November 10, 2020 — On November 5, 2020, a federal court ruled in favor of Cascadia Wildlands’ lawsuit that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated core federal laws when it approved the first-ever genetically engineered (GE) animal: a GE salmon! This decision is a huge victory for wild salmon, the environment, and our fishing communities.
August 7, 2019 — An Oregon judge has issued a decision concluding the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission violated Oregon law in denying a petition filed by five conservation groups demanding the commission uplist the murrelet from threatened to endangered under the Oregon Endangered Species Act.
July 26, 2019 — Late Wednesday afternoon after hours of deliberation, the Oregon Board of Forestry voted 5-2 to accept a petition for rulemaking on coho salmon. The petition was brought by 22 different conservation and fishing groups under a rarely used portion of the Forest Practices Act which requires the Board to consider forest protections on private and state land when species are listed under state or federal endangered species acts. The Board is required to identify “resource sites” for listed species and subsequently develop rules to protect these species if threatened by state and private logging practices.
April 24, 2019 — Today, twenty conservation and fishing organizations delivered a rulemaking petition to the Oregon Board of Forestry requesting new rules to prevent logging-related harm to “resource sites” for coho salmon listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Act. Coho salmon, which are split into three evolutionarily significant units in Oregon, were first listed in Southern Oregon in 1997, and soon thereafter along the rest of the Oregon Coast in 1998. The Lower Columbia coho population was listed almost over a decade ago, in 2005.
September 12, 2018 — This morning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an Oregon law restricting motorized gold mining in sensitive salmon streams. In 2017, Oregon passed the Suction Dredge Reform Bill (SB 3) to protect water quality and fish habitat across the state from damaging suction dredge mining.
August 2, 2018 — Five conservation groups filed a lawsuit today against the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) Commission for failing to uplist the marbled murrelet from threatened to endangered under the Oregon Endangered Species Act.
by Nick Cady, Legal Director It has been a long road to suction-dredge mining reform in Oregon, but this campaign is close to finalizing permanent protections for Oregon’s iconic rivers and wild salmon. Suction dredging is an incredibly harmful, gold-mining practice that involves sucking up fragile river bottoms through a large, gas-powered vacuum. This mining practice … Continue reading Saving Oregon’s Famed Rivers and Wild Salmon from Gold Mining
