A Washington state-based conservation group is suing the National Marine Fisheries Service over king salmon – again.

The Wild Fish Conservancy filed suit earlier this month in US District Court to compel NMFS to complete its Endangered Species determination for king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska.

The group previously sued in 2020 to halt commercial trolling for kings in Southeast Alaska, to protect an endangered  population of killer whales in Puget Sound.

Nat Herz is covering the story for the Northern Journal. He spoke recently with KCAW’s Robert Woolsey. 

KCAW: Nat, what is the Wild Fish Conservancy asking for this time?

Hertz:  About a year ago, a little more than a year ago, the Wild Fish Conservancy,  – which is a Washington state-based conservation group – filed a petition with the Biden administration, asking for a determination that king salmon all across the Gulf of Alaska fit the criteria for threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. And there is a deadline in the Endangered Species Act that requires the federal government to act on those petitions within a year of their filing. And fast forward one year, plus a sort of legally-required notification period, and the federal government has not issued that finding yet. And so the Wild Fish Conservancy, with their lawyers that are battle-tested from previous conflicts in Southeast Alaska and across the Pacific Northwest, filed a lawsuit last week (5-8-25) to force the hand of now the Trump administration to issue a determination on this request to listing salmon as endangered or threatened. 

KCAW: This is a completely different lawsuit than the 2020 lawsuit the Wild Fish Conservancy filed to try and block Southeast trolling to protect Southern Resident killer whales?

Herz:  Fair to say it is separate. I don’t think it’s totally fair to say that it’s entirely unrelated. I think, from their position down there in Washington, they are looking at Alaska and saying, “These are species of fish have a bearing on folks down here in Washington State,” both because I think there’s some mixing of the fish and and their predators, but also, I think just because there are people in Washington state that visit Alaska and have a stake in the harvesting of these species, but I think it’s very clear that the Wild Fish Conservancy, which I think has done a lot of work previously on conservation in the Pacific Northwest, seems to be making Alaska and the Gulf of Alaska an increasing focus.

KCAW: Nat, in your article in the Northern Journal, you did have a response from somebody at NOAA who didn’t seem to say, “Oops, we goofed,” but more like, “Oh, we’re taking our time.”Herz: If I had to guess, I think there are entire law firms or attorneys that probably do a pretty good bulk of their business just filing these lawsuits against federal agencies that haven’t acted quickly enough on these Endangered Species Act petitions. I think it’s a pretty common thing that you have this 12-month deadline in law, but sort of from a practical standpoint, it’s not always possible for the agencies to issue their decision in that time frame. And so yes, the Federal official that corresponded with me about it basically was saying, “We’re working on it.” And there are also some state biologists that have  been attached to the team at the National Marine Fisheries Service that is reviewing some of the statistical data. And so it sounds like there is a robust review going on. Maybe that has been somewhat disrupted – I mean, there have been all kinds of headlines about the chaos at the National Marine Fisheries Service, specifically because that agency was really heavily targeted by DOGE (the Elon Musk government efficiency arm) and so I’m sure that has probably disrupted them a little bit. But I doubt that this is something that is not already on their radar, and something that is underway, as they (the NOAA official) said.