Suit May Have Altered Salmon Plan Papers Show Feds Pressured Fish Agency To Alter Proposals

The National Marine Fisheries Service disregarded biological evidence and eased salmon-saving proposals under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, according to federal documents obtained by The Oregonian.

Charles H. Lobdell, state supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s field office in Boise, said in an internal memo that the Justice Department exerted pressure to gain leverage in an environmental lawsuit.

The fisheries service “should remind the Justice Department that they have” an Endangered Species Act “responsibility like any federal department,” the government scientist said in the memo.

“I wrote that memo and I believed what was in it,” he said Thursday. “I still do.”

Lobdell’s memo also criticized the fisheries service for not providing enough protection for Snake River salmon that are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

The fisheries service changed its opinion on the impact of activities in eight Eastern Oregon and Idaho forests.

The federal government and Northwest electric ratepayers are spending millions of dollars a year to save salmon that spawn in Snake and Columbia river tributaries.

The changed opinion “shakes our confidence in the (fisheries service’s) ability to adequately represent and protect our joint interests,” Lobdell wrote in his memo.

Fisheries service documents, called biological opinions, were obtained by The Oregonian. They reveal that the agency’s opinion on those activities was changed. “I was told by (fisheries service) staff that they were receiving extreme pressure from Justice because of the suit,” Lobdell said.

The biological opinions were changed to ease restrictions involving road building, stream bank protection, cattle grazing and mining.

Lobdell’s memo and the draft biological opinions that were changed were provided to the newspaper by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund office in Seattle. The defense fund sued the government, on behalf of the Pacific Rivers Council in Eugene, over its failure to consult on forest plans that could affect endangered salmon.

The government lost the case, resulting in injunctions that threatened to stop - and in some cases did stop - logging, grazing and mining in those Eastern Oregon and Idaho forests, which cover 11 million acres.

The Justice Department appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.