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THREATENED SALMON LISTING CHALLENGED IN COURT
BELLEVUE, Washington, January 11, 2002 (ENS) - The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit aiming to overturn the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing of the Southern Oregon/Northern California coho salmon.
The threatened listing for the coho living in the Klamath River was a factor in the government's decision to shut down water deliveries to farmers in the Klamath Basin in the spring of 2001.
"The [National Marine] Fisheries Service is guilty of using junk science to advance a political agenda," said Russ Brooks of the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a property and individual rights group which has led previous challenges to ESA protections for threatened and endangered species.
"Our rivers and streams are teeming with salmon, yet farmers have been pushed into bankruptcy, businesses are closing, and a way of life is being destroyed while government officials explain away listing fish that really aren't endangered at all,'' added Brooks.
The lawsuit announced Thursday, Oregon Grange v. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), marks the second time that PLF has challenged salmon listings brought under the ESA. In September 2001, PLF won a victory in Alsea Valley Alliance v. Daley, which challenged the Oregon Coast coho listing.
In that case, a federal judge ruled that hatchery spawned salmon are biologically indistinguishable from wild spawned salmon, and called the listing of Oregon Coast coho "arbitrary." Judge Michael Hogan ruled that the government had created the unusual circumstance of two genetically identical coho salmon swimming side by side in the same stream, while one receives ESA protection and the other does not.
The Alsea case is the basis for the new case that will be filed next week in Oregon federal court. PLF sent a 60 day notice of intent to sue to the Secretary of Commerce and NFMS in mid-November.
"We are within days of fulfilling the 60 day notice requirement," said Brooks. "Unless the government takes immediate action to remove the fish from protected status - and we have no indication that they will - PLF will be banging on the courthouse door to challenge this listing. It is time to end the nonsense and return some common sense to species listings."
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