ADF&G responds to petition to add chinook salmon to Endangered Species Act

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest is planning to petition the federal government to designate critical habitat for chinook salmon in Southeast Alaska, Southwest Alaska and Cook Inlet.

The fish conservancy announced its plans in a May 24 letter addressed to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang. The nonprofit said the petition will be filed under the Endangered Species Act in no sooner than 30 days (from May 24). Although advance notice of such petitions is not required, the fish conservancy said they are doing so as a “courtesy as it is our intent to maintain open communication with the state of Alaska through this petition process about our concerns over the health of Alaska Chinook salmon.”

Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest is the same organization that sued for the closure of troller fisheries in Southeast Alaska.

In response to the letter, Vincent-Lang says that while some chinook stocks have been low in recent years, they are not near extinction levels.

“The state does not believe that any Alaskan chinook salmon stocks are endangered or threatened with extinction in the foreseeable future. We have a constitutional obligation to manage for sustained yield,” Vincent-Lang said in a written statement.

Vincent-Lang further said populations of fish have to reach numbers between 500-1,000 before that species is under threat of extinction.

“There’s a difference between low productivity and a stock being threatened with extinction, or being threatened with their very existence,” Vincent Lang said in an interview. “Our management is to provide for sustained yield, and in many cases, maximum sustained yield. And we may close a fishery to get to that past level of yield. But that’s a long way, a long stretch, from not being able to provide for the continued existence [of a species], which Endangered Species Act is centered around.”

Once a petition is filed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list a species under the Endangered Species Act, it will undergo a service review that will take place within 90 days to ensure there is substantial information to warrant the listing.

If it passes, it then undergoes a period of status review and gathering information no longer than 12 months.

If the petition is deemed warranted after review, then the petition is subject to expert and public opinion for a 60-day comment period before a final ruling is made.

Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest was not immediately available for comment.

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