The lawsuit challenges EPA's failure to take even the first steps required by the Endangered Species Act to protect salmon from harmful pesticides. It has been ten years since the first salmon were declared threatened, and EPA still has done nothing to comply with the Act. Some registered pesticides are lethal to salmon, and large fish kills have occurred. Pesticides can impair swimming ability, cause abnormal sexual development and cause skeletal deformities. Pesticides can indirectly affect fish by changing the aquatic environment, by reducing the food supply and by eliminating vegetative cover used by young salmon.
Pesticides can impair salmon's ability to transition from freshwater to sea water.
The agency's most recent study of the Willamette River Basin found pesticides at higher concentrations than earlier testing revealed. Fishing families throughout the Northwest need our government agencies to pull out all the stops to recover salmon. This article was condensed from a message from the Pesticide Action Network, North America.