The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration says it will take another look at a proposed plan aimed at saving endangered Pacific salmon species of the Columbia River basin.
The announcement, which came Friday, follows a statement by a federal judge hearing a challenge to the plan that it won't likely pass muster under the Endangered Species Act unless provisions allowing for adaptive management are added.
Redden gave NOAA the option of voluntarily agreeing to reconsider the plan before he ruled on the legal challenges to it.
NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco took that offer, but signaled that her agency will not make any significant changes to the plan despite arguments from a number of environmental organizations that it is not likely to bring back the Pacific Northwest's signature species from the brink of extinction.
"The court noted that we do not need to start over from scratch, develop a new jeopardy framework or put at risk the progress made through the regional collaborative process," Lubchenco said in a statement.
The plan before Redden, who sits on the U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., does not contemplate any significant changes to the dams clustered along the Columbia and Snake rivers.
The dams are widely thought to be the most important contributor to the generally consistent declines in wild salmon stocks native to the watershed during recent decades.
NOAA's plan, which essentially proposes to more closely watch salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake river basins and then implement management strategies to cope with any continued stress facing them, is part of a biological opinion required under the ESA to allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bonneville Power Administration to continue to operate the Federal Columbia River Hydropower System.
Redden rejected earlier versions of the biological opinion issued during the George W. Bush administration. The Obama administration commenced a review of the 2008 version shortly after taking office last year.
The American Fisheries Society released last week a report concluding that a focus on adaptive management is not likely to bring about the recovery of threatened and endangered Columbia River basin salmon species.
Environmentalists, along with several Pacific Northwest states and some fishing organizations, have pushed the federal government to consider removal or breaching of four dams along the Snake River as a means to assure that goal is reached.
Photo of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) courtesy of NOAA.
