Monday May 23, 2022
Times-Standard —
A Trump era decision has further imperiled endangered fish species in the Trinity River, and commercial fishermen and local tribes are demanding the federal government take action.
This week, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and its sister organization Institute for Fisheries Research sent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a 60-day notice of their intention to sue the federal agency for violating the Endangered Species Act. The amount of water the bureau is diverting from the Trinity River to the Central Valley Project has decimated the river’s salmon populations and the fishermen are demanding a new biological opinion on the conservation methods and measures that should be required to protect them.
“There hasn’t been an updated biological opinion on the Trinity River since the year 2000,” Tom Stokely, a consultant to the federation who has been working on the Trinity River for decades, told The Times-Standard. “When they did the last biological opinion, they did not anticipate the take of coho salmon from warm water.”