally negative, and variable but without an obvious trend for the Rogue River spring-run population,” the status review says.
Estimates of late-19th century run sizes for the SONCC Chinook salmon ESU ranged from about 100,000 to 300,000 Chinook salmon
“We followed the rangewide assessment with a significant portion of its range extinction risk assessment and we did not find any portions of the OC or SONCC ESU’s range that were both significant and at risk of extinction,” NOAA concluded.
The Dec. 9 Federal Register notice where NOAA published its findings and determination: (Federal Register :: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Notice of 12-Month Finding on a Petition To List the Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon and Northern California Coastal Chinook Salmon Evolutionarily Significant Units Under the Endangered Species Act).
The Jan. 11, 2023 Federal Register notice announcing the status review is here Federal Register :: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife; 90-Day Finding on a Petition To List Oregon Coast and Southern Oregon and Northern California Coastal Chinook Salmon as Threatened or Endangered Under the Endangered Species Act
For information on the conservation groups’ petition and federal actions, see: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/2022-petition-list-oregon-coast-chinook-salmon-and-southern-oregon-and-northern-california
For background, see:
— CBB, April 5, 2024, NOAA Releases Status Review For Oregon Coast/Northern California Chinook, Low To Moderate Risk Of Extinction; Listing Decision Coming, NOAA Releases Status Review For Oregon Coast/Northern California Chinook, Low To Moderate Risk Of Extinction; Listing Decision Coming – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, October 26, 2023, CONSERVATION GROUPS SAY VERY LOW RETURN OF WILD SPRING CHINOOK TO SOUTHERN OREGON COASTAL RIVER SHOWS NEED FOR ESA LISTING, https://cbbulletin.com/conservation-groups-say-very-low-return-of-wild-spring-chinook-to-southern-oregon-coastal-river-shows-need-for-esa-listing/
— CBB, January 13, 2023, NOAA TO CONSIDER ESA-LISTING FOR OREGON COAST, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SPRING/FALL CHINOOK SALMON, https://cbbulletin.com/noaa-to-consider-esa-listing-for-oregon-coast-northern-california-spring-fall-chinook-salmon/
— CBB, April 16, 2020, NOAA FISHERIES ANNOUNCES STATUS REVIEW OF OREGON COAST SPRING-RUN CHINOOK TO DETERMINE IF PETITIONED ESA PROTECTIONS WARRANTED; CURRENTLY MANAGED WITH FALL-RUN, https://cbbulletin.com/noaa-fisheries-announces-status-review-of-oregon-coast-spring-run-chinook-to-determine-if-petitioned-esa-protections-warranted-currently-managed-with-fall-run/
— CBB, September 26, 2019, GROUPS PETITION TO ESA-LIST OREGON COAST SPRING CHINOOK, SAY DISTINCT FROM FALL-RUN CHINOOK, https://cbbulletin.com/groups-petition-to-esa-list-oregon-coast-spring-chinook-say-distinct-from-fall-run-chinook/
— CBB, December 16, 2016, “Recovery Plan Aims To Make Oregon Coast Coho First West Coast Salmonid To Be Eligible For Delisting,” https://www.www.www.cbbulletin.com/recovery-plan-aims-to-make-oregon-coast-coho-first-west-coast-salmonid-to-be-eligible-for-delisting/
The most recent filings in U.S. District Court in Portland by plaintiffs in the latest challenge to the biological opinion of the federal Columbia/Snake river hydropower system’s impacts on salmon and steelhead does not have to do with impacts by the federal dams, but instead it is a plea to dismiss a nearly two-year old counterclaim by the state of Idaho.
In that counter claim, Idaho had asked the court to decide “that breach of the [lower Snake River] Dams is unavailable as a remedy” under the Endangered Species Act. Attorneys for the state of Oregon (intervenor-plaintiffs) and Earthjustice attorneys for the National Wildlife Federation et al (plaintiffs) both filed motions Nov. 7, 2025 to dismiss the Idaho plea, saying that Idaho was asking the court to decide a theoretical issue.
“Our motion says that’s not a real or current dispute before the court,” Jenny Hansson of Oregon’s Department of Justice wrote in an email. “Oregon hasn’t asked for dam removal in this case, so there’s no reason for the court to weigh in on that hypothetical issue. We’re simply asking the court to focus on the actual questions in the case instead of something that may never come up.”
Hansson noted that Oregon’s filing of a Motion for Judgement on Pleadings doesn’t change Oregon’s broader role in the case or its commitment to salmon recovery — it’s just a procedural step to clear out a claim that doesn’t belong in the lawsuit.
Earthjustice’s Motion for Judgement on Pleadings filed with the court on the same day as Oregon’s says that “While Idaho raises what it considers to be a genuine dispute regarding whether relief under the ESA extends to dam removal, that abstract concern—no matter how deeply felt—does not satisfy the need for an actual ‘adverse legal interest’ that is grounded in the law.”
In moving the Motion for Judgement on Pleadings to the argument stage, District Court Judge Michael H. Simon on Nov. 11 set a schedule to argue the issue. His scheduling order says: “As requested by the parties, the State of Idaho’s response to Plaintiffs and Intervenor-Plaintiffs’ Motions for Judgment on the Pleadings is due not later than December 1, 2025; with replies due not later than December 15, 2025. Ordered by Judge Michael H. Simon.”
This is the eighth time since 2001 that the plaintiffs have challenged NOAA Fisheries’ BiOp of operation and maintenance of the federal Columbia River hydro system in the U.S. District Court of Oregon, according to the Nov. 7 Earthjustice pleading. The most recent challenge came January 19, 2021 as the National Wildlife Federation and other plaintiffs filed with the court challenging NOAA Fisheries’ 2020 BiOp. The plaintiffs also challenged the 2020 Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the Bonneville Power Administration.
Some 13 species of salmon and steelhead in the rivers are listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead, particularly those that return to the Snake River to spawn, persist at dangerously low abundance and many continue to decline toward extinction, Earthjustice had said in its complaint.
In their challenge of the BiOp, the plaintiffs asked the judge to vacate the EIS and remand it back to the Corps and Bureau of Reclamation, and order NOAA to vacate and set aside the 2020 BiOp and accompanying incidental take statement and permits and “enjoin NOAA to notify the Action Agencies of these actions.”
The court challenge was paused December 14, 2023 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, also known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, between plaintiffs and the U.S. government. It was the basis for the stay in the litigation that was to be effective through 2028.
The agreement was designed to restore Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead runs to “healthy and abundant levels.” It promised increased funding for fisheries projects and infrastructure and included $1 billion in federal investments planned over a decade. As part of the agreement, parties had agreed to a five-year pause in the litigation.
However, the Trump Administration on June 12 revoked the agreement, notifying the partners in the MOU in a June 24 letter.
Plaintiffs argued in September for the stay to be lifted and to resume their BiOp challenge in federal court.
On Oct. 14, Earthjustice filed a preliminary injunction with the court seeking emergency operational changes at federal Columbia and Snake river dams to protect endangered salmon and steelhead from harms caused by dam operations. Earthjustice said those changes it is asking the court to approve are “science-based measures” that will improve salmon survival as they migrate past dams and reservoirs in the Columbia and Snake rivers. They include increased spill, which allows juvenile fish to pass over the dams instead of through lethal turbines, and lowered reservoir elevations, which decreases the time salmon spend migrating through stagnant, overheated waters. That preliminary injunction is working its way through Simon’s court.
This latest pleading with the court began before the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement was signed. In December 2023 Intervenor-Defendant State of Idaho filed an answer to the complaint by Earthjustice that challenged the 2020 BiOp. At the same time, Idaho brought the counterclaim against NWF plaintiffs asking the court to decide if breaching lower Snake River dams could be a remedy in the case.
Why did it take the plaintiffs so long to respond to the Idaho counterclaim? “The court paused this case in 2024, which meant we didn’t have to respond to Idaho’s counterclaim at that time,” Hansson of the Oregon DOJ wrote in her email. “Now that the pause has been lifted, the case is moving forward again, and we’re taking the next required step by asking the court to dismiss that claim.
“Doing this now helps keep the case focused on the issues that matter — like how dam operations affect protected fish — instead of spending time and resources on a question that isn’t part of the dispute,” she continued. “It’s about keeping the process efficient and on track.”
Although the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement did not call for the removal of the four lower Snake River dams, it did provide for the studies and economic underpinnings that would have made their removal possible.
However, in its online briefing, Earthjustice said “Put simply, the agreement brought all the stakeholders together and was a promising step toward breaching the four dams on the Lower Snake River, where every salmon population is currently threatened or endangered.”
Plaintiffs in the case with the National Wildlife Federation American Rivers, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Sierra Club, Idaho Rivers United, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, NW Energy Coalition, Columbia RiverKeeper and the Idaho Conservation League.
Defendants in the case are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and NOAA Fisheries.
For background, see:
— CBB, Oct. 19, 2025, Judge Denies Feds’ Request To Put Salmon BiOp Case On Hold Due To Shutdown, Plaintiffs Seek Changes To Dam Operations To Aid Fish, Judge Denies Feds’ Request To Put Salmon BiOp Case On Hold Due To Shutdown, Plaintiffs Seek Changes To Dam Operations To Aid Fish – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, September 26, 2015, Judge Sets Schedule For Continuing Litigation Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery; Motions, Briefs Oct. 8 To Jan. 22, 2026, Judge Sets Schedule For Continuing Litigation Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery; Motions, Briefs Oct. 8 To Jan. 22, 2026 – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, September 14, 2025, Plaintiffs Return To Federal Court To Continue Legal Battle Over Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery, Judge Lifts Stay, Plaintiffs Return To Federal Court To Continue Legal Battle Over Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery, Judge Lifts Stay – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, June 13, 2025, Trump Rescinds Biden’s Executive Order Aimed At Restoring Columbia Basin Salmon, Steelhead Runs, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/trump-rescinds-bidens-executive-order-aimed-at-restoring-columbia-basin-salmon-steelhead-runs/
— CBB, January 19, 2025, COUNCIL PANEL HEARS DETAILS ON $1 BILLION ‘RESILIENT COLUMBIA BASIN AGREEMENT,’ EXTENT OF ‘COLLABORATION’ QUESTIONED, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/COUNCIL-PANEL-HEARS-DETAILS-ON-1-BILLION-RESILIENT-COLUMBIA-BASIN-AGREEMENT-EXTENT-OF-COLLABORATION-QUESTIONED/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Agencies Taking Another Look At 2020 Eis Detailing Impacts Of Columbia/Snake River Federal Hydrosystem On Imperiled Salmonids, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/agencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snake-river-federal-hydrosystem-on-imperiled-salmonidsagencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snak/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Council Shows Total Salmon/Steelhead Return Numbers To Columbia River Through The Years Short Of Goal; Esa-Listed Fish Continue To Struggle, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/council-shows-total-salmon-steelhead-return-numbers-to-columbia-river-through-the-years-short-of-goal-esa-listed-fish-continue-to-struggle/
— CBB, December 15, 2024, Despite Habitat Improvements Over 20 Years, Spring Chinook In Washington’s Tucannon River Still At Risk Of Extinction, Steelhead Doing Better, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/despite-habitat-improvements-over-20-years-spring-chinook-in-washingtons-tucannon-river-still-at-risk-of-extinction-steelhead-doing-better/
— CBB, December 9, 2024, Shifting Currents In Columbia/Snake River Salmon Recovery: Efforts To Save Snake River Fish Runs Likely To Look Different Under Trump, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/shifting-currents-in-columbia-snake-river-salmon-recovery-efforts-to-save-snake-river-fish-runs-likely-to-look-different-under-trump/
— CBB, October 18, 2024, Northwest Power/Conservation Council Issues Draft Annual Report To Congress On Council Progress With Fish, Power, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/northwest-power-conservation-council-issues-draft-annual-report-to-congress-on-council-progress-with-fish-power/
— CBB, June 21, 2024, Administration Report Describes Harm Of Dams To Columbia Basin Tribes, White House Sets Up Task Force To Coordinate Basin Salmon Recovery, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/administration-report-describes-harm-of-dams-to-columbia-basin-tribes-white-house-sets-up-task-force-to-coordinate-basin-salmon-recovery/
— CBB, Feb. 9, 2024, Federal Judge Approves Years-Long Pause On Basin Salmon Recovery Litigation So Parties Can Pursue Tribal-States-Feds Restoration Plan, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/federal-judge-approves-years-long-pause-on-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-so-parties-can-pursue-tribal-states-feds-restoration-plan/
— CBB, Dec. 15, 2023, Biden Administration, Two States, Treaty Tribes Reach MOU On Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery, Litigation Paused For At Least Five Years, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/biden-administration-two-states-treaty-tribes-reach-mou-on-columbia-river-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-paused-for-at-least-five-years/
— CBB, July 15, 2022, White House Issues Reports On Basin Salmon Recovery, Costs; ‘Business As Usual’ Not Restoring ESA-Listed Salmon, Steelhead, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/white-house-issues-reports-on-basin-salmon-recovery-costs-business-as-usual-not-restoring-esa-listed-salmon-steelhead/
— CBB, October 22, 2021, Parties Put Salmon/Steelhead BiOp Litigation On Hold, Commit To Working Together To Find ‘Comprehensive, Long-Term Solution’ https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/parties-put-salmon-steelhead-biop-litigation-on-hold-commit-to-working-together-to-find-comprehensive-long-term-solution/
— CBB, February 5, 2021, “Conservation Groups File Complaint Against New Columbia River System Operations EIS, BiOp For Salmon, Steelhead,” https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/conservation-groups-file-complaint-against-new-columbia-river-system-operations-eis-biop-for-salmon-steelhead/
How and where water bird predation impacts juvenile salmon and steelhead must be considered on a case- by-case basis before taking action against the birds, according to a new report being considered at this week’s Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting.
When determining whether predation on both hatchery and Endangered Species Act-listed fish in Washington’s rivers — including Columbia River basin mainstem and tributaries — by American white pelicans, Caspian terns, double-crested cormorants and, to a lesser extent, California and ring-billed gulls, it is impossible to make general statements like “Bird species [X] impacts threatened or endangered salmonid species [X],” the Avian Salmon Predation Working Group said in its report to the Washington legislature.
Instead, the Working Group says it endorses the Pacific Flyway Council’s guidance on determining migratory bird predation impacts on fish resources, which states, “Responses to perceived avian predation issues [should be] based on sound science.”
In its report, the Working Group wrote that “a clear predation threshold should be developed using watershed- and salmon stock-specific predation rates and adult returns; an understanding of how predation impacts treaty rights and obligations; and an understanding of economic implications of the management actions, such as the cost-effectiveness of monitoring.”
There are 14 Evolutionarily Significant Units (salmon) or Distinct Population Segments (steelhead) in Washington that are listed under the ESA, according to the report.
“Satisfying the ESA is a critical, but narrow component of salmon recovery that is directed at avoiding extinction; more broadly, the objective is a more robust ‘healthy and harvestable’ target that reflects the importance of salmon to Pacific Northwest cultures, economies, and ecosystems,” the report says.
In his letter to the legislature introducing the report, WDFW director Kelly Susewind said that the Avian Salmon Predation Working Group was formed by WDFW and tasked to complete the report to the legislature by Substitute House Bill 2293, passed last year.
“The ASPWG was tasked with identifying all avian species that contribute to the predation of juvenile salmon at a population level, determining whether such species are adversely impacting the recovery of any threatened or endangered salmon species, and identifying remedies to predation,” Susewind wrote in his letter. “The report compiles useful data and existing knowledge about avian salmon predation in Washington and makes recommendations for how the legislature can support the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) on this complex situation.”
The Fish and Wildlife Commission is hearing the report for the first time at its meeting this weekend, Nov. 13 through 15 in Lynnwood, WA.
In the report, the Working Group characterized predation as a “natural, dynamic, and complex ecosystem process” with both predator and prey as valuable components of naturally functioning ecosystems.
“Many species of birds in Washington eat fish, especially small and/or schooling fish, including juvenile salmonids,” the report says. “Abundance and distribution of birds and fish, as well as the predation process, have been altered by human activities and structures. In some cases, there have been attempts to characterize and control predation to benefit salmonids, resulting in varied outcomes and conclusions.”
Cormorants
The three nesting cormorant species in Washington are pelagic, Brandt’s and double-crested. All eat fish, but pelagic and Brandt’s are restricted to marine or estuarine environments, where they eat a variety of fish and are not necessarily focused on salmonids, according to the report. However, double crested cormorants use natural and manmade structures, such as channel markers, bridges and transmission towers, for nesting, sometimes closer to out-migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead. While they likely do not eat salmonids in Puget Sound, they do prey on salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin, the report says. Still, the western double-crested cormorant population has declined in recent years. More than 73,000 breeding pairs were counted in 2014, but that number declined to about 50,000 in 2022, the last year that the Working Group had information on their numbers.
Caspian Terns
The Pacific Flyway population of Caspian terns has declined by at least half since 2010. Driven by NOAA Fisheries’ biological opinions covering federal Columbia River dams, three management plans were developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to attempt to reduce the impacts of predation by both Caspian terns and double-crested cormorants on ESA-listed juvenile salmon and steelhead. These plans prescribed actions to reduce breeding colony size in critical areas of the river. Actions included planting vegetation, hazing, egg removal and lethally removing birds to reach target nesting populations. Two of the plans focused on Caspian terns and double-crested cormorants in the Columbia estuary, and one addressed terns nesting at inland islands.
Here’s the outcome of cormorant and tern management actions in the Columbia River estuary:
— Predation by Caspian terns on three islands specified in the plans has decreased with targeted management efforts.
— Double-crested cormorants were successfully reduced on East Sand Island in the Columbia River estuary, which caused the birds to shift to areas in the upper estuary, thus increasing predation at the Astoria-Megler bridge where more of the prey are salmon and steelhead. Adaptive management continues to be necessary to achieve reduced predation impacts by cormorants.
— Management of Caspian terns since 2008 has reduced the colony on East Sand Island to below the target colony size in the plan, and the colony has experienced complete nesting failure in six out of the last nine years (2016-2024). Additionally, the Pacific Flyway population has decreased by more than 50 percent since management began in 2008, triggering an adaptive management threshold for reducing the decline.
Pelicans
Brown pelicans are restricted to marine and estuarine habitats and eat a variety of fish, foraging by plunge-diving headfirst. Brown pelicans do not breed in Washington and are only present during the post-breeding season (May-November).
American white pelicans nest in colonies on islands in fresh water and mostly forage for a wide variety of fish, including salmon and steelhead, in groups, concentrating prey into shallow water. They are the largest water bird in the U.S. and can have a wingspan as large as 10 feet and can weigh up to 16 pounds. They have also been documented foraging at dam spillways solo or in groups, according to the study. Nesting colonies are on Badger Island and Miller Sands Spit in the Columbia River, although it appears the Badger Island colony was abandoned in 2025. Most white pelicans migrate out of Washington during winter. Both the Flyway population and the Washington breeding colonies have declined in recent years.
There are also reports that white pelicans at colonies in the mid-Columbia and lower Snake have been preying on adult sockeye salmon, according to Allen Evans, scientist with RealTime Research in Bend, OR, speaking to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in August of 2024.
–See CBB, August 18, 2024, Despite 20 Years Of Management Actions, Avian Predation Remains Substantial Source Of Columbia River Salmon, Steelhead Mortality, Despite 20 Years Of Management Actions, Avian Predation Remains Substantial Source Of Columbia River Salmon, Steelhead Mortality – Columbia Basin Bulletin
Gulls
Of the ten species of gulls found in Washington, California and ring-billed gulls are mostly freshwater dependent, nesting in colonies, sometimes alongside Caspian terns. They have diverse diets, limited by their inability to dive or swim underwater, so they steal food from other fish-eating species. Their complex behaviors make accurate estimates of their direct predation difficult, the report says.
According to the Working Group report, most of the information about avian predation on salmon and steelhead and about predation management is from Columbia River studies. Lessons learned include:
— Consumption of salmonid smolts by piscivorous birds is highly variable across bird species, fish population, and site; not all species/colonies threaten smolt survival in the CRS.
— Impacts to salmonids vary based on the specific phenology of breeding activities and the associated energetic demands (timing of colony arrival, incubation, and chick-rearing), as well as colony size, location, and species composition.
— Bird colonies in the Columbia River estuary, where there are a variety of available fish prey species, generally consume less salmon as a percentage of their total diet than bird colonies upriver.
Despite the amount of information available, there continues to be knowledge gaps. In general, those gaps include:
Limited avian diet information. “It is difficult to quantify diet and foraging dynamics for species that are flexible and adaptive in their prey requirements and have highly migratory behavior and large geographic ranges that span international, state, tribal, and local jurisdictions,” the report says.
Asymmetrical regional data and knowledge. Relatively little is known about avian predation in Washington outside the Columbia River. It has not been as well studied on the coast or in the Salish Sea and associated riverine systems.
Lack of clear management goals. “Avian predation management plans should be implemented with a clear goal regarding the anticipated benefit to salmonids in mind,” the report says. “Returning adult fish abundance, widely considered the ‘gold standard’ for monitoring salmon, cannot be attributed to any particular condition or action because of the many factors that influence survival during the salmon life cycle. Therefore, establishing goals and metrics that are meaningful and achievable is a challenge.”
The Working Group developed two products to respond to the Legislature’s request that they “identify remedies:”
— Intervention Principles that guide the development of robust, long-term adaptive management plans for reducing avian predation, increasing juvenile salmonid survival, and building resiliency into salmon populations.
— An inventory of actions to dissuade avian predation that have been implemented or are being implemented in the region.
In addition, the Working Group recommended to the Washington legislature that it:
1. Fund research to examine geographically specific anecdotes of salmon predation by birds, particularly Puget Sound rivers with at-risk salmon stocks and that are cited as places where avian salmon predation negatively impacts juvenile salmonid survival, including but not limited to the Stillaguamish River and the Nisqually River Delta, the report says.
2. Invest in WDFW’s capacity to coordinate with federal and state governments, tribes, and other regional entities to address avian predation issues in the Columbia River System.
3. Invest in Department-led work focused on closing data gaps and learning more about the shared needs of birds and salmon. This work can make critical connections between ecosystem recovery actions that benefit both species, increase the Department’s ability to partner in avian predation policy and science, and promote coordination with tribes and other partners, the report says. As examples, the report suggests updating the Washington seabird colony inventory and diet database, and researching piscivorous bird species diet and foraging dynamics in Washington state.
The Avian Salmon Predation Working Group 2025 Report to the Washington State Legislature is at Avian Salmon Predation Working Group Report to the Legislature
For background, see:
— CBB, August 18, 2024, Despite 20 Years Of Management Actions, Avian Predation Remains Substantial Source Of Columbia River Salmon, Steelhead Mortality, Despite 20 Years Of Management Actions, Avian Predation Remains Substantial Source Of Columbia River Salmon, Steelhead Mortality – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, November 16, 2023, Déjà Vu: Oregon Study Says Once Again Salmon-Eating Cormorants Need To Somehow Be Relocated From Astoria Bridge Back To Estuary Island, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/deja-vu-oregon-study-says-once-again-salmon-eating-cormorants-need-to-somehow-be-relocated-from-astoria-bridge-back-to-estuary-island/
— CBB, June 16, 2023, More Letters, Meetings About What To Do With Salmon-Eating Cormorants On Astoria Bridge; Chase Them Back To East Sand Island? Culling? https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/MORE-LETTERS-MEETINGS-ABOUT-WHAT-TO-DO-WITH-SALMON-EATING-CORMORANTS-ON-ASTORIA-BRIDGE-CHASE-THEM-BACK-TO-EAST-SAND-ISLAND-CULLING/
— CBB, January 26, 2023, COUNCIL REACHES OUT TO STATE AGENCIES TO DISCUSS ‘ALARMING CONCLUSIONS’ OF STUDY DETAILING IMPACTS TO SALMON FROM CORMORANTS ON ASTORIA BRIDGE, HTTPS://CBBULLETIN.COM/COUNCIL-REACHES-OUT-TO-STATE-AGENCIES-TO-DISCUSS-ALARMING-CONCLUSIONS-OF-STUDY-DETAILING-IMPACTS-TO-SALMON-FROM-CORMORANTS-ON-ASTORIA-BRIDGE/
— CBB, November 16, 2022, WHERE TO PUT THE BIRDS? RESEARCH SAYS CORMORANTS CHASED OFF COLUMBIA RIVER ESTUARY ISLAND EAT FAR MORE SALMON, STEELHEAD UPSTREAM, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/where-to-put-the-birds-research-says-cormorants-chased-off-columbia-river-estuary-island-eat-far-more-salmon-steelhead-upstream/
— CBB, March 10, 2022, WHACK-A-MOLE: AGENCY THAT CHASED SALMON-EATING CORMORANTS OFF ESTUARY ISLAND NOW HAZING RE-LOCATED BIRDS ON ASTORIA BRIDGE OVER COLUMBIA RIVER, HTTPS://CBBULLETIN.COM/WHACK-A-MOLE-AGENCY-THAT-CHASED-SALMON-EATING-CORMORANTS-OFF-ESTUARY-ISLAND-NOW-HAZING-RE-LOCATED-BIRDS-ON-ASTORIA-BRIDGE-OVER-COLUMBIA-RIVER/
The state of Washington and Columbia River tribes are lining up in U.S. District Court to support a request for a preliminary injunction filed Oct. 14 by Earthjustice seeking emergency operational changes at federal Columbia and Snake river dams aimed at protecting endangered salmon and steelhead from harms caused by dam operations.
Earthjustice said the proposed “science-based measures” will improve salmon survival as they migrate past dams and reservoirs in the Columbia and Snake rivers. The changes include increased spill, which allows juvenile fish to pass over the dams instead of through turbines, and lowered reservoir elevations, which decreases the time salmon spend migrating through stagnant, overheated waters.
“This case is not just about salmon — it’s also about justice and a way of life,” Earthjustice wrote in a recent online briefing. “The Trump administration’s decision to tear apart this carefully crafted agreement is another dark chapter in the federal government’s history of betraying Tribes. The salmon populations our lawsuit seeks to restore are key to the region’s ecosystem, economy, and Tribal culture.”
Earthjustice represents plaintiffs National Wildlife Federation along with the state of Oregon and Nez Perce Tribe. Washington filed an Amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction on Oct. 22.
Earthjustice and the plaintiffs are also asking the court to approve a set of emergency conservation measures for what they say are some of the most imperiled populations that are on the brink of collapse. These include removing passage barriers slowing the migration of Tucannon River spring Chinook, a population that is rapidly approaching extinction, as well as increasing federal efforts to control predators like invasive walleye and some birds that prey on salmon and steelhead.
The preliminary injunction with its emergency measures would likely not have been needed if the federal government had not altered course and reneged on a Biden-era Memorandum of Understanding between plaintiffs and the U.S. government, according to court documents.
The MOU, signed in December 2023, known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement (RCBA), was to be effective through 2028 and was designed to restore Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead runs to “healthy and abundant levels.”
Oregon District Court Judge Michael H. Simon had approved a stay in the original and long-running lawsuit that challenged NOAA Fisheries’ 2020 biological opinion and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision as long as the agreement was in place.
However, the Trump Administration on June 12 revoked the agreement and notified the partners in the MOU in a June 24 letter. Plaintiffs in the case went back to the U.S. District Court in Oregon to ask the court to lift the stay and resume the court case that had been on pause for nearly two years
“For the Nez Perce Tribe—for the Nez Perce people—the circumstances necessitating a return to this Court are disgraceful,” the Nez Perce Tribe wrote in its memorandum to the court supporting the emergency injunction. “Endangered and threatened Snake River salmon and steelhead are essentially no better off today than when they were listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) over thirty years ago. A distressing number of populations are at or below critical abundance thresholds and others are on the literal brink of extinction.”
Although it has the power to help solve the problem, the Tribe said that the federal government instead “cynically returned to past games and tricks that this Court and the Ninth Circuit squarely rejected in prior BiOps.”
“Rather than make good on the hopeful commitments of the 2023 Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, which took all river users into account, the United States has withdrawn from the agreement and once again broken its word to the Tribe and the entire Pacific Northwest, both of which are defined by the very salmon and steelhead at the heart of this lawsuit.”
There is no time left, the Nez Perce memorandum said, calling on the court to intervene and supporting the plaintiffs in their call for a preliminary injunction for new operational changes at dams.
Jay Hesse, the Tribe’s Director of Biological Services, said in testimony that “the abundance of ESA-listed wild-origin salmon and steelhead returning annually to the Snake River Basin has not appreciably changed since their ESA-listing in the 1990s.”
Half have already been extirpated and nearly all the remaining populations remain below minimum abundance thresholds with no indication of reaching those thresholds anytime soon, he said.
In its quasi-extinction thresholds (QET) analysis, the Tribe concluded that 11 percent of Snake River spring summer Chinook already have abundance levels at or below QET (50), and a third of the existing Snake River spring-summer Chinook populations were below 50 natural origin spawners in 2023 and 2024.
The QET describes a population that is at a point where its persistence is uncertain and its extirpation is possible; the threshold is met when the population has 50 or fewer natural-origin spawners for four consecutive years, the Tribe said.
“But the situation is that much more dire because abundance trends show an average annual rate of decline of six percent (-6%) across all Snake River spring-summer Chinook populations over the past ten years, with many on even more calamitous trajectories (e.g., annual rate of decrease of fourteen percent (-14%) for Lower Snake Major Population Group (MPG) (Tucannon Group)),” the Tribe said. “With these trends, by 2029, 41% of Snake River spring-summer Chinook populations are predicted to be at QET (50) or to have begun the 4-year count for QET(50).
“Due to these disturbing abundances and downward trends, the prognosis is bleak for ESA-listed Snake River salmon and steelhead without urgent action.”
Although it has not challenged the preliminary injunction in court, nearly two weeks ago the Inland Ports and Navigation Group said the changes to spill and reservoir levels that plaintiffs are calling for are a danger to people and navigation that would result in disruptions in the flow of commerce “that has a highly destructive impact on our communities and economy.”
“This injunction is short sighted; increasing spill comes at an incredibly steep cost to navigation, freight movement, agriculture and the communities dependent on this river system,” said Executive Director Neil Maunu.
Plaintiffs are forcing people to trade safety, reliability, and the climate against a highly debated strategy of increasing spill on a system that already sees a high percentage of fish survival rates through the dams, IPNG said.
Filing as a friend of the court participant lining up with the plaintiffs, the state of Washington said in an Oct. 24 brief that it is fully-supportive of the preliminary injunction filing. The current BiOp “fails to adequately address the substantial impacts of the federal hydropower system on salmon and steelhead, and it would likely lead to the extinction of some populations while irreparably harming others.”
“When Federal Defendants removed themselves from the MOU they upended a comprehensive basin-wide approach to salmon and steelhead recovery through a whole-of-federal-government approach aimed at restoring healthy, abundant salmon and steelhead populations …”
Washington said that there are actions the federal hydro system operators must take now to protect ESA-listed salmon and steelhead from this higher risk of extinction.
“The hydropower operation changes and essential conservation actions requested by the Plaintiffs will improve survival of all ESA-listed interior Columbia River salmon and steelhead species,” Washington concluded in its brief. “With these changes, key ESA-listed salmon and steelhead have a better chance at persisting until this case is resolved and an effective, long-term recovery strategy is back in place.”
A week prior to Washington’s filing, the Public Power Council, an organization representing most of Washington’s public utilities, urged Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson in a letter to oppose both the reopening of the BiOp litigation case and to oppose the emergency operational changes at the dams proposed in the preliminary injunction. PPC said that “The federal court case could set back clean energy transformation and we believe there are better ways for the state and region to advance the cause of salmon recovery than in a courtroom.”
It added that just in the past few years, Washington utilities have gone from having the lowest retail electricity rates in the nation to “barely remaining in the Top 10.”
“The region’s backbone for maintaining affordability and reliability, as well as meeting Washington state’s greenhouse gas emissions targets, is our fleet of hydroelectric resources,” PPC’s letter says. About 60 percent of Washington’s electricity is generated from hydropower and “reliable, clean, and affordable hydropower, provide essential irrigation and cargo transportation, support municipal water and wastewater treatment facilities, and have helped establish a significant recreation economy.”
Although the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement did not call for the removal of the four lower Snake River dams, it did provide for the studies and economic underpinnings that would have made their removal possible.
And Earthjustice seems to believe that would have been the eventual outcome. In its online briefing, it said “Put simply, the agreement brought all the stakeholders together and was a promising step toward breaching the four dams on the Lower Snake River, where every salmon population is currently threatened or endangered.”
Filing as amicus curiae, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, which owns and operates Yakama Power, which delivers electricity to more than 3,000 customers within the Yakama Reservation, and is the only tribal electric utility in the regional Public Power Council, takes another view of public power and the need for the lower Snake River dams.
The “Yakama Nation understands the challenges of competing interests in our modern world, even as it works tirelessly to protect its fundamental First Foods from extirpation,” the Tribe said in support of the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction.
Citing their Treaty-reserved fishing rights obtained in 1854 to retain half the salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River system (a portion affirmed in a 20th century court decision), the Yakama Tribe said that “Courts have also affirmed that Treaty-reserved fishing rights carry an inherent right to protection of the fish from man-made despoliation because a fundamental prerequisite to exercising the right to take fish is the existence of fish to be taken.”
However, those fishing rights are now constrained by non-tribal development, such as the federal Columbia and Snake river dams, and runs of salmon and steelhead are in steep decline.
“Although Yakama Nation is not responsible for the decline of Columbia River fisheries, its Members are made to bear this conservation burden,” the Tribe said.
“Today, in light of the federal government’s abandonment of the Fish Accords (the Bonneville Power Administration notified tribes that the Fish Accords would expire in Sept. 2025) and RCBA, the continued deterioration of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead populations, and Yakama Nation’s substantial concerns regarding the sufficiency of the 2020 BiOp and 2020 ROD, Yakama Nation appears before this Court in alignment with the Plaintiffs,” the Tribe said in its court filing.
“Yakama Nation supports Plaintiffs’ claims that the 2020 BiOp and 2020 ROD fail to satisfy ESA requirements, and concurs that the preliminary injunctive relief requested by Plaintiffs is both necessary and appropriate to prevent further irreparable harm to Columbia Basin fish and to Yakama Nation Treaty-reserved fisheries resource,” the Tribe concluded.
The debate via court briefs began over a month ago when Simon lifted the two-year old stay on long-running litigation challenging the federal EIS and BiOp (Sept. 11) and set a court schedule that again sets the legal battle in motion.
However, a day after the federal shutdown went into effect, federal defendants filed a motion to stay or pause the court’s schedule, saying that the appropriations act that had been funding the Department of Justice, which is representing NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the case, had expired and Department of Justice funding had “lapsed.” The government shutdown began Oct. 1 and has continued through October.
Simon denied the request Oct. 14 to delay the proceedings and set a new schedule to continue the court case. On the same day, plaintiffs filed the motion for the preliminary injunction.
In that order, Simon said that “the potential harm from granting a stay is substantial. As this Court is aware, salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin are in “a perilous state” and have been so for many years now.”
The new schedule includes: Oct. 15 — Any motions for a preliminary injunction filed by a party, and all supporting papers; Oct. 22 — Any amicus filing in support of such motion, and all supporting papers, shall be filed.
For background, see:
— CBB, Oct. 19, 2025, Judge Denies Feds’ Request To Put Salmon BiOp Case On Hold Due To Shutdown, Plaintiffs Seek Changes To Dam Operations To Aid Fish, Judge Denies Feds’ Request To Put Salmon BiOp Case On Hold Due To Shutdown, Plaintiffs Seek Changes To Dam Operations To Aid Fish – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, September 26, 2015, Judge Sets Schedule For Continuing Litigation Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery; Motions, Briefs Oct. 8 To Jan. 22, 2026, Judge Sets Schedule For Continuing Litigation Over Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery; Motions, Briefs Oct. 8 To Jan. 22, 2026 – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, September 14, 2025, Plaintiffs Return To Federal Court To Continue Legal Battle Over Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery, Judge Lifts Stay, Plaintiffs Return To Federal Court To Continue Legal Battle Over Columbia Basin Salmon Recovery, Judge Lifts Stay – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, June 13, 2025, Trump Rescinds Biden’s Executive Order Aimed At Restoring Columbia Basin Salmon, Steelhead Runs, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/trump-rescinds-bidens-executive-order-aimed-at-restoring-columbia-basin-salmon-steelhead-runs/
— CBB, January 19, 2025, COUNCIL PANEL HEARS DETAILS ON $1 BILLION ‘RESILIENT COLUMBIA BASIN AGREEMENT,’ EXTENT OF ‘COLLABORATION’ QUESTIONED, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/COUNCIL-PANEL-HEARS-DETAILS-ON-1-BILLION-RESILIENT-COLUMBIA-BASIN-AGREEMENT-EXTENT-OF-COLLABORATION-QUESTIONED/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Agencies Taking Another Look At 2020 Eis Detailing Impacts Of Columbia/Snake River Federal Hydrosystem On Imperiled Salmonids, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/agencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snake-river-federal-hydrosystem-on-imperiled-salmonidsagencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snak/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Council Shows Total Salmon/Steelhead Return Numbers To Columbia River Through The Years Short Of Goal; Esa-Listed Fish Continue To Struggle, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/council-shows-total-salmon-steelhead-return-numbers-to-columbia-river-through-the-years-short-of-goal-esa-listed-fish-continue-to-struggle/
— CBB, December 15, 2024, Despite Habitat Improvements Over 20 Years, Spring Chinook In Washington’s Tucannon River Still At Risk Of Extinction, Steelhead Doing Better, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/despite-habitat-improvements-over-20-years-spring-chinook-in-washingtons-tucannon-river-still-at-risk-of-extinction-steelhead-doing-better/
— CBB, December 9, 2024, Shifting Currents In Columbia/Snake River Salmon Recovery: Efforts To Save Snake River Fish Runs Likely To Look Different Under Trump, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/shifting-currents-in-columbia-snake-river-salmon-recovery-efforts-to-save-snake-river-fish-runs-likely-to-look-different-under-trump/
— CBB, October 18, 2024, Northwest Power/Conservation Council Issues Draft Annual Report To Congress On Council Progress With Fish, Power, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/northwest-power-conservation-council-issues-draft-annual-report-to-congress-on-council-progress-with-fish-power/
— CBB, June 21, 2024, Administration Report Describes Harm Of Dams To Columbia Basin Tribes, White House Sets Up Task Force To Coordinate Basin Salmon Recovery, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/administration-report-describes-harm-of-dams-to-columbia-basin-tribes-white-house-sets-up-task-force-to-coordinate-basin-salmon-recovery/
— CBB, Feb. 9, 2024, Federal Judge Approves Years-Long Pause On Basin Salmon Recovery Litigation So Parties Can Pursue Tribal-States-Feds Restoration Plan, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/federal-judge-approves-years-long-pause-on-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-so-parties-can-pursue-tribal-states-feds-restoration-plan/
— CBB, Dec. 15, 2023, Biden Administration, Two States, Treaty Tribes Reach MOU On Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery, Litigation Paused For At Least Five Years, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/biden-administration-two-states-treaty-tribes-reach-mou-on-columbia-river-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-paused-for-at-least-five-years/
— CBB, July 15, 2022, White House Issues Reports On Basin Salmon Recovery, Costs; ‘Business As Usual’ Not Restoring ESA-Listed Salmon, Steelhead, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/white-house-issues-reports-on-basin-salmon-recovery-costs-business-as-usual-not-restoring-esa-listed-salmon-steelhead/
— CBB, October 22, 2021, Parties Put Salmon/Steelhead BiOp Litigation On Hold, Commit To Working Together To Find ‘Comprehensive, Long-Term Solution’ https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/parties-put-salmon-steelhead-biop-litigation-on-hold-commit-to-working-together-to-find-comprehensive-long-term-solution/
— CBB, February 5, 2021, “Conservation Groups File Complaint Against New Columbia River System Operations EIS, BiOp For Salmon, Steelhead,” https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/conservation-groups-file-complaint-against-new-columbia-river-system-operations-eis-biop-for-salmon-steelhead/
Plaintiffs in long-running court battles that since 2001 have challenged environmental impact statements and biological opinions regarding the impact of operations of Columbia and Snake river federal dams on imperiled salmon and steelhead are heading back to court, according to a filing by the groups this week in U.S. District Court in Oregon.
The states of Oregon and Washington, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs joined in the request to lift a stay in litigation on Sept. 11. The stay had been in effect since December 2023.
Other plaintiffs are National Wildlife Federation et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service et al are the National Wildlife Federation, American Rivers, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Sierra Club, Idaho Rivers United, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, NW Energy Coalition, Columbia RiverKeeper and the Idaho Conservation League. The groups are represented in court by Earthjustice.
Defendants in the case are the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and NOAA Fisheries.
The plaintiffs asked the court in their motion to lift the stay to expedite the court’s decision, also stating that the federal defendants do not oppose the stay motion. However, the motion to lift the stay says, “Federal Defendants do not agree that expedited consideration of the motion to lift the stay is warranted. Given that the administrative records have been compiled, the Federal Defendants’ position is that this case could proceed directly to summary judgment.”
On the same day that the states and tribes asked U.S. District Court of Oregon Judge Michael H. Simon to lift the stay, he did so in a one-line order that simply says “The Court GRANTS the parties’ joint motion to lift stay.” If Simon agrees to proceed directly to summary judgement, the case could potentially be raised to an appeals court.
Other plaintiffs in the case are National Wildlife Federation et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service et al are the National Wildlife Federation, American Rivers, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Sierra Club, Idaho Rivers United, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, NW Energy Coalition, Columbia RiverKeeper and the Idaho Conservation League.
A Biden-era Dec. 14, 2023 Memorandum of Understanding, also known as the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, between plaintiffs and the U.S. government was the basis for the stay in the litigation that was to be effective through 2028. The agreement was designed to restore Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead runs to “healthy and abundant levels.” Those who supported the agreement touted it as a long-awaited collaborative and funded effort that finally would give restoration of salmon runs in the basin a chance.
The agreement promised increased funding for fisheries projects and infrastructure, a federal-state partnership to analyze replacement of the energy, transportation, irrigation and recreation services provided by four dams on the lower Snake River, and investments in new tribal clean energy projects. It included $1 billion in federal investments planned over a decade.
As part of the agreement, parties had agreed to a five-year pause of litigation that could have been extended five more years – as long as the agreement was in effect and the federal government continued to work with the states and tribes on a plan to restore the basin’s imperiled salmon, steelhead and other native fisheries while investing in affordable, clean and resilient energy across the Pacific Northwest, Earthjustice said in a news release.
However, the Trump Administration on June 12 revoked the agreement and notified the partners in the MOU in a June 24 letter that said in part:
“The undersigned signatories to the MOU now withdraw the United States from the MOU. It should be noted, however, that none of the undersigned agencies are opposed to seeking a satisfactory solution to the pending litigations and concerns of the various stakeholders and are willing to engage in good faith in efforts to achieve such a result,” the revocation letter said.
The Trump Administration’s unilateral decision to abandon the agreement removes the basis for the stay of litigation, plaintiffs argued in their filing this week for the stay to be lifted.
“The Trump administration’s recent actions leave us with no choice but to return to court,” said Earthjustice Attorney Amanda Goodin. “Since this administration has reneged on this carefully negotiated agreement – with no alternative plan to restore our imperiled salmon and steelhead – we find ourselves once again on a course towards extinction of these critically important species. Earthjustice and our plaintiffs, alongside state and tribal partners, have spent decades protecting Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead – and we won’t back down now.”
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said that extinction of Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead is “not an option,” and that the President’s decision to withdraw from the agreement means further litigation.
“The Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative represents a shared, scientifically sound vision for restoring healthy and abundant salmon populations in the Columbia River that all of our governments committed to implement under the 2023 agreement,” Kotek said. “Healthy runs are key for successful fish migration – and our salmon and steelhead runs are in crisis. President Trump walking away from these commitments presents a very real threat at a time when the fish are on the brink of extinction. It also continues our nation’s shameful legacy of broken promises to sovereign tribal nations that this partnership sought to repair.
“Extinction of iconic Columbia River salmon runs is not an option; we can have both healthy and abundant fish runs and power to meet our growing energy needs. Working with the sovereign tribes and state of Washington, I have directed staff and agencies to protect existing salmon runs and advocate for sustainable salmon population restoration. The state of Oregon will return to federal court and seek an injunction to address urgent needs for the fish, including requiring the federal government to operate the hydropower system to help salmon complete their downstream migration next spring, maximizing the chance that they will return as adults.”
The plaintiffs challenged the salmon/steelhead BiOp Jan. 19, 2021, in the case National Wildlife Federation et al. v. National Marine Fisheries. It was the eighth challenge by Earthjustice since 2001 to federal hydroelectric system BiOps on the impacts of the dams on salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. That filing restarted the long-standing dispute over federal biological opinions assessing the impacts of Columbia and Snake river dams on federally listed salmon and steelhead.
Some 13 species of salmon and steelhead in the rivers are listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead, particularly those that return to the Snake River to spawn, persist at dangerously low abundance and many continue to decline toward extinction, Earthjustice said.
Of the 16 salmon and steelhead stocks that had historically returned to spawn upstream of Bonneville Dam, four are now extinct and seven others are listed under the ESA, including all that return to the Snake River, according to Earthjustice.
“For most of these ESA-listed salmon species, by far the largest threat in their freshwater life stage is the harm caused by federal dams,” Earthjustice said. “These dams kill and harm salmon both as they attempt to migrate past each dam and by transforming the river into a series of slack water, warm reservoirs.”
“Pacific Northwest salmon are facing extinction. Today—salmon, fishing, and clean energy advocates applaud the Tribes, States, and non-governmental organizations for filing a motion with the U.S. District Court in Portland to lift a litigation stay that had been put in place as part of an historic regional agreement,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. “Without the agreement in place, plaintiffs are left with no alternative but to return to court to seek critical near-term actions to improve the survival of ocean-bound out-migrating juvenile salmon and steelhead and adults returning in search of their natal spawning beds.”
“People in the Pacific Northwest finally came up with a way to increase salmon populations and fishing while improving public services, meeting the promises we made to Tribes, and cutting taxpayer subsidies,” said Mike Leahy, senior director of Wildlife, Hunting and Fishing Policy for the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s been disappointing to see the federal government overrule all the progress made in the region in favor of returning to court.”
“The unilateral and abrupt termination of the Columbia Basin salmon agreement by the Trump administration is counter-productive and wrong,” said Sierra Club Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign Director Bill Arthur. “Climate change and ongoing destructive impacts from the four lower Snake River dams, combined with the stagnant hot reservoirs they create, continue to keep our iconic salmon and steelhead runs at the brink of extinction. We have a responsibility to return to court to improve and modernize our hydropower system so we can have affordable and reliable clean energy well into the future, alongside healthy and salmon and steelhead runs. These wild native fish are essential to tribal cultures and important to sport, commercial, and tribal fishing communities and economies throughout the Pacific Northwest. We can and must do better.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’ final EIS and NOAA Fisheries 2020 BiOp, currently litigated in Simon’s court, are the culmination of a National Environmental Policy Act process begun by court order in May 2016 when Simon rejected NOAA Fisheries’ 2014 BiOp.
In his opinion, Simon said the rejected BiOp “continues down the same well-worn and legally insufficient path” followed by previous recovery plans over the past 20 years and ordered a new BiOp that had the foundation and support of a full National Environmental Policy Act process.
In their latest challenge to the BiOp, the plaintiffs asked the judge to vacate the EIS and remand it back to the Corps and Bureau of Reclamation, and order NOAA to vacate and set aside the 2020 BiOp and accompanying incidental take statement and permits and “enjoin NOAA to notify the Action Agencies of these actions.”
In their complaint, the plaintiffs noted the goals of the Columbia Basin Partnership and Northwest Power and Conservation Council, and stressed the struggles of Snake River salmon and steelhead listed under the ESA, saying that breaching of the Lower Snake dams is the path to recovery.
“The agreement had set us on a path to restore a strong fishing economy, honor tribal treaty rights and secure a bright future across the Northwest. Now that the Trump Administration has reneged on the agreement, we must find other ways to keep moving Columbia Basin restoration forward – and that includes returning to court,” said Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association Policy Director Liz Hamilton. “Losing our irreplaceable salmon would harm everyone, including the sportfishing industry that generates over $5 billion in economic output for the region, creating jobs for nearly 37,000. We won’t give up on these fish – and no one else should either.”
In its Motion to lift the stay, Earthjustice wrote that “The reasoning underpinning the Court’s decision to impose the stay has been nullified by recent events. The Court should lift the stay in this case and allow interested parties to proceed with the litigation.”
President Trump’s June 12 Memorandum rescinding the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement is here: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Generate Power for the Columbia River Basin – The White House
Earthjustice’s motion to lift the stay is here: 1404-motion-to-lift-stay-final.pdf
For background, see:
— CBB, August 11, 2025, After Withdrawal Of Biden Administration’s Basin Salmon MOU, Plaintiffs Tell Federal Court They Are Considering Next Steps, After Withdrawal Of Biden Administration’s Basin Salmon MOU, Plaintiffs Tell Federal Court They Are Considering Next Steps – Columbia Basin Bulletin
— CBB, June 13, 2025, Trump Rescinds Biden’s Executive Order Aimed At Restoring Columbia Basin Salmon, Steelhead Runs, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/trump-rescinds-bidens-executive-order-aimed-at-restoring-columbia-basin-salmon-steelhead-runs/
— CBB, January 19, 2025, COUNCIL PANEL HEARS DETAILS ON $1 BILLION ‘RESILIENT COLUMBIA BASIN AGREEMENT,’ EXTENT OF ‘COLLABORATION’ QUESTIONED, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/COUNCIL-PANEL-HEARS-DETAILS-ON-1-BILLION-RESILIENT-COLUMBIA-BASIN-AGREEMENT-EXTENT-OF-COLLABORATION-QUESTIONED/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Agencies Taking Another Look At 2020 Eis Detailing Impacts Of Columbia/Snake River Federal Hydrosystem On Imperiled Salmonids, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/agencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snake-river-federal-hydrosystem-on-imperiled-salmonidsagencies-taking-another-look-at-2020-eis-detailing-impacts-of-columbia-snak/
— CBB, December 22, 2024, Council Shows Total Salmon/Steelhead Return Numbers To Columbia River Through The Years Short Of Goal; Esa-Listed Fish Continue To Struggle, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/council-shows-total-salmon-steelhead-return-numbers-to-columbia-river-through-the-years-short-of-goal-esa-listed-fish-continue-to-struggle/
— CBB, December 15, 2024, Despite Habitat Improvements Over 20 Years, Spring Chinook In Washington’s Tucannon River Still At Risk Of Extinction, Steelhead Doing Better, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/despite-habitat-improvements-over-20-years-spring-chinook-in-washingtons-tucannon-river-still-at-risk-of-extinction-steelhead-doing-better/
— CBB, December 9, 2024, Shifting Currents In Columbia/Snake River Salmon Recovery: Efforts To Save Snake River Fish Runs Likely To Look Different Under Trump, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/shifting-currents-in-columbia-snake-river-salmon-recovery-efforts-to-save-snake-river-fish-runs-likely-to-look-different-under-trump/
— CBB, October 18, 2024, Northwest Power/Conservation Council Issues Draft Annual Report To Congress On Council Progress With Fish, Power, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/northwest-power-conservation-council-issues-draft-annual-report-to-congress-on-council-progress-with-fish-power/
— CBB, June 21, 2024, Administration Report Describes Harm Of Dams To Columbia Basin Tribes, White House Sets Up Task Force To Coordinate Basin Salmon Recovery, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/administration-report-describes-harm-of-dams-to-columbia-basin-tribes-white-house-sets-up-task-force-to-coordinate-basin-salmon-recovery/
— CBB, Feb. 9, 2024, Federal Judge Approves Years-Long Pause On Basin Salmon Recovery Litigation So Parties Can Pursue Tribal-States-Feds Restoration Plan, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/federal-judge-approves-years-long-pause-on-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-so-parties-can-pursue-tribal-states-feds-restoration-plan/
— CBB, Dec. 15, 2023, Biden Administration, Two States, Treaty Tribes Reach MOU On Columbia River Basin Salmon Recovery, Litigation Paused For At Least Five Years, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/biden-administration-two-states-treaty-tribes-reach-mou-on-columbia-river-basin-salmon-recovery-litigation-paused-for-at-least-five-years/
— CBB, July 15, 2022, White House Issues Reports On Basin Salmon Recovery, Costs; ‘Business As Usual’ Not Restoring ESA-Listed Salmon, Steelhead, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/white-house-issues-reports-on-basin-salmon-recovery-costs-business-as-usual-not-restoring-esa-listed-salmon-steelhead/
— CBB, October 22, 2021, Parties Put Salmon/Steelhead BiOp Litigation On Hold, Commit To Working Together To Find ‘Comprehensive, Long-Term Solution’ https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/parties-put-salmon-steelhead-biop-litigation-on-hold-commit-to-working-together-to-find-comprehensive-long-term-solution/
— CBB, February 5, 2021, “Conservation Groups File Complaint Against New Columbia River System Operations EIS, BiOp For Salmon, Steelhead,” https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/conservation-groups-file-complaint-against-new-columbia-river-system-operations-eis-biop-for-salmon-steelhead/
The Nez Perce Tribe filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court this week challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a large open-pit gold mine in the headwaters of Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River. The undammed Salmon River basin is a critical source of Idaho’s salmon, steelhead and bull trout.
Late last year, the Service approved Perpetua Resources Corporation’s Stibnite Gold Project that the Tribe says sits in its homeland, an area identified by treaties with the U.S. that reserve the Tribe’s sovereign rights to fish, hunt, gather, pasture and travel.
The Nez Perce said the mine will cause significant and long-term term impacts to the Tribe’s treaty rights and resources. That warning, it said, is according to the Forest Service’s own final environmental analysis.
The Tribe also said in its complaint, among the other issues it listed, that when developing its Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision the Service refused to consider alternatives offered by the Tribe. And it changed two forest plans – the Payette Forest Plan Standards and the Boise National Forest Standards – to fit the gold mine plan, when it should have been altering the gold mine’s plan to fit existing forest plans, the Tribe said.
Operations at the mine, will include diverting the East Fork South Fork Salmon River, a Nez Perce usual and accustomed fishing place, into a tunnel for over a decade as well as restrict Tribal members from accessing the area for fishing, hunting, and gathering, the Tribe said.
“Our treaty-reserved rights are the supreme law of the land and fundamental to the culture, identity, economy, and sovereignty of the Nez Perce people,” said Shannon F. Wheeler, Chairman of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. “For nearly a decade the Tribe has consistently and exhaustively voiced our deep concerns to the Forest Service about the Mine’s threats to our Treaty rights upon which our culture and way of life depend and which jeopardizes our ability to transfer our knowledge and customs unique to this area to our children.”
Perpetua Resources’ proposed mine site is 45 air miles east of McCall, Idaho, adjacent to the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness Area and within the homelands of the Nez Perce Tribe.
The Stibnite Gold Project mining plan is massive and consists of four phases, the Nez Perce complaint says: a three-year construction phase; a fifteen-year mining and ore processing operations phase; a seventeen-year surface and underground exploration phase overlapping with the first two phases; and a closure and reclamation phase beginning at the conclusion of the operations phase and extending for an undefined period of time.
The Yellow Pine Pit will be mined first but it must be dewatered. To excavate the pit, the Forest Service’s ROD authorizes construction of an about one-mile underground tunnel to bypass the East Fork South Fork Salmon River around the pit, the complaint says.
“The project’s scale of disturbance will be staggering: not including the re-mining of existing tailings, the ROD authorizes mining approximately 392 million tons of material from three primary pits,” the complaint says. “Of this tonnage, approximately 280 million tons will be development rock and approximately 112 million tons will be ore. The ore will be produced at a rate as high as 25,000 tons—or 50 million pounds—per day.”
The Nez Perce lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Idaho Aug. 29, is the second to challenge the Service’s FEIS and ROD for the gold mine. Conservation groups Save the South Fork Salmon, Idaho Conservation League, Idaho Rivers United, Earthworks, Center for Biological Diversity and American Rivers also challenged the Service’s rulings in February.
–See CBB, February 25, 2025, Lawsuit Challenges Proposed Massive Gold Mine On Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River, Lawsuit Challenges Proposed Massive Gold Mine On Idaho’s South Fork Salmon River – Columbia Basin Bulletin
While the Nez Perce complaint challenges the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture, as well as Brooke L. Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, the conservation groups directed their complaint to a wider group of federal agencies, including the Forest Service, NOAA Fisheries, departments of Agriculture, Interior and Commerce, along with Rollins, and Doug Bergum, Secretary of Interior.
The Nez Perce complaint says that the Service’s FEIS and ROD consisted of just two alternatives with very little difference between the two, while the Tribe offered five alternatives, none of which were adopted.
“The Forest Service dismissed our requests to consider alternative approaches that would avoid and minimize harm to our Treaty rights and life sources and instead adopted Perpetua’s goals and interests for the Mine,” Wheeler said. “We are filing suit to force the Forest Service to address the Mine’s enormous and long-term degradation and destruction to our Treaty life sources, and to honor our reserved right to fully and freely exercise our Treaty fishing, hunting, and gathering rights as the U.S. Government promised over 170 years ago.”
Before Perpetua’s predecessor companies began acquiring interests in the Mine in 2008, the Tribe had secured funding from the Bonneville Power Administration to restore legacy mining impacts on fish passage at the site. The Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management is still spending about $2.8 million every year to restore Chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout populations and habitat in the South Fork Salmon River watershed, the complaint says.
The Tribe began work in the South Fork Salmon River in 2007 in order to fix the impacts of previous mining at the historical Stibnite Mine, the Tribe’s complaint says. The goal was to restore passage for anadromous and resident fish above the Yellow Pine Pit. However, before the Tribe could implement the fish passage, Perpetua Resources’ corporate predecessors began acquiring mining claims at the Stibnite Gold Project site and denied permission for the fish passage project, the complaint says.
In 2019, the Tribe filed a lawsuit against Perpetua Resources, then named Midas Gold, for discharges of arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and other pollutants at the Stibnite Gold Project site in violation of the Clean Water Act. That lawsuit was settled and Perpetua Resources negotiated a cleanup agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and Forest Service under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. That cleanup work is ongoing at the Stibnite Gold Project site, the complaint says.
Perpetua Resources on its website said that fish haven’t been able to swim past the Yellow Pine pit since 1938, almost no topsoil can be found in the area due to extensive erosion and millions of tons of sediment are running into the waterways, degrading water quality and fish habitat. The Stibnite Gold Project is designed to begin addressing these historic challenges early in the project, the company said.
“Our plan for the Stibnite Gold Project is as much about restoring the site as it is mining it for the much-needed critical mineral antimony and gold,” the company said. “Redeveloping this already mined area will allow us to generate the funds needed to rehabilitate the environment.”
For background, see:
–CBB, Sept. 13, 2024, Forest Service Releases EIS For Massive Gold Mine At Headwaters Of Idaho’s Salmon River, Critical Habitat For Chinook Salmon, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/forest-service-releases-eis-for-massive-gold-mine-at-headwaters-of-idahos-salmon-river-critical-habitat-for-chinook-salmon/
In a draft report, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council says since the Northwest Power Act in 1980 its energy efficiency programs have saved some 8,000 average megawatts, enough to power seven cities the size of Seattle, while saving energy consumers some $5 billion in lower utility bills.
Predation by sea birds on salmon and steelhead smolts in some years is responsible for as much as 50 percent of all smolt mortalities during the outmigration to the sea from the Columbia and Snake river basins, according to a presentation this week at a meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
Plaintiffs in litigation that challenged the U.S. government over a biological opinion and environmental impact statement for the operations of Columbia and Snake river dams and their impacts on salmon and steelhead have returned to court.
Two environmental groups are suing to halt what they say is pollution released from three commercial net pen aquaculture facilities that produce steelhead located on the Columbia River in Eastern Washington. The groups say Pacific SeaFood Aquaculture LLC has been violating its Clean Water Act permits since 2020 and has been harming wild fish and the river’s ecosystem, home to anadromous fish species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The complaint, filed by the Wild Fish Conservancy and the Center for Food Safety, alleges the company has repeatedly violated the terms of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit in its process of raising the steelhead in Rufus Woods Lake, the reservoir backed up behind Chief Joseph Dam. The plaintiff nonprofits are represented by Kampmeier & Knutsen PLLC and CFS counsel.
The groups say that Pacific Seafoods markets the steelhead as “sustainably raised,” but that government records show the company has been “in continuous violation” of their NPDES permit conditions since at least April 2020 when the permits were reissued by the Washington Department of Ecology.
“Despite ‘sustainable’ marketing claims and third-party certifications, government records tell a different story— one of chronic noncompliance and ecological harm,” said Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. “In the face of the public’s sustained, long-term efforts to protect and restore the Columbia River and its ecosystems, Pacific Seafood has repeatedly violated the Clean Water Act, undermining public trust, degrading water quality, and threatening the survival of wild salmon and steelhead. Local communities and economies should not be left to shoulder the costs of cleanup and ecological damage while a billion-dollar corporation cuts corners on basic environmental protections.”
Commercial aquaculture farms house fish in net pens, or floating facilities, that contain young and mature steelhead in enclosures, such as netting, in open water. The fish are hatched at freshwater hatcheries and the smolts are transferred to the net pens where they are cultivated to a marketable size.
In their court filing, the groups say that net pen aquaculture poses significant environmental and ecological risks, including “impacts associated with water pollution from feces, uneaten food, and pharmaceuticals or other chemicals used to treat the fish; disease and parasite amplification and transmission to wild aquatic species; and fish escapes that can disrupt the ecosystem.”
“These confined industrial fish farming operations have been unlawfully and egregiously polluting the Columbia River for years,” said George Kimbrell, CFS Legal Director. “Fish feed, fish waste, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other contaminants released by the facilities threaten water quality and native fish populations. We’re taking this action to ensure compliance with environmental laws designed to protect our waterways and the species that depend on them.”
In a news release, the groups listed the “adverse environmental and intertwined socioeconomic impacts” that results from net pen aquaculture. The long list of impacts include pollution from drugs, chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, pharmaceuticals, and other inputs; nutrient pollution from uneaten fish food and fish waste; the spread and amplification of parasites, viruses, and disease from farmed fish to wild fish; overfishing of forage fisheries in order to make fish meal and oil to grow aquacultured fish; adverse ecological effects on surrounding marine wildlife from the facilities; harm to traditional and indigenous fishing cultures and communities; and harm to recreational and commercial fisheries.
They add that chronic fish spills, caused by equipment failure, human error, or weather, are among the worst causes of harm. Escaped fish harm wild fish by competing for food and habitat, spreading viruses and disease, and inbreeding, reducing genetic diversity and resilience, says the complaint.
The groups noted that a net pen aquaculture facility in Puget Sound collapsed in August 2017. At the time, Cooke Aquaculture released an estimated 250,000 non-native and “viral infected Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.” In early January this year, the state of Washington banned aquaculture facilities in the Sound. The groups added that some 25 million aquacultured fish had escaped net pens worldwide from 1996 through 2012.
Pacific Seafoods has violated its NPDEs permits by exceeding their effluent limitations, failing to properly monitor and report discharges, and failing to develop and implement plans for best management practices to reduce pollution in the manner required, the groups wrote in their complaint. They are seeking the court to:
The complaint and 60-day Notice are here: https://wildfishconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/001.0.complaint.pdf
For background, see:
— CBB, January 19, 2025, WASHINGTON STATE FORMALLY BANS NET PEN AQUACULTURE SEVEN YEARS AFTER NET PEN COLLAPSE RELEASED ATLANTIC SALMON INTO PUGET SOUND, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/WASHINGTON-STATE-FORMALLY-BANS-NET-PEN-AQUACULTURE-SEVEN-YEARS-AFTER-NET-PEN-COLLAPSE-RELEASED-ATLANTIC-SALMON-INTO-PUGET-SOUND/
— CBB, November 16, 2022, WASHINGTON DNR ENDS LEASES FOR REMAINING TWO NET PEN AQUACULTURE OPERATIONS (STERILE STEELHEAD) ON STATE-OWNED AQUATIC LANDS, HTTPS://COLUMBIABASINBULLETIN.ORG/WASHINGTON-DNR-ENDS-LEASES-FOR-REMAINING-TWO-NET-PEN-AQUACULTURE-OPERATIONS-STERILE-STEELHEAD-ON-STATE-OWNED-AQUATIC-LANDS/
–CBB, Jan. 27, 2022, WASHINGTON STATE SUPREME COURT ALLOWS COOKE AQUACULTURE TO FARM STERILE STEELHEAD IN STATE’S WATERS https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/washington-state-supreme-court-allows-cooke-aquaculture-to-farm-sterile-steelhead-in-states-waters/
Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) introduced the Columbia River Clean-Up Act to reauthorize the Columbia River Basin Restoration Program.
Merkley created the program in 2016 to focus federal attention on reducing toxics and pollution through voluntary efforts in the Columbia River Basin. However, funding for the program is set to expire next year. The Columbia River Clean-Up Act would ensure the program can be funded for another five years, through 2030.
“Our rivers and waterways are the lifeblood of communities across Oregon and the rest of the Pacific Northwest,” said Merkley. “The Columbia River Basin Restoration Program—which I created in 2016—is vital to preventing toxic pollutants from accumulating in our environment. Our bill reauthorizes this critical program, ensuring federal dollars will continue to support a cleaner, healthier Columbia River for Tribal communities, wildlife, ecosystems, and the economy.”
“The Columbia River Basin is one of our most important watersheds — supporting communities, economies, and ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest,” said Hoyle. “Reauthorizing the Columbia River Basin Restoration Program is critical to continuing the progress we’ve made in cleaning up toxic pollution and protecting public health. This voluntary program is a proven, bipartisan success, and I’m proud to join Senator Merkley in leading the effort to ensure it continues delivering results for Oregonians, Tribal Nations, and future generations.”
The Columbia River Basin is the second-largest watershed in the United States, stretching across parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and beyond. Home to 8 million people and more than 15 Tribal Nations, the Basin is central to the cultural, economic, and ecological identity of the Pacific Northwest, a Merkely press release said.
For decades, industrial pollution, toxic runoff, and habitat degradation have threatened the health of the river and the communities that depend on it. The Columbia River Basin Restoration Program, first authorized in 2016, was the first federal initiative specifically designed to address toxic contamination in this critical watershed.
“Since its inception, the program has helped fund on-the-ground restoration projects, empowered Tribal and community-led efforts, and strengthened the scientific foundation for long-term recovery,” said the press release.
The Columbia River Clean-Up Act is endorsed by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, The Freshwater Trust, Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership, National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies, Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, and Trout Unlimited.
The Freshwater Trust – Joe Whitworth, President & CEO:
“The Columbia River Basin Restoration program incentivizes effective and collaborative conservation effort with public and private partners across Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. We strongly support the reauthorization of this funding.”
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership – Elaine Placido, Executive Director:
“The Columbia River Basin Restoration Program unites Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington to reduce toxic pollution in the Columbia River Basin through coordinated, community-driven solutions. This program is a transformative resource for the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership. With its support, we are implementing locally designed stormwater projects at schools and community centers. We’ve also leveraged program funding to secure over $1 million in additional investments, significantly amplifying the program’s reach and impact.”
The National Wildlife Federation – Alicia Marrs, Director of Western Water:
“The health and resilience of the Columbia River Basin is critical to the more than 8 million people that depend on it for their drinking water. Reducing contaminants is essential to maintaining a healthy water supply so that fish, wildlife, and communities and economies in the Basin can thrive. With the future of EPA funding uncertain, reauthorizing the Columbia River Basin Restoration Program ensures previous investments are not wasted and we continue to leverage collaborative, voluntary efforts with tribes and states that protect communities and ecosystems from toxic pollution. We are grateful for Representative Hoyle’s sustained leadership on this critical issue and look forward to continued collaborations to build resilience for the entire region.”
The Nature Conservancy – Sammy Mastaw Jr, Columbia Basin Program Director:
“Salmon are facing a myriad of threats, including pollution and contamination of vital habitat. The introduction of the Columbia River Clean-Up Act — reauthorizing the Columbia River Basin Restoration Program — is a practical, science-based investment in the resilience of the Basin, and an important step toward healing for salmon and people.”
Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies – Jerry Linder, Executive Director:
“Columbia Basin Restoration Funds enabled EPA to provide grant funds to the Oregon Association of Clean Water Agencies to complete work aimed at toxics reduction, specifically reducing PFAS and Phthalates through public education, low toxicity institutional purchasing guidelines, assessment of PFAS and Phthalate sources, and industrial pollution prevention information and assistance. The products of this effort are on the Oregon ACWA website and there have been 5111 downloads, so the information is making a difference to reduce toxics in the Columbia Basin and elsewhere. There is still much work to be done and the Columbia River Basin Clean-Up Act is essential to continuing the progress that has been made so far.”
Pacific Northwest Waterways Association – Neil Maunu, Executive Director:
“The Pacific Northwest Waterways Association (PNWA) was proud to support the original legislation that created this voluntary program to aid in the clean up and prevention of toxins that are harmful to the Columbia River ecosystem, listed species, and people. PNWA supports the reauthorization of the program under the Columbia River Clean Up Act to continue the valuable collaborative work being done by local communities, organizations, and Tribes to improve water quality and the environment on the Columbia River.”
Trout Unlimited – Chrysten Rivard, Oregon Director:
“For nearly a decade, the successful Columbia River Basin Restoration Program has made key investments across the Columbia River Basin to reduce toxins and improve water quality. Trout Unlimited applauds Congresswoman Hoyle’s leadership to ensure that this program continues to support Tribal, state and local governments, and non-profit groups throughout the basin who are working to make a difference for our waters and communities.”
This bill is co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.)
The text of the Columbia River Clean-Up Act is available here.
The Columbia River Basin Restoration Program:
Also see:
–CBB, Nov. 30, 2023, “EPA Sending $32 Million To The Columbia River Basin For Projects Aimed At Reducing Toxins In Fish, Water,” https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/epa-sending-32-million-to-the-columbia-river-basin-for-projects-aimed-at-reducing-toxins-in-fish-water/
–CBB, Dec. 16, 2016, “‘Columbia River Basin Restoration Act’ Passes Congress, Aims To Reduce Toxic Contaminants,” https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/columbia-river-basin-restoration-act-passes-congress-aims-to-reduce-toxic-contaminants/
In its recommendations for change to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s 2014/2020 Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, the Bonneville Power Administration says the Program’s estimates and goals are beyond the power marketing agency’s statutory responsibility.
The study, published June 20 in Nature Sustainability, details a new system for leasing rights to water from the basin while reallocating some water to imperiled habitats.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a lawsuit this month in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. in an effort to speed up NOAA Fisheries’ review of the Washington-based conservation group’s proposal to list Chinook salmon in Alaska under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The group said in a news release that NOAA is failing to meet an essential legal guideline under the ESA and delaying the federal protections a listed species would have, in this case “at-risk Alaskan Chinook salmon.”
The Conservancy formally petitioned NOAA on Jan. 11, 2024, nearly one-and-a-half years ago, to list the fish and to grant it federal protection under the ESA in rivers that flow into the Gulf of Alaska.
NOAA issued a finding May 24, 2024 that the petition filed by the Conservancy contained substantial information indicating that federal listing and protection could be warranted. According to the group, that triggered a review at NOAA that should have been completed by Jan. 11, 2025.
“It should not take a lawsuit to make the federal government uphold its legal responsibility, but with the crisis facing Alaskan Chinook, we are out of time and options,” said Emma Helverson, Executive Director of Wild Fish Conservancy. “The Endangered Species Act sets clear deadlines for a reason, to evaluate the risk of extinction and trigger action while recovery is still possible. By ignoring those deadlines, NOAA isn’t just breaking the law—it’s perpetuating the collapse of Alaskan Chinook and threatening the ecosystems and communities that depend on them.”
Under the ESA, NOAA had 12-months, until Jan. 11, 2025, to review the data on Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon and determine whether ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered’ status is warranted, according to the group.
Once abundant, wild Chinook are experiencing chronic declines throughout the streams that flow into the Gulf of Alaska, threatening the health of ecosystems, indigenous cultural practices and food security, local economies, and communities that all depend on wild salmon, the Conservancy said.
The Conservancy said that data from the state of Alaska demonstrates persistent declines in Chinook abundance, size, age, diversity, and spatial structure.
“Many are surprised to learn some Alaskan Chinook populations are in even worse condition than other Pacific Northwest populations already listed under the ESA,” the Conservancy said.
Those threats include overfishing, bycatch in trawl fisheries, hatchery impacts, habitat degradation and climate change. Alaska has already recognized many of these stocks as ‘species of concern’ over the last decade, due to their continued decline in the face of the state’s attempted regulatory actions.
“Alaska’s leadership insists it’s taking aggressive steps to recover Chinook and that those efforts are proving successful, but the state’s own data shows this couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Helverson.
“We’ve heard directly from Alaskan fishers, Indigenous individuals, and the general public who depend on Gulf of Alaska Chinook who are frustrated by the state’s false narrative and inaction. These individuals expressed relief and optimism in the ESA process, not only for its comprehensive review, but also for the tangible actions and increased resources it can bring to begin rebuilding populations.”
According to the Conservancy in its January 2024 petition to list, the petition “encompasses all Chinook populations that enter the marine environment of the Gulf of Alaska.” It “includes all populations on the southern side of the Aleutian Peninsula, Cook Inlet, and the coast of Alaska south of Cook Inlet to the southern end of the Alaska/British Columbia border.”
NOAA Fisheries said at the time that it interpreted the request as asking to consider populations of Chinook salmon on:
In many cases, the number of Chinook salmon officials forecast to return are well below the minimum number of fish needed to reproduce at a rate to simply replace themselves, let alone to recover prior abundance, the Conservancy said.
“Compounding the problem, actual returns frequently fall even lower than predicted by the state– a fact that doesn’t become known until after management decisions have already been made,” it said. “Over time, steadily declining returns have resulted in consecutive years of emergency fishery closures for in-river commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries, including for indigenous communities. Meanwhile, Alaska’s government continues to authorize large-scale commercial ocean fisheries to harvest or kill as bycatch Chinook from these same populations; threats identified in the petition.”
It continued, saying that the Kenai River, world-renowned for its Chinook salmon, is at a historic low. In 2024, the early-season count was just 1,365 fish returning, which is the fifth consecutive year of missed forecasts. The late-season numbers were equally concerning, with only 6,930 Chinook returning, far lower than the historical average of about 28,000 Chinook over the last four decades. And, the Conservancy says, the oldest and largest of the (age-7) salmon have failed to appear the last three years.
On the west side of Kodiak Island in the Karluk River, goals to maintain the population require at least 3,000 Chinook to return annually. In 2024 just 76 returned to spawn.
The Ayakulik River, the largest river system on the island, saw only 354 Chinook return to spawn, just 7 percent of the river’s population goal of 4,800 fish.
“Government officials, seafood certifiers, and the fishing industry continue to assure the public that Alaska’s Chinook are well managed, but the data tells a different story. This year, Chinook fisheries across the Gulf of Alaska are closed on an emergency basis, yet fisheries managers continue to stubbornly defend their position that the fish are not at risk of extinction.” said Conrad Gowell, a biologist with Wild Fish Conservancy and co-author of the petition. “The longer the federal government waits to release their findings and take appropriate action, the more severe the social, economic, and environmental consequences will be.”
NOAA has also failed to issue legally required final determinations on ESA listing petitions for Olympic Peninsula steelhead, Oregon and California coast Chinook and Washington coast Chinook, the Conservancy said.
The lawsuit asks that the court order NOAA to “promptly issue” its decision on the petition.
As reported by Nathaniel Herz in the Northern Journal (www.northernjournal.com) in Anchorage, AK, Doug Vincent-Lang, Alaska Fish and Game commissioner, said the state agency has opposed the Conservancy’s proposal, but adding that NOAA Fisheries is “working through the process.”
“I understand they’re getting closer to a decision,” he told the Northern Journal. “I’d much rather have them take their time and have a deliberative process than to rush to a decision because of a statutory timeline.”
The Conservancy’s May 8 complaint is at https://wildfishconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/001.0.complaint.pdf
The Conservancy’s Jan. 2024 petition to list Alaska Chinook salmon is here: https://wildfishconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Petition-to-List-Alaskan-Chinook-Salmon-under-ESA_Final.pdf
For background, see:
— CBB, Jan. 18, 2024, GROUP PETITIONS NOAA FISHERIES TO LIST ALASKA CHINOOK SALMON UNDER ESA; STATE SAYS ‘TARGETED ATTACK’ ON ALASKA https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/group-petitions-noaa-fisheries-to-list-alaska-chinook-salmon-under-esa-state-says-targeted-attack-on-alaska/
— CBB, May 3, 2024, NOAA Fisheries Finds ESA Listing Of Gulf Of Alaska Chinook May Be Warranted, https://staging.columbiabasinbulletin.org/noaa-fisheries-finds-esa-listing-of-gulf-of-alaska-chinook-may-be-warranted/
President Donald Trump, in an April proposed rule, has directed the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rescind the long-standing definition of “harm” to species covered by the federal Endangered Species Act. The existing definition of harm as the ESA is currently written, the Administration says, is contrary to the “best meaning” of the term “take.”
The proposal, in essence, says that habitat modification should not be considered harm because it is not the same as intentionally targeting a species, called “take.”
Environmentalists say that the definition of “take” has always included actions that harm species, and the definition of “harm” has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“There’s just no way to protect animals and plants from extinction without protecting the places they live, yet the Trump administration is opening the flood gates to immeasurable habitat destruction,” said Noah Greenwald, co-director of endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This administration’s greed and contempt for imperiled wildlife know no bounds, but most Americans know that we destroy the natural world at our own peril. Nobody voted to drive spotted owls, Florida panthers or grizzly bears to extinction.”
The ESA prohibits “take” of endangered species by any person, including individuals, government entities and corporations, the Center wrote in a news release. Take has been defined to include actions that “harm” endangered species through “significant habitat modification or degradation.”
The Administration’s proposal would fully rescind this definition, the Center wrote. That would open “the door for industries of all kinds to destroy the natural world and drive species to extinction in the process.”
While the proposed rule could drastically change how habitat protections are considered for threatened and endangered species listed under the ESA, according to the Center, an April 17 Federal Register posting of the proposal says that the Administration is simply adhering to the meaning of the ESA.
“The existing regulatory definition of ‘harm,’ which includes habitat modification, runs contrary to the best meaning of the statutory term ‘take.’ We are undertaking this change to adhere to the single, best meaning of the ESA,” an April 17 Federal Register posting says (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/17/2025-06746/rescinding-the-definition-of-harm-under-the-endangered-species-act).
The Federal Register posting seeks public comment on Trump’s April 15 proposal. Comments are due by May 19. If the proposal is finalized, the Administration plans to take the next step and submit an Executive Order to solidify the proposal.
“The ESA itself defines “take,” and further elaborating on one subcomponent of that definition “harm”—is unnecessary in light of the comprehensive statutory definition,” the Federal Register says.
The ESA was passed by Congress in 1973, designating two agencies to share the responsibility for administering the law: Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries).
Habitat destruction is the biggest cause of extinction and this definition of harm has been pivotal to protecting and recovering endangered species, the Center wrote.
“It was upheld in the Supreme Court case Babbitt v. Sweet Home – 515 U.S. 687 (1995). The inclusion of habitat destruction in the prohibition on take has been critical to saving species. It’s a key difference between the federal Endangered Species Act and almost all state endangered species laws.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbitt_v._Sweet_Home_Chapter_of_Communities_for_a_Great_Oregon)
“Without a prohibition on habitat destruction, spotted owls, sea turtles, salmon and so many more imperiled animals won’t stand a chance,” said Greenwald. “Trump is trying to drive a knife through the heart of the Endangered Species Act. We refuse to let him wipe out America’s imperiled wildlife, and I believe the courts won’t allow this radical assault on conservation.”
A report by the Center called “Trump’s Extinction Proposal,” says that “The proposal has profound, life-altering implications for endangered animals in the United States that are currently protected under the Endangered Species Act” (https://biologicaldiversity.org/publications/papers/Trumps-Extinction-Proposal.pdf).
“Habitat loss is a key driver of extinctions around the globe and in the United States. The protection of habitat has therefore been a crucial element in preventing extinction for species protected under the Act,” the Center’s report says.
According to the report, the ESA prohibits “take” of endangered species by individuals, government entities and corporations. Take has been defined to include actions that “harm” endangered species through “significant habitat modification or degradation.”
“This definition of harm has been pivotal to protecting and recovering endangered species and preventing the destruction of their most important habitat,” the report says. “It was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995. The Trump administration’s extinction proposal would fully rescind this definition, opening the door for industries to mine, log, bulldoze, drain, pollute and otherwise destroy habitat that’s fundamental to the survival of endangered species.”
The Center’s report lists 10 species at risk of extinction due to the Executive Order and one of those species is Chinook salmon.
Nine populations of Chinook salmon are protected under the ESA. Salmon have declined in numbers since the 1800s from habitat destruction, such as “indiscriminate logging, development, dams, river diversion and dramatic reductions in coastal wetlands,” the report says. “The Snake River once supported Chinook runs of half a million fish each autumn but this once-mighty population had a run of only 78 fish in 1990 and remains at less than 10% of its historic numbers today.”
Salmon rely on clear, cool water and connected habitat for them to complete their juvenile and adult migration, but under Trump’s proposed rule, salmon will no longer be protected, says the Center.
“The Trump administration is threatening the survival of some of America’s most iconic animals with this devastating habitat proposal,” Greenwald said. “You simply can’t protect species without protecting the places they live, and Trump’s radical plan might be the end of the Florida panther or the spotted owl. It’s incredibly sad and disturbing to see this administration pressing fast-forward on the extinction crisis.”
According to the Environment and Energy Law Program at Harvard University this matters because, while the ESA provides protections for threatened and endangered species, the level of protection given to each species and the number of species protected depends on how agencies interpret the Act and apply it through regulations. Those regulations, the Harvard Program says, contain detailed definitions and the steps that federal agencies need to take to apply the protections in the Act to species and their habitats. “The regulations are the ‘how-to’ guide that upholds the purpose of the Endangered Species Act, ‘to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend,’” it says.
In an Environmental Law blog, The National Law Review says that Section 9 of the ESA prohibits the “take” of any endangered species.
Under the ESA, “take” means to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any such conduct.” Existing regulations further define “harm” as “an act that actually kills or injures fish or wildlife … [including] significant habitat modification or degradation where it actually kills or injures wildlife by significantly impairing essential behavioral patterns, including breeding, feeding or sheltering,” the Review says.
Trump, through NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is proposing “to eliminate the regulatory definition of “harm,” leaving only the statutory definition of “take,” which the Services said they interpret as prohibiting only affirmative acts that are intentionally directed toward particular members of a listed wildlife species,” the Law Review says. “Actions that could indirectly harm listed wildlife by modifying their habitat would no longer be prohibited by the ESA, removing a significant source of potential liability for projects that involve clearing, grading, vegetation removal and similar activities.
“While effects on listed species’ habitat still could trigger a federal agency’s obligation to consult with the Services under Section 7 of the ESA, many projects lacking a federal “handle” such as a federal approval or funding, likely would be able to forgo seeking ESA authorization,” the Law Review concludes.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced the selection of 15 projects that will receive funding for the restoration, enhancement and protection of salmon and steelhead (anadromous salmonid) habitat in California watersheds.
Western Washington’s Olympic Peninsula summer and winter steelhead were found by NOAA Fisheries in November 2024 to be at moderate risk of extinction, but the federal agency has yet to list the fish as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a new complaint filed Jan. 17 in federal court by The Conservation Angler and the Wild Fish Conservancy.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has directed Washington state agencies to take all actions necessary, in cooperation with the state of Oregon and four lower Columbia Basin treaty tribes, to fulfill the State of Washington’s commitments to the Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.
A lawsuit contending that lower Columbia River hatcheries downstream of Bonneville Dam are a threat to wild salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act was settled in part last week.
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