Washington Coast Chinook are “most likely at low risk of extinction,” according to a federal status review, potentially lowering the odds of an eventual Endangered Species Act listing for the population.
The review looked at Chinook runs in Willapa Bay, Grays Harbor, the Central and North Coast and western Strait of Juan de Fuca and found that while some individual basins had somewhat higher risks, the overall population was “not at risk in a significant portion of its range.”
The work was done by the federal Northwest Fisheries Science Center and National Marine Fisheries Service and was in response to a July 2023 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Rivers to either list Washington Coast spring Chinook as threatened or endangered, or all springers, summer-run and fall Chinook here as such.
In making their determination, the feds looked at abundance of the salmon, their productivity, spatial structure and diversity of the population, as well as the relative impacts of habitat modification, overharvest, disease and predation, regulatory protections, hatchery production and climate change – the factors considered for making an ESA listing – and determined that the evolutionary significant unit was in “low-risk status.”
That said, the review stated North Coast and Straits Chinook were at somewhat higher risk due to smaller returns, small watersheds and “substantial hatchery influence,” though not greater than the overall population. Chinook in Willapa Bay, with its lower gradient streams more susceptible to a warming climate and less stringent habitat protections than federal ground, were also called out, as were Chehalis and other spring Chinook runs.
The deep dive was precipitated by an initial 90-day finding to the petition that was issued in December 2023 and found that a listing “may be warranted.”
Next up in the process is an independent peer review of the status review, followed by a 12-month finding from NMFS on whether an ESA listing is either warranted or not.
While the Washington Coast Chinook status review is dated May 2025, it appears to have only appeared on NMFS’s website in early September.
NMFS is also under a court agreement to issue a key Endangered Species Act listing finding on Olympic Peninsula steelhead by December 1. The feds have already found that a listing “may be warranted” for what some consider to be Washington’s “crown jewel” fish, those that run up the Hoh and Q rivers of the North Coast, and the agency’s status review found them to be at “moderate risk of extinction.”
