BY ANDY WALGAMOTT, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN MAGAZINE
Another petition to list an important Northwest fish stock under the Endangered Species Act appears to have been shot down by the feds, making for three in the last two and a half months.
In a filing to be posted on the Federal Register tomorrow, the National Marine Fisheries Service says that the Washington Coast Chinook population “does not warrant listing.”
The stock, which includes spring and fall kings from rivers between Willapa Bay and the western Strait of Juan de Fuca, was petitioned for listing back in August 2023 by the Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Rivers, and in their initial look, NMFS said a listing might be warranted.
A subsequent deep dive by a status review team found the fish were “most likely at low risk of extinction,” per a September 2025 finding, and now comes the feds’ official 12-month finding.
“Based on our review of the best available scientific and commercial information including the findings of the status review report, we determined that the (Washington Coast) Chinook salmon (evolutionary significant unit) is not currently in danger of extinction, nor is it likely to become so within the foreseeable future, throughout all or a significant portion of their range. We also determined the spring-run component of the WC does not meet the ESU Policy, and the WC Chinook salmon ESU should not be partitioned based on run-timing,” a NMFS statement reads.
In making last year’s determination of low risk, 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.
NMFS says its finding is final, and explained a little more about it in a statement.
“In the extinction risk assessment for WC Chinook salmon, we concluded that the ESU is at low-risk of extinction and does not warrant listing under the ESA. The ESU has high overall abundance, with numerous, well-distributed spawning populations. Habitat conditions and connectivity are generally good, and current Federal, state and Tribal management strategies have helped address historical threats. Additionally, the ESU’s high productivity allows WC Chinook salmon to maintain abundance even in the face of relatively high exploitation rates. In evaluation of the threat factors identified in section 4(a)(1) of the ESA, we find that overall the factors contribute to a low extinction risk rangewide now and in the foreseeable future. We followed the rangewide assessment with a significant portion of its range extinction risk assessment and we did not find any portions of the WC Chinook salmon range that were both significant and facing higher risk of extinction than the ESU rangewide,” NMFS wrote.
It’s the third ESA denial for one of our salmon or steelhead stocks by the Trump Administration’s Department of Commerce, which NMFS is bundled under, since the start of this winter.
In early December, the feds found it unnecessary to list Oregon Coast and Northern California Chinook, and then in January, they announced that an Olympic Peninsula steelhead listing wasn’t warranted either.
Petitions to list those stocks came from Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity and Umpqua Watersheds, and the Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler, respectively.
All three petitions were filed over the space of a year between summer 2022 and summer 2023, during the Biden Administation.
