OAKLAND, California.— After years of efforts by the Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups, the US Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to designate 554,454 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada as critical habitat for a population. distinct and endangered Pacific fishermen.

The protected habitat includes areas in Tulare, Kern, Fresno, Madera, Mariposa and Tuolumne counties.

“With the increasing threats this small population faces, it is crucial to protect the vulnerable habitat of these fishermen now,” said Justin Augustine, senior counsel at the Center. “While these new protections are good news for the people of the southern Sierra Nevada, it is disappointing that the Service has neglected to protect habitat in the northern Sierra as well to help fishermen recover fully.”

Parents of mink and otters, Pacific fishermen once roamed the forests of British Columbia to southern California. But due to intense logging and historic trapping, only two natural populations remain: about 100 to 500 fishermen survive in the southern Sierra Nevada, and a few thousand more live in southern Oregon. and northern California. They have recently been reintroduced to Washington State.

The Center for Biological Diversity, along with Sierra Forest Legacy, the Environmental Protection Information Center, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, and others, first called for endangered species protection for fishermen in 2000. The Service estimated that they deserved protection in 2004, but that this protection was excluded by the listing of other species.

Following further litigation, the agency offered protection for fishermen in 2014, but reversed course again in 2016, refusing protection. Represented by Earthjustice, the groups filed a lawsuit and the decision was returned – which again proposed protection for the species in 2019. In May 2020, the Trump administration denied protection under the Act. endangered species to Pacific fishermen from the central Sierra to the Canadian border, but granted their endangered status in the southern Sierra Nevada.

Pacific fishermen continue to be threatened by habitat loss due to logging, wildfires, the use of toxic rodenticides by marijuana growers and other factors. In a 2015 study, scientists performing autopsies on fishermen found that 75% of them had been exposed to rodent poison.