Without one, they will keep getting sued.
October 31, 2025
By Marc Sullivan
Some of us have been fighting for salmon for more than three decades.
To understand the resolve of salmon advocates — and the frustration so many of us felt when the federal government recently reneged on a historic agreement, reigniting litigation — it’s helpful to review the legal history associated with protecting Columbia Basin salmon.
In a recent story about plaintiffs returning to court to protect Columbia Basin salmon, the Washington State Standard described the court battle as “long-running.” So true.
The initial shot was fired in 1991 after Snake River sockeye salmon became the first Columbia Basin salmonid to be listed as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. That listing requires federal agencies to ensure the protection and recovery of the fish.
Federal agencies involved with the federal dams in the Columbia Basin include the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (which operates dams on the lower Snake and lower Columbia rivers), the Bonneville Power Administration (which markets power from the dams), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which issues rulings on whether fish protection and recovery plans comply with the Endangered Species Act).
Since 1992, they’ve put forth no fewer than eight plans for operating the hydropower system while ostensibly protecting threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin. (By 1999, 12 more salmon and steelhead stocks had been listed under the Endangered Species Act.)
Over three decades of litigation, three different federal district judges have declared six different federal dam management plans illegal for their failure to protect salmon and steelhead. That includes every plan since 2000. The very first plan was invalidated in 1994 by U.S. District Judge Malcolm Marsh, who proclaimed that the “situation literally cries out for a major overhaul,” but found that the federal plan failed to deliver any such fundamental change.
Fast forward to 2005, when District Court Judge James Redden struck down a 2004 federal plan, a plan he later called a “cynical and transparent attempt to avoid responsibility for the decline of listed Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead.”
In the following years, new plans were issued by the federal agencies in 2008, 2010, and 2014. Each was promptly struck down. After Redden’s retirement, Judge Michael Simon struck down the 2014 plan. Twice, the federal agencies tried appealing the district court rulings to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Twice, the circuit court upheld the district court.
The most recent plan, issued in the waning days of the first Trump administration, was promptly challenged, and was headed for the same fate as the prior plans, when the Biden administration decided not to defend the indefensible and entered into settlement talks with plaintiffs and Northwest states and tribes, with input from other stakeholders as well.
Those talks led to the adoption in 2023 of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement, a package of investments, changes in dam operations, and studies on replacing the services of four especially lethal dams on the lower Snake River (so that the dams could be breached and 140 miles of free-flowing river restored). Litigation was stayed while that agreement was in place.
In June of this year, the second Trump administration unilaterally renounced the agreement, leaving nothing to replace it save the illegal 2020 Trump salmon plan. So, it’s back to court.
In various rulings over the years, the courts have ordered modest changes in dam operations, but the federal agencies have repeatedly refused to produce the “major overhaul” Judge Marsh called for 31 years ago.
As a result, not one of the 13 listed populations is on a path to recovery. Despite misleading claims from federal agencies, public utilities, and other river user groups, most of those stocks are on a path to extinction.
It’s past time for the court to find a way to end more than three decades of stubborn evasion of the law by the federal agencies and direct them to, finally, produce a plan that will lead to restoration of abundant, harvestable populations of these iconic creatures.
Marc Sullivan is western Washington coordinator for the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, an alliance of more than 50 Northwest and national fishing and conservation groups. He lives near Sequim, on the Olympic Peninsula.
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