The Idaho Fish and Game Commission could decide at its meeting Wednesday in Coeur d’Alene to shut down the steelhead fishing season on Dec. 7 and not open a spring season.
The move to close fishing would be made in response to the threat of a lawsuit issued by a small cadre of fishing and conservation groups who believe this year’s return of protected wild steelhead is so low, that fishing should be curtailed to guard against any incidental mortality. They have legal leverage because Idaho doesn’t have an approved plan that details how the season will be monitored to avoid harm to wild steelhead protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Last month the groups, which include Idaho Rivers United, Friends of the Clearwater, the Conservation Angler, Snake River Water Keeper and the Wild Fish Conservancy, filed a 60-day notice to sue Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, Idaho Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore and members of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. That notice expires on Dec. 7.
Snake River steelhead are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. While regulations require anglers to release any wild fish they catch, a tiny fraction of those released fish die from the experience.
Idaho’s Fisheries Management and Evaluation Plan gives the state cover under the ESA to incidentally harm a small percentage of protected wild steelhead during the course of its recreational steelhead fishery. That plan expired in 2009. The state submitted a new monitoring and evaluation plan the same year but officials at Fisheries Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration let it sit idle while working on other pressing issues.
The federal agency released a draft of the plan last week and is now taking public comments on it while reviewing the plan and completing other necessary documentation under the ESA and the National Environmental Policy Act. That process could be completed and a plan approved late this winter or early next spring.
For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Lewiston Tribune.
