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Wednesday June 22, 2005
Fish gain protection in policy
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- A new federal policy issued Thursday puts 131 strains of hatchery salmon under Endangered Species Act protection along with their wild cousins, but it allows those raised artificially to still be harvested by fishermen.
While counting hatchery fish along with wild fish under the new policy, NOAA Fisheries decided against taking 15 populations of salmon and steelhead off the threatened and endangered species lists, added lower Columbia River coho to the threatened list, and decided to wait six months before deciding what to do with 10 listed populations of steelhead and Oregon coastal coho. California coastal coho were changed from threatened to endangered.
Both the review of Endangered Species Act status for all West Coast salmon and steelhead and the new hatchery policy were prompted by a 2001 federal court ruling that NOAA Fisheries could no longer consider the same strains of salmon and steelhead different just because one spawned naturally in the wild and one was spawned artificially in a hatchery.
NOAA Fisheries considered more than 300 strains of hatchery fish before deciding that 131 of them were genetically close enough to their wild cousins to be useful to recovery, said Bob Lohn, northwest regional administrator of the agency.
At the same time, the agency adopted a rule saying that fish marked to show they came from a hatchery would not be subject to Endangered Species Act protections against being killed, and could still be harvested by fishermen.
Wednesday June 22, 2005
Fish gain protection in policy
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- A new federal policy issued Thursday puts 131 strains of hatchery salmon under Endangered Species Act protection along with their wild cousins, but it allows those raised artificially to still be harvested by fishermen.
While counting hatchery fish along with wild fish under the new policy, NOAA Fisheries decided against taking 15 populations of salmon and steelhead off the threatened and endangered species lists, added lower Columbia River coho to the threatened list, and decided to wait six months before deciding what to do with 10 listed populations of steelhead and Oregon coastal coho. California coastal coho were changed from threatened to endangered.
Both the review of Endangered Species Act status for all West Coast salmon and steelhead and the new hatchery policy were prompted by a 2001 federal court ruling that NOAA Fisheries could no longer consider the same strains of salmon and steelhead different just because one spawned naturally in the wild and one was spawned artificially in a hatchery.
NOAA Fisheries considered more than 300 strains of hatchery fish before deciding that 131 of them were genetically close enough to their wild cousins to be useful to recovery, said Bob Lohn, northwest regional administrator of the agency.
At the same time, the agency adopted a rule saying that fish marked to show they came from a hatchery would not be subject to Endangered Species Act protections against being killed, and could still be harvested by fishermen.
