Defending Wild Chinook Salmon and Killer Whales
The Conservation Angler and Wild Fish Conservancy filed a state legal challenge seeking an end to excessive chinook salmon hatchery production that will harm wild chinook and orca whales.
Spurred by improper Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission action in June, 2018, The Conservation Angler (TCA) and Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) file a lawsuit in Washington state court challenging the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) increased hatchery production of chinook salmon throughout the state without undertaking the thorough review of impacts as required by Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA).
Our joint press release can be read here. In that two-page piece, you will find links to the legal brief if you want to take a deeper dive.
If you have a few more minutes, you can listen to David Moskowitz, TCA’s executive director, providing testimony to the WA Commission in August 2020 outlining the administrative, legal and ecologic rational for not adopting the policy now being challenged. That audio link is here.
TCA is very pleased to join our colleagues at WFC in court to force suspension of this misguided hatchery production increase because it fails to successfully consider the vast body of scientific evidence on the risks of hatchery production to wild salmon and other dependent wildlife species. Our goal is to reduce reliance on unproven, expensive and risky hatchery production. The region must adopt ecologically sound solutions to wild salmon and orca declines and recovery, addressing the most pressing limiting factors on these at-risk species.
