Court keeps salmon on species list

A federal appeals court has stayed a judge's ruling that took some Oregon salmon off the list of threatened species.

But a federal official said Friday's ruling likely won't affect the government's decision to reconsider whether threatened and endangered salmon throughout the Northwest really deserve that status.

That study, which was prompted by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hogan's September ruling, could cause the delisting of some salmon runs in the Snake and Columbia rivers. It was championed by groups that oppose the Endangered Species Act.

"We've said all along that the time is right" for the review, said Brian Gorman, Seattle spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Hogan ordered the NMFS to end threatened species protections for Oregon's coastal coho salmon because the agency hadn't counted hatchery-bred salmon when it decided the fish were rare enough to warrant protection.

Hogan's ruling, applauded by opponents of federal salmon- protection measures, opened the door for logging on thousands of acres in the Umpqua and Siskiyou national forests.

But Friday's two-sentence decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Hogan's ruling.

The circuit court's decision will remain in place until it has an opportunity to consider an appeal of Hogan's ruling. The appeal was brought by environmental groups that were disappointed when NMFS announced the government would not challenge the ruling.

"The logging will now stop," said Patti Goldman, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice in Seattle.

Hogan issued the delisting order after concluding that it made no sense for the government to declare wild coho salmon threatened under the Endangered Species Act while not granting the same status to hatcheryborn salmon.

In response to Hogan's ruling, several conservative groups, including irrigators from the Tri-Cities area of Washington, demanded that NMFS reconsider its protection of other salmon runs. The NMFS eventually said it would review whether 23 of the 25 groups of Pacific salmon and steelhead protected under the Endangered Species Act should keep their listings.

NMFS said it would also review the role hatcheries play in restoring dwindling salmon populations. Current federal policy considers hatchery fish a threat to the survival of wild fish because they compete for limited food and habitat, carry disease, and are less successful at survival.

In many cases, the eggs and sperm used to start hatcheries were obtained from far-flung streams, meaning the fish from those hatcheries are genetically distinct.

No other run of Northwest salmon has been the subject of so much litigation as Oregon's coastal coho.

NMFS decided in 1997 that the fish were well enough protected without being listed under the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists successfully sued to force NMFS to reconsider its decision, and the government lost several appeals. A federal judge eventually told the agency it must list the fish as threatened.

The appeal that led to Hogan's decision came after an elk hunter videotaped state workers clubbing unprotected hatchery coho. The tape has been shown at gatherings of conservative groups throughout the region and has been a popular subject on talk-radio shows in Oregon.

Many politicians and other Northwest residents contend that the government-sanctioned clubbing of salmon proves the fish aren't really endangered and that the Endangered Species Act needs reforms.

"This whole coho process is symptomatic of the tortured course in which the region finds itself in trying to decide what to do with salmon," Gorman said.

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