The Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently affirmed a district court order requiring that the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Corps of Engineers, and the Bureau of Reclamation conduct spill operations and monitoring at dams and related facilities in the Federal Columbia River Power System in order to protect migrating salmon and steelhead. The district court issued the order after finding the continued low abundance of the species made them vulnerable to extinction from shock events such as climate change. National Wildlife Federation v. NMFS, 886 F.3d 803 (9th Cir. 2018).
This appeal is the latest development in a long-running dispute regarding salmonids in the Columbia River listed as endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The fish migrate up and down the Columbia and Snake Rivers every year, encountering the Columbia River dams. Turbines in the dams cause a high rate of mortality for the salmonid species that pass through or near them.
A 2014 Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion concluded that ongoing operation of the dams would jeopardize ESA-listed species and adversely modify their critical habitat. It proposed an alternative that included multiple...
