July 17, 2000
Coho salmon and their cousins, chinook and steelhead, are sliding precipitously toward extinction in northern California. Here on the North Coast, where most watersheds critical to the coho?s survival traverse vast tracts of industrial timberland, logging is a primary cause of the fishery?s decline.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) cited logging and associated activities as major reasons for the listing of coho salmon as ?threatened? under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). Central California populations of Coho made the list in late 1996, and were joined in the spring of 1997 by northern California and southern Oregon Coho. A few months after the ESA listings, NMFS published an additional regulation making it illegal to ?take? Coho. ?Take? includes not only direct killing but also habitat destruction and impairment of normal breeding, feeding, and sheltering patterns. In December 1999, NMFS released a set of guidelines that would likely avoid ?take? as a result of logging on private lands. Unlike California?s Forest Practice Rules, the NMFS guidelines called for wide ?no cut? buffer zones along all streams as well as detailed protections for steep slopes and unstable areas. The California Department of Forestry (CDF), however, maintained business as usual, rubber-stamping hundreds of plans calling for clearcutting steep hillsides and logging streamside areas. On March 1, EPIC led almost 20 conservation, fisheries, Native American, and restoration organizations in filing a long-contemplated lawsuit against the state?s oversight of the logging plan approval process.
Federal courts in other parts of the country have repeatedly determined that state and local authorities may be held liable for violating the ESA if the activities they permit are likely to cause a ?take? of listed species. The evidence is clear that California?s logging rules, as implemented by the Director of CDF, the Board of Forestry and the Secretary of the Resources Agency, cause ?take? of coho and other aquatic species. EPIC went to court June 23, seeking to halt approval of logging plans in watersheds where coho are still present. After hearing from attorneys representing all sides, the judge declined to issue the injunction, but instructed all parties to work out a schedule for quickly bringing the case to trial. While we were disappointed in the court?s reluctance to provide immediate protection for coho, we welcome the opportunity to fully present our overwhelming evidence that the state?s logging rules result in destruction of essential coho habitat in direct violation of the ESA.
Once again, citizens have been forced into the position of enforcing laws that the state and federal governments, out of political timidity, have failed to enforce. Thanks to the support of a vocal and active community, EPIC and its fellow plaintiffs hope to meet this challenge and secure lasting changes on behalf of coho, chinook, steelhead, and the other wild creatures that depend upon clean streams and intact forest watersheds.
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TOC for Forest & River News, Summer 2000