Crediting strong efforts by the state of Oregon to limit fishing, reform hatchery production and improve freshwater habitat, NOAA Fisheries said Tuesday it’s shelving its proposal to return Oregon coastal coho to the threatened species list.

“I applaud the hard work of local agriculture, forestry, state, tribal and other federal partners to develop a solid plan for recovery,” Bob Lohn, the NOAA Fisheries Northwest regional administrator, said in a statement. “This is an encouraging example of the diverse interests that can come together to improve conditions for salmon in the Pacific Northwest.”

With no federal protection, there will be fewer regulations on logging, agriculture, land development and restoration work from Astoria to Port Orford.

Douglas Timber Operators Executive Director Bob Ragon said the decision won’t likely increase logging in the region, but will ultimately mean less threat of lawsuits and restrictive bureaucratic red tape in the future.

“It’s been a decision that we’ve been looking forward to and it’s good news,” Ragon said.

The state of Oregon will have a draft plan ready this summer detailing how it will continue rebuilding Oregon coastal coho populations, said Ed Bowles, fisheries chief for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Nothing on the ground is going to change because of this from the fish’s perspective,” Bowles said. “We will still continue doing the good stewardship activities. We will continue to fix things that are broken within the watersheds.”

Salmon advocates said the decision was premature, with many scientists, including some within NOAA Fisheries, believing recent improvements in Oregon coastal coho numbers are largely due to weather patterns producing more food in the ocean — a condition subject to periodic change.

“We need a few more years under our belt before we know what the population trends really are,” said Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited. “If this is not a scientific decision, it’s probably based more on politics than scientists. I think they’re trying to get at least one species not on the endangered species list. I think they picked Oregon coastal coho.”

If NOAA Fisheries had gone through with its proposal to list, Oregon coastal coho would have become the 27th population of Pacific salmon stretching from the Canadian border to Southern California to be protected by the Endangered Species Act since 1991. None has ever been judged healthy enough to be delisted.

Ken Ferguson of Roseburg, director of the Steamboaters, a locally based fly-fishing conservation group, said the decision reeks as a far-reaching example of the White House’s influence on environmental rules and laws.

“I’m not surprised given the current administration. I’ve seen politics trump science more than once,” Ferguson said.

Oregon coastal coho spawn in small rivers running out of the Coast Range into the Pacific from the mouth of the Columbia south to the Sixes River near Port Orford. The area is largely private land, controlled by timber companies and farms. Historically, annual returns numbered more than 1 million fish, but that dropped to a low of about 25,000 in 1997. Returns now are running around 100,000, Bowles said.

They were the bread and butter of the Oregon salmon fleet until 1994, when federal authorities shut off ocean fishing due to plummeting numbers. They were listed as a threatened species in 1998, primarily due to overfishing, loss of habitat to logging, agriculture and urban development, and misguided hatchery practices.

At the time, hatcheries intent on boosting harvests produced as many as 8 million young fish a year, with no regard for the harm to wild fish from diluting their gene pool and producing competitors for scarce habitat. That has since been reduced to 1 million.

The 1998 threatened species listing was overturned in 2001, when a federal judge ruled that NOAA Fisheries had erred in lumping hatchery and wild fish in the same population group, but only granting threatened species protections to wild fish. That ruling was put on hold, but finally upheld in 2003.

The ruling prompted NOAA Fisheries to evaluate all its salmon listings, and it eventually decided to keep them all on the threatened and endangered species lists, even adding one.

In 2003, Gov. Ted Kulongoski reached an agreement with NOAA Fisheries to revive an earlier Oregon Plan for Salmon, which emphasized voluntary efforts to restore the fish, and last spring the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife came out with a report finding that Oregon coastal coho remained viable as a species, even when ocean conditions were poor.

“A ‘no-list’ under federal ESA does not mean these fish are firing on all cylinders,” said Bowles. “All this means is that the fish are doing well enough to not require federal protection through the ESA.”

Jim Muck, ODFW Roseburg district fish biologist, said the decision means that Oregon has done a good enough job of watershed assessment for the past eight years to prevent federal government intervention — keeping Oregon coastal coho in state control.

“We won’t have the government on our back,” Muck said.

Muck stresses, however, that there’s plenty of work to be done before wild coho can be considered fishable. Coho in the district average about 21 to 23 fish per mile in the Umpqua watershed’s rivers and streams. He said hatchery fish make up about 2 to 3 percent of that figure in the district. ODFW’s goal is to bring that figure to about 42 fish per mile.

“Even though the fish isn’t listed, we still need to continue our efforts. They’re still not healthy enough to harvest,” Muck said.


News-Review reporter Adam Pearson contributed to this report. He can be reached at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.