Petition Seeks Protection For Chinook Runs Environmental Groups Unhappy With Pace Of Federal Salmon Report

Unhappy with the government’s slow pace in protecting Northwest salmon, environmentalists have filed a petition to list all West Coast chinook runs as threatened or endangered species.

The National Marine Fisheries Service already has pledged to report on the status of all salmon and steelhead species in the region, with a December deadline for recommending whether chinook salmon merit protection under the Endangered Species Act.

But after more than four months of delays for the agency to come out with its proposal for coho salmon, the Oregon Natural Resources Council decided to impose a legally binding deadline of February 1996 for the chinook decision.

Filing the petition set in motion a timetable that gives the fisheries service a year to decide whether to list the fish. If it recommends doing so, the agency has another year to make it final.

The council, which filed the petition last week, also plans to file a 60-day notice of intent to sue over the delays in the coho report, said Diane Valantine, salmon and rivers program leader for the group.

The council is afraid that the longer the fisheries service waits to propose a coho listing, the fewer runs will be protected, Valantine said.

Meritt Tuttle, senior policy analyst for the fisheries service in Portland, acknowledged that the agency has withdrawn some runs from its proposal for protection after receiving additional inforfish mation from state agencies and Indian tribes.

The petition represents a rift among environmental groups, some of which are hesitant to press use of the Endangered Species Act at a time when newly powerful Republicans in Congress threaten to change the law by making economics a factor in deciding whether to protect plants and animals from extinction.

“There is worry among environmentalists that if we use it, we lose it,” said Valantine. “If we can’t use it, what use is it?”