{"id":307144,"date":"2026-05-09T04:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T04:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307144\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T04:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T04:01:16","slug":"lawyer-theres-no-need-to-punish-fishermen-to-protect-otters-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307144\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyer: There’s no need to punish fishermen to protect otters | California"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Center Square) \u2013 A law firm has called for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to restore protections for California fishermen.<\/p>\n

The request comes from the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing the California Sea Urchin Commission.<\/p>\n

Attorney Nathan Hotes said the commission is struggling because federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act have limited what fishermen can do out of concern for the southern sea otter, also known as the California sea otter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do that regularly for endangered species to a certain extent,\u00a0but what makes the otter different is that by all known metrics,\u00a0including the service’s own metrics, it’s recovered,\u201d\u00a0Hotes\u00a0told The Center Square.\u00a0\u201cSo the Sea Urchin Commission and other fishermen in California end up in a position\u00a0where they can’t go out on the water out of risk of even possibly criminal and civil liability for getting an otter to change direction or disturbing its habitat or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Hotes, \u201cnobody is trying to intentionally harm otters,\u201d but even going out on the water as the regulations currently stand can be risky.<\/p>\n

As a result,\u00a0Hotes\u00a0said it \u201ccauses all kinds of issues\u201d for fishermen.<\/p>\n

That, he added, is why Pacific Legal wants these restrictions lifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are writing two different petitions to the [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife Service\u00a0and the [U.S.] Department of Interior,\u201d said\u00a0Hotes.\u00a0\u201cWe are essentially arguing first that the\u00a0southern sea otter<\/a>\u00a0should be delisted\u00a0from the Endangered Species Act list, and I should mention the southern sea otter isn’t endangered currently. It’s threatened, but all of those fall under the Endangered Species Act,\u00a0even though it’s threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Threatened” puts sea otters in a lower-risk category than “endangered.”<\/p>\n

The Pacific Legal Foundation’s other petition seeks to restore the fishermen’s protections in the southern sea otter management zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s no lawsuit, so it’s a little out of our normal zone,\u00a0but sometimes you get issues that are lined up like this,\u201d said\u00a0Hotes.<\/p>\n

On its\u00a0website<\/a>, Pacific Legal Foundation boasts that it has been \u201csuing the government since 1973.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fishing<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A fishing boat is moored in calm blue waters beneath a clear horizon. Photo: David McElwee \/ Pexels<\/a><\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time Pacific Legal Foundation has gotten involved\u00a0with the southern sea otter issue.<\/p>\n

Pacific Legal Foundation previously petitioned in 2021 to delist the otter from the Endangered Species Act, but no changes occurred.<\/p>\n

“Now, five years later, everything we said is even more true,” Hotes told The Center Square. “The otter population has continued to rise, and the threats have continued to decrease.”<\/p>\n

On the rulemaking petition, Pacific Legal Foundation has previously litigated this issue\u00a0in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals but was not successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgency deference was very different,\u201d said\u00a0Hotes<\/a>. \u201cThe Fish and Wildlife Service jumps to what would be called Chevron deference,\u00a0and that was viable at the time, so in our rulemaking petition, we discuss how that logic no longer holds\u00a0from the earlier court case.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this issue may involve California fishermen,\u00a0Hotes\u00a0recommended that everyone around the country care about and pay attention to this issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did something with the\u00a0pinesnake<\/a>, the lesser\u00a0prairie-chicken<\/a>. We’ve had a number of cases where industry groups, fishermen, farmers,\u00a0run-of-the-mill Americans trying to work hard end up getting their efforts\u00a0completely stonewalled by federal regulation,\u201d said\u00a0Hotes. \u201cSo\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0is far from the first ESA case that Pacific Legal Foundation has worked on,\u00a0and by all indications, it won’t be the last.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Center Square has reached out to agencies and groups for comment, including the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation and the Santa Barbara-based Ocean Futures Society. They did not respond by press time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2013 A law firm has called for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to restore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,129167,10872,17742,18146,14057,9671,129169,129168],"class_list":["post-307144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-endangered-species-act-of-1973","tag-environmental-protection","tag-fishing","tag-otter","tag-pacific-legal-foundation","tag-sea-otter","tag-u-s-department-of-interior","tag-u-s-fish-and-wildlfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}