Coho Woes

The federal government is about to add another stock of Pacific salmon to the Endangered Species List. The National Marine Fisheries Service has determined that the coastal Coho is threatened from northern California through southern Oregon. The listing means land use restrictions will be imposed on millions of acres from the coast to interior mountain ranges. But the Coho listing could have been even broader. It could have included the entire Oregon coast and with it the nation’s most productive timber lands. The federal government instead dedicded to let the state of Oregon try its own plan to recover Coho. If the state plans works it could write a new chapter in the history of the endangered species law. Ley Garnett reports.