At last federal authorities have enlisted smelt as endangered species. Last week the federal NOAA Fisheries Service announced its decision to list Pacific smelt as a threatened species. NOAA said that a recovery plan won’t be completed for several years, but the impact of the listing likely will be far less extensive than earlier salmon listings. According to NOAA climate change, declining river flows, shrimp fishing and predation by seals and sea lions are the main reasons for the smelt’s decline.
Cowlitz Indian Tribe has welcomed the move. The Tribe has launched petitioned in 2007 to have smelt listed under the ESA. Tribal chairman William Iyall said that the listing has been needed for a long time. He told that the prospect of this species going extinct is wholly unacceptable.
Smelt are in trouble in other areas also such as West Coast rivers. The threatened listing extends from the Mad River in Northern California into British Columbia. NOAA’s scientific review found that this smelt stock is indeed declining throughout its range, and further declines are expected as climate change affects the availability of its prey. The agency opined that Pacific smelt are vulnerable to being caught in shrimp fisheries in the United States and Canada.
NOAA spokesman Brian Gorman said that after a fierce political battle, state agencies last year started killing sea lions that were eating endangered salmon below Bonneville Dam. He added that NOAA and other fishery agencies will devise a recovery plan that could be years in the making.
