At the turn of the century, 1.4 million coho thrived in Oregon's coastal rivers. Today, fewer than 50,000 coho remain in Oregon. These declines have been disastrous for fishing communities. During the 1970's, coastal communities in the Pacific Northwest received between $60 and $70 million per year directly from the coho troll fishery. Today that number is essentially zero. Virtually no commercial or sport fishery for coho remains in Oregon or California.
"We're working to restore native coho populations to levels of biological and economic vitality," said Diane Valantine, ONRC's Salmon and Rivers Program Leader. "The Endangered Species Act is one of our best tools for protecting and restoring salmon species and the human communities dependent on them."
Coho salmon are endangered due to a combination of human caused problems including habitat destruction and loss, and over-harvest practices. These factors have eliminated the coho's ability to withstand adverse natural conditions like the "El Nino" ocean currents.
Coho are particularly sensitive to habitat damage because they stay in rivers longer than other salmon species before migrating to the sea. Juvenile coho need sheltered side-channels and wetlands in which to take refuge from high winter flows. But the region's heavily logged watersheds have lost the ability to gather and store moisture, resulting in harmful winter runoff and low summer flows. Riparian vegetation no longer shades streams, stabilizes banks, provides nutrients that suport the food chain, or contributes the large woody debris that creates refuge for fish. The use of splash dams to flush logs downstream channelized many miles of coastal streams, and floodplain areas have been drained and filled for agriculture and other development. Riparian areas must be protected and restored if we are to bring back the coho.
"Dumping of homogenous hatchery coho has overwhelmed native stocks," said Bill Bakke, Oregon Trout's Conservation Director. "Hatchery fish pose serious threats to native stocks in spawning and rearing areas and they also lead to over-harvest problems on native stocks. The end result is that fewer fish make it back, only to face poor spawning and rearing conditions. It's a death spiral towad extinction."
ONRC and Oregon Trout filed separate petitions in 1993 with the National Marine Fisheries Service asking that coho be listed under the Endangered Species Act. Oregon Trout, along with two other groups, filed a petition for coastal coho on July 21, while ONRC joined 20 other groups in a petition for coho in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California on October 20, 1993. (In addition, Santa Cruz County petitioned on March 11, 1993 for two Central California populations.)
Once a petition is filed, the Endangered Species Act gives NMFS one year to decide whether to propose a species for listing. The agency is now more than six months late on one petition and more than three months late on the other. Under the ESA, federal agencies must be given 60-days notice before they can be taken to court, even for an obvious violation of law.
"The law is crystal clear on this matter and the government has broken it," said attorney Mike Sherwood.