February 28, 2024 — U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski believes an effort by a Washington-state conservation group to put Alaska king salmon on the federal endangered-species list is misguided.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed a petition with NOAA Fisheries in January, but Murkowski says the organization has missed the mark.
“They are attempting to utilize a very legitimate law, the Endangered Species Act, for what I would consider to be a very wrongheaded purpose,” Murkowski said by phone. “And that is to basically stop our wild fisheries.”
Murkowski says Alaska’s fisheries are under threat from several sources, including environmental pressure from climate change and warming oceans, and economic pressure from Russia’s oversupply of traditional seafood markets. And there’s also ongoing litigation by the Wild Fish Conservancy itself, which sued NOAA Fisheries in 2020 to shut down the commercial troll fishery for kings in Southeast Alaska.
That tactic has yet to succeed, so Murkowski is not surprised that the Wild Fish Conservancy is trying another.