Feds designate coho salmon as 'endangered'
By Peter Jamison
Thursday, July 7, 2005
Last week was a fortunate one for Lagunitas Creek's rare coho salmon – depending on how you look at it.On Wednesday, June 29, the coho's status was changed from "threatened" to "endangered" in the federal register. The salmon's uplisting, while indicating that the fish is perilously close to extinction, also guarantees the coho a new set of federal protections not afforded under its previous status.
The same day, a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals guaranteed the fish a "buffer zone" around the waters where they spawn in which the use of 38 harmful pesticides is outlawed.
On the whole, last week's events seemed to demonstrate that higher authorities are getting serious about aiding a species that has been in steady decline over the past hundred years, said biologist Paola Bouley of the Forest Knolls-based Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN).
"I think there's more and more focus being put on this species right now," she said.
Bouley added, however, that the principal threats to Lagunitas Creek's coho won't vanish overnight as a result of last week's boons. Chief among those threats are dams, which restrict the fish's historic range of habitat, and continued development in the San Geronimo and Lagunitas Creek watersheds, which can clog with nest-choking sediment the streams where the fish spawn .
"The ruling and the uplisting are not going to stop these things anytime soon," she said.
Dams slashed fish's habitat
Coho salmon, which once thrived in California's streams and off its shores, today survive in numbers that represent a mere sliver of their former population.
The fish are studied in specific regions called "Environmentally Significant Units," or ESUs. Scientists estimate that the California Central Coast ESU, which stretches from Mendocino in the north to Big Sur in the south, historically had somewhere between 50,000 and 125,000 fish. Fewer than 6,000 remain.
Dan Logan, a biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, said the coho's decline can be traced primarily to the damming off of the rivers, creeks, and streams where the fish once spawned.
In Marin County, he said, coho salmon can only gain access to about 40 percent of their historic streams – and Marin, he noted, is "one of the [coho salmon's] strongholds" in the state. In neighboring Sonoma County, by contrast, coho salmon now frequent only four percent of their historic streams.
SPAWN director Todd Steiner said that Lagunitas Creek alone is home to between 10 and 20 percent of the Central Coast's remaining coho salmon.
Despite the fish's newly endangered status, Steiner added, this year saw 500 female coho salmon returning to spawn in Lagunitas Creek – the most that SPAWN has ever recorded in its 8 years of efforts to revive the salmon population.
But such gains could be shortlived, he said, if the fish are threatened by unexpected disasters. Such disasters could include a leak of treated water into the watershed from Marin Municipal Water District's water tanks (chloramine, which is used to treat San Geronimo Valley residents' drinking water, is deadly to fish) or a severe drought.
"One long drought and we could be back down to a handful of fish," Steiner said. "One big [treated water] spill could set us back decades. We're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination."
Endangered listing ‘a stronger hammer'
The coho's federally endangered status will take effect Aug. 29, 60 days after its publication in the federal register. Coho salmon in Lagunitas Creek are already listed as "endangered" by the state of California. The practical effect of the coho's federally endangered status will be to further limit "take" on the fish.
"Take," as defined by the National Marine Fisheries, refers to a broad array of human actions that reduce a species' population: "to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect."
Some take is permitted on a species listed as "threatened," fisheries biologist Logan told The Light . Once a species is endangered, however, the prohibition on "take" becomes nearly absolute.
"When a species is listed as threatened, the Endangered Species Act allows [the National Marine Fisheries] to offer some flexibility in those take prohibitions," Logan said. "When they're endangered, they just have complete coverage in there." Such coverage, Logan added, could mean headaches for those – including residents, government agencies and water districts – planning construction projects within the coho's watershed. Building permits, already difficult to get in the Valley, may become even harder to come by with the salmon's uplisted status.
Steiner said that the coho's new federal listing will give SPAWN "a bigger hammer in preventing future impacts to the fish." Biologist Bouley said that the listing could help SPAWN secure funding.
Court upholds pesticide ban
Also on Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2002 federal district court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency was failing to comply with the Endangered Species Act because it did not protect salmon from harmful pesticides.
Amy Williams-Derry, an attorney for Earthjustice, the non-profit lawfirm that brought the suit against the EPA, said in a statement that the court had stood up to corporate pesticide producers and their government allies.
"Fortunately the courts have just said no to the pesticide makers and their friends in the federal government who think having pesticides in our waters is fine," Williams-Derry said.
The Appeals Court's ruling preserves a no-spray "buffer zone" of 100 yards around salmon habitat for pesticides released in the air and 20 yards for pesticides sprayed directly into the ground. The ruling also requires that a "salmon hazard" warning label be placed on seven common pesticides sold over-the-counter in home and garden stores.
Bouley said that pesticide use is a problem in the Valley, where she believes some landowners may be flaunting the no-spray zone around Lagunitas Creek.
"We've approached landowners we know are using these chemicals," Bouley told The Light . "And they know [the no-spray zone] is not being enforced,"
Bouley said that pyrethrins, a group of insecticides widely used in mosquito control, are especially poisonous to coho salmon. She added that SPAWN has endorsed the non-toxic mosquito-control protocol drafted by the Bolinas Public Utility District's Mosquito Advisory Committee.
"The scientific literature has stated that these [pyrethrins] are extremely toxic to salmon, and particularly coho," Bouley said. "[The use of pyrethrins] is not something we could support."