The Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC), Wild Steelhead Coalition (WSC) and three other groups filed suit in Seattle federal court this week, accusing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of sucking at its job by failing to propose and implement a Puget Sound wild steelhead recovery plan.

Puget Sound steelies return today at a lousy 3 percent of historical abundance and the entire population was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2007. Other than cutting off catch and release seasons and pissing off recreational anglers, NMFS has failed to show any leadership or urgency in saving these fish. The ESA listing requires NMFS to produce a recovery plan, but nine years later no plan has materialized and conservation groups are fed up.

The elusive plan would address and attempt to mitigate the impacts of the 4 h’s, hydro, habitat, harvest and hatcheries on wild steelhead. The latter has already been the subject of a WFC lawsuit.

In a Seattle Times op-ed, WFC director of science, Jamie Glasgow said, “Without a plan, state, tribal and federal agencies are flying blind. They are lacking a coordinated strategy or even clear wild steelhead recovery goals, let alone the means to achieve them. In the meantime, the wild steelhead decline continues.” He also notes current efforts are failing, adding, “As we have seen for the past nine years, when recovery efforts are not guided by a science-driven plan, they are inefficient, expensive and ineffective—a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Hopefully this legal lightning bolt will jolt NMFS into action. We cannot afford to lose such a precious icon.

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Tom Bie
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Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

Category: Daily Drake
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Author: Tom Bie

Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.

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