{"id":112322,"date":"2025-08-26T22:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T22:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/112322\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T22:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T22:30:09","slug":"the-local-pacific-fisher-population-has-again-been-denied-endangered-species-act-protection-lost-coast-outpost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/112322\/","title":{"rendered":"The Local Pacific Fisher Population Has Again Been Denied Endangered Species Act Protection | Lost Coast Outpost"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Photo: National Parks Service, public domain.<\/p>\n

Press release from the Environmental Protection Information Center:<\/p>\n


\nThe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has denied
\nlisting<\/a> for the Northern California\/Southern
\nOregon population of Pacific fishers.<\/p>\n

Fishers are
\nrelatives of mink, otters, and martens. Fishers once roamed West
\nCoast forests from Southern
\nCalifornia through British Colubmia, however trapping and habitat
\ndestruction have reduced the
\nspecies to two native populations: one in Southern Oregon\/Northern California one in
\nthe Southern Sierra Nevada mountains.<\/p>\n

Conservation groups
\nincluding EPIC, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Center
\nfor Biological Diversity
\nfirst petitioned to list the species in 2000. Consideration of that
\npetition has been repeatedly
\nstalled, with the agency repeatedly evading its responsibilities
\nunder the law, forcing litigation
\nby conservation groups.<\/p>\n

Following the 2000
\nlisting petition, conservation groups sued the Service to force a determination. In
\n2004, the Service found that listing was warranted but precluded by higher-priority
\nactivities. Following inaction by the Service, in 2010 conservation
\ngroups again sued the Service to
\nforce the government to complete a final decision. In 2014, the
\nService returned with a
\ndraft decision to list the species. Curiously, two years later the
\nService reversed its decision,
\nfinding that listing was not warranted. Conservation groups again
\nsued and won, with a judge
\nordering the agency to try again. In 2020, the Service split the
\nlarger species into two smaller
\npopulations, listing one (Southern Sierra population) as threatened
\nwhile denying protections to the
\nother (Northern California\/Southern Oregon). This decision was,
\nagain, overturned, with a
\nsettlement to re-consider listing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear that
\nthe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing its best to stop the
\nlisting of the Pacific fisher,\u201d said Tom
\nWheeler, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection
\nInformation Center. \u201cThe law,
\nhowever, requires that science drive decisions, not the whims and
\nwishes of the timber
\nindustry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pacific Fisher
\nis under threat from numerous stressors, each compounding the effects
\nof the other: climate
\nchange, including larger and more severe wildfires; rodenticide
\nexposure; logging of the mature forest habitats required by the
\nspecies; and enhanced predation from changes to forest
\necosystems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis reckless
\ndecision ignores the recommendations of professional wildlife
\nbiologists,\u201d said KS Wild\u2019s Conservation
\nDirector George Sexton. \u201cWidespread use of toxic rodenticide
\npoisons has Fishers dropping
\ndead across the landscape and the Trump Administration just doesn\u2019t
\nseem to care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFishers are
\nemblems of the Pacific Northwest\u2019s wild forests, and we have to
\nhelp them avoid extinction and
\npersevere for future generations,\u201d said Tierra Curry, senior
\nscientist at the Center for Biological
\nDiversity. \u201cWe\u2019ll keep working to protect these carnivores and
\nthe special places they live.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Photo: National Parks Service, public domain. Press release from the Environmental Protection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-112322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}