Salmon, Orcas at Risk From Lack of Fishery Oversight, Suit Says

The National Marine Fisheries Service is failing to ensure that its management of salmon fisheries off the southeastern coast of Alaska isn’t putting endangered orcas and threatened salmon at risk, a conservation group says in a new lawsuit filed in Washington federal court.

NMFS failed to comply with the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued its 2019 Southeastern Alaska Biological Opinion that relied on “ill-defined mitigation proposals” to offset threats to orca and salmon species, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

“Alaskan fishers ...