Federal Agency Seeks Protection for Coho Salmon

In the most far-reaching decision in the history of the Endangered Species Act, the Clinton Administration on Wednesday announced a proposal to declare coho salmon a threatened species in Northern California and Oregon.

For decades a beloved cultural, economic and environmental icon in the Pacific Northwest, the wild fish is headed toward extinction and needs federal protection, government fisheries experts announced after a two-year review.

Recovery of the silver-and-blue fish is one of the most formidable environmental challenges facing the West Coast and could surpass the famed spotted owl in causing divisiveness over the Endangered Species Act.

The long-delayed decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service comes at a time when the new Republican-led Congress plans to overhaul the 22-year-old law and slash the funding of the federal agencies that enforce it.

“This is the most significant listing proposal in the history of the Endangered Species Act, and one look at a map will tell you why,” said William Stelle, the fishery service’s Northwest regional director. “The geographic scope of this listing is enormous.”

The designation would protect coho salmon along 700 miles of coastline, from the San Lorenzo River near Santa Cruz north to the Columbia River, and in streams that flow more than 100 miles inland.

The federal agency, however, concluded that there is insufficient proof that coho in Washington state are endangered or threatened, although it promised another review within a year.

The proposal is extraordinary in that the bulk of the affected land is privately owned--90% of it in California and half in Oregon--which raises the political stakes and difficulty of the recovery efforts.

The fish will be afforded no immediate protection under the law, since a yearlong review, including public hearings, must be held before a final decision.

The Clinton Administration sought to defuse the controversy by proposing a threatened status, rather than endangered. That allows the federal government to mold a conservation plan that gives more flexibility and control to landowners, local communities, state governors and Native American tribes.

But many environmentalists are angry that the Administration left off Washington’s coho and ignored compelling scientific evidence that the species should be declared endangered, not just threatened. They fear the consensus approach is too weak to safeguard the salmon and accused the federal agency of bowing to the Wilson Administration and other politicians in the three states.

“It appears that politics has overridden science in this process,” said Barbara Boyle, the Sierra Club’s regional director.

Facing a variety of man-made disturbances of their spawning grounds, many salmon populations on the West Coast have virtually disappeared, and some stocks are already extinct.

Because an array of factors are to blame, some experts say coho salmon will require a more complex and longer recovery than virtually any other species in the country.

“This really is about how we use water in the West,” said Michael Blumm, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, who has studied salmon for 17 years. “It is a microcosm of poor water management practices that characterize the West of the 20th Century. Salmon are the ultimate barometer of the health of a watershed.”

Coho spawn in freshwater streams, a resource frequently filled for development, diverted for hydropower generation and silted up by timber and agricultural operations. Such practices, rather than overfishing, are widely considered the major causes of the fishes’ decline.

The proposed listing is not expected to stop timber operations and other uses of the habitat. But it would be likely to alter some logging practices and road building so coastal streams are protected from sedimentation, temperature increases and loss of vegetation.

Although other wars over species pit jobs against the environment, many of the Pacific Coast’s jobs and revenues have already vanished with the salmon.

Earnings of the coho commercial fishing industry, which reached $30 million a year in the 1970s, dwindled to zero in 1994 and 1995 because the fisheries in the continental United States have been closed indefinitely. Another $40 million to $60 million per year has been lost in sportfishing revenue.

Most commercially sold fish now comes from Alaska, Canada or overseas.

The fisheries service estimates that 10,000 fishing jobs may have been lost in the West’s coastal communities since the late 1970s.

The largest losses to coho populations are along California’s central coast from Santa Cruz to Mendocino, where only 1,500 to 5,000 spawn, less than 1% of their peak 40 years ago, fisheries scientists estimate. Throughout the three states, spawning coho have been depleted an estimated 90%.

More than two dozen environmental and sport-fishing groups petitioned the Clinton Administration in 1993 to protect the fish.

John Beuttler, executive director of United Anglers, representing 30,000 California sport fishers, said the federal action was not only late in coming, but too weak--a reaction to “attack by right-wing elements in Congress.”

The salmon, in fact, may never receive the proposed protection because Congress is debating its biggest overhaul of environmental regulations in two decades.

Congress has imposed a moratorium on new species listings in 1995, and is considering extending it indefinitely. Also, the budgets of all wildlife agencies have been targeted by the House Appropriations Committee.

The Clinton Administration has shown a preference for declaring controversial species threatened, instead of endangered, when private land is at stake. It embraced a groundbreaking effort in 1993 for the California gnatcatcher, a songbird that inhabits valuable coastal land largely in Orange and San Diego counties.

A declaration of threatened means a species cannot be harmed or harassed without federal approval, the same protection that applies under a status of endangered. But it differs by allowing federal agencies to avoid inflicting the rigorous project-by-project reviews on landowners and instead form alliances with local communities to create conservation plans.

At a press conference in Seattle, Stelle called Pacific salmon “too sacred” for federal biologists alone to decide their fate and guide their recovery.

“I hope in a year’s time,” Stelle said, “we can reconvene here . . . and say we have succeeded in weaving the web of conservation efforts . . . and conclude that we don’t need the Endangered Species Act because we’ve found a better way.”

California Gov. Pete Wilson’s lead official on salmon policy, John A. Amodio, praised the decision Wednesday at the federal fishery agency’s press conference held alongside the Sacramento River.

The Wilson Administration has long urged a threatened listing. Amodio said it provides all the legal authority to restore wild coho while allowing “greater flexibility” and “cooperation on the part of the involved parties.”

In Oregon, Roy Hemmingway, the governor’s salmon policy adviser, said affected parties in his state already are working to bring coho fishing back.

But opponents of such business-friendly consensus-building say it is too late for political compromises.

Sierra Club lobbyist Michael Paparian said Wednesday’s action leaves too much discretion with the Wilson Administration to protect its friends in the timber industry.

Forestry and water boards “dominated by Wilson appointees . . . will be put in a very tough position,” Paparian said. “Some of their best allies are those who are destroying the fishery.”

Since 1993, Wilson has received more than $200,000 in campaign contributions from four of Northern California’s large timber companies, state records show. Contribution reports for his current presidential campaign are not available.

Critics of the consensus-building approach point out that it has failed so far in the Pacific Northwest.

“If the recovery efforts for coho mirror the recovery efforts for the Chinook and the sockeye, I wonder how effective they will be,” Blumm said. “They have come up with plans that don’t accomplish much.”

Timber companies dispute accusations that they roll roughshod over salmon streams.

“I won’t deny that timber harvesting does result in accelerated erosion,” which clouds streams and kills fish eggs, said Tom Herman, resources manager of Pacific Lumber Co. in Humboldt County.

But Herman said the company operates “under what are already considered the strictest forest practices,” submits to periodic environmental reviews and voluntarily works to protect coho salmon on its lands.

“I think we’re providing a quality hotel for the fish to come and spawn in,” he said.

Bob Taylor, director of wildlife ecology for the California Forestry Assn., said the timber industry group supports the decision.

“We fight a lot of listing efforts, but this is not one of those,” he said.

Wild coho has long been a symbol of natural abundance and rejuvenation in the West, and has great cultural significance to Native Americans.

Born and reared in freshwater streams, a coho swims to the ocean to forage for a year or two, then somehow finds its way back to the place where it was born to spawn and die.

For the Washington populations at Puget Sound, the lower Columbia River and southwestern coast, the federal agency has proposed candidate status, which offers no protection but triggers another review within a year.

“What that means is things look awfully bad for this species [in Washington] but we don’t have enough information yet to make a decision,” said fisheries service spokesman Brian Gorman.

Some observers speculate that political reasons are behind the Clinton Administration’s refusal to list the Washington populations. The state is home to several Republican congressional leaders attacking the Endangered Species Act.

“With the Endangered Species Act, the fewer people you get upset about it, the better,” Blumm said.

But Bob Turner, director of Washington state’s wildlife agency, said the federal law is “very restrictive and constraining” and his state can be more successful on its own.

“The listing or proposed no-listing does not in of itself add a single fin to the stocks,” he said. “It’s the actions of people that will help us rebuild our runs.”

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Protecting the Coho Salmon

The Clinton Administration proposed Wednesday to list coho salmon in California and Oregon as a threatened species. In Washington state, coho were either rejected for listing or proposed as a candidate, which means another review will occur. In areas where the salmon is designated as threatened, harm to its habitat is prohibited. Unlike an endangered status, however, listing a species as threatened gives federal officials flexibility in working out conservation plans with landowners and communities.