Saving Seafood

US fishing groups to sue over chemicals in tires

August 30, 2023 — Two fishing industry groups plan to sue a baker’s dozen of U.S. tire manufacturers over a chemical found in rubber tires, which the groups claim have had “devastating impacts” on salmon and steelhead.

The chemical, 6PPD, is used to prevent tires from degrading too quickly. However, it breaks down into 6PPD-quinone when exposed to ground-level ozone. The new chemical can kill coho salmon within hours of exposure and can lead to urban runoff mortality syndrome, according to environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, which is representing the Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR) and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA) in the lawsuit.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Environmental law group threatens to sue tire manufacturers over pollutants

August 22, 2023 — On Aug. 15, environmental litigation group, Earthjustice, notified more than a dozen American tire manufacturers of their intent to sue them over violations of the Endangered Species Act if they do nothing to stop their alleged chemical pollution.

In the letter to the tire manufacturers, Earthjustice acknowledges that the suit is being made on behalf of the Institute for Fisheries Resources and Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, because chemicals used in the production of tires has had adverse impacts on coho, steelhead and Chinook salmon species.

Read the full story at Seattle Weekly

Judge throws out Trump-era rollbacks on endangered species

July 6, 2022 — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, a year after the Biden administration said it was moving to strengthen such species protections.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California eliminated the Trump-era rules even as two wildlife agencies under President Joe Biden are reviewing or rescinding the regulations. The decision restores a range of protections under the Endangered Species Act — including some that date to the 1970s — while the reviews are completed. Environmental groups hailed the decision, which they said sped up needed protections and critical habitat designations for threatened species, including salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Tigar’s ruling “spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. “Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.”

The court ruling comes as two federal agencies — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service — review five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by President Donald Trump’s administration, including critical habitat designations and rules requiring federal agencies to consult with the wildlife or fisheries services before taking actions that could affect threatened or endangered species.

Read the full story at the AP News

US Representative Jared Huffman files bill to reauthorize Magnuson-Stevens Act

July 26, 2021 — U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) announced on Monday 26 July, 2021, that he introduced a reauthorization bill for the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal law that oversees fishery management in the United States.

In a statement, Huffman said it’s time for a new reauthorization of the landmark legislation because of changes within the industry and the challenges it faces.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Oceana, Earthjustice File Suit Again Over NMFS Anchovy Rules on West Coast

February 4, 2021 — Call it a vicious circle. Maybe a vortex from which it seems there is no escape. Maybe it’s quicksand.

Regardless, Earthjustice and Oceana are, for the third time, suing NMFS over the central subpopulation of northern anchovy on the West Coast. NMFS published new anchovy catch limit regulations on Dec. 31, 2020; the conservation groups said those regulations, again, were insufficient.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Conservation groups ask federal judge to halt salmon plan

January 22, 2021 — Salmon and steelhead advocates returned to court to again ask a federal judge to overturn the government’s plan to operate dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers in a way that pushes the fish closer to extinction.

The National Wildlife Federation and several other conservation groups, including Idaho Rivers United and the Idaho Conservation League, contend a biological opinion issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and associated documents and decisions by the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration violate the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Last year, the agencies completed an environmental impact statement ordered by Judge Michael Simon of Portland after he found the government’s 2014 plan to be illegal. In it, the agencies dismissed the idea of breaching the four lower Snake River dams as too costly while also admitting that dam removal offered the fish the best chance of recovery. Instead, the agencies chose a plan built largely on spilling water at the dams to help speed juvenile salmon and steelhead downstream during their migration to the Pacific Ocean.

Todd True, the lead EarthJustice attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the groups felt forced to file.

Read the full story at The Spokesman-Review

Lawsuit claims Gulf of Mexico drilling permits violate Endangered Species Act

October 23, 2020 — Environmental groups went to federal court Oct. 21 with a lawsuit claiming the Trump administration is violating the Endangered Species Act by an inadequate interagency consultation on oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

The San Francisco-based legal foundation Earthjustice filed the action on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth and Turtle Island Restoration Network. The lawsuit attacks an assessment of the hazards that offshore oil and gas drilling and production pose to endangered marine species, issued in March by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In an earlier 2018 lawsuit filed in a federal court in Florida, Earthjustice and other groups complained NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had unreasonably delayed developing a new biological opinion – or “BiOp” in the argot of federal bureaucracy – to evaluate impacts as required by the Endangered Species Act.

The law requires certification that government actions – such as permitting offshore drilling – won’t harm endangered species. The last biological opinion was issued in 2007; BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill in 2010, with its sweeping environmental impacts and losses of marine life, triggered the process for a reassessment of the dangers.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Suit: Feds ignore risk of huge spills to endangered species

October 22, 2020 — Environmental groups asked a federal court Wednesday to throw out the Trump administration’s assessment of oil and gas activity’s likely effects on endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, saying it dismisses the chance of another disastrous blowout like the BP spill of 2010.

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s 700-page analysis greatly underestimates both the likely number and size of oil spills, according to the suit filed by Earthjustice for the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Turtle Island Restoration Network.

Even though the study was prompted by the 2010 spill, it “essentially pretends the Deepwater Horizon spill never happened — that there was nothing to learn from that disaster,” Earthjustice attorney Chris Eaton said in an interview Tuesday.

Read the full story at The Post and Courier

Federal government allowing permits for seismic blasting in Atlantic Ocean to expire

October 12, 2020 — All manner of marine life, from plankton to the largest of whales, will be spared from months of nonstop thunderous seismic blasts that could kill or harm them because the oil and gas explorers and the federal government are allowing their permits to expire on Nov. 30 — and it would take at least a year for them to obtain new ones — should they wish to, environmentalists say.

“If you had told me two years ago 2020 would begin and end without any seismic air gun testing I would have been elated; that’s why I’m elated now,” Steve Mashuda, the Seattle-based managing attorney for oceans at Earthjustice, said by telephone.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit is one of several environmental nonprofits that in December 2018 sued in a South Carolina federal court to stop the tests — twice as loud as a jet engine — sought from New Jersey’s Cape May to Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Though New York and New England were not included, the blasts are so powerful they travel thousands of miles. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and a number of other East Coast local, state and federal officials opposed them — the first step in the Trump administration’s initial plan to open the Atlantic Ocean to oil and gas firms.

Read the full story at Newsday

Agreement Reached To Protect Dwindling Shark Species

July 2, 2020 — A threatened shark species is poised to see new protections against overfishing under a deal with federal officials, conservation groups and a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, according to Earthjustice.

More than 300,000 oceanic whitetip sharks have died as bycatch in commercial fishing nets off Hawaii and American Samoa since 2013, and the species is believed to have declined by as much as 95% since the mid-1990s, according to a release from the nonprofit law organization.

It’s been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — but it’s never been designated as “overfished,” the release stated.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat