The Puget Sound Chinook recovery plan was issued in 2007, eight years after the fish were ESA listed. While recovery planning is required by the ESA, I don't know that a specific timeframe for those plans is required. PS steelhead were listed in 2007, soon to be nine years ago. I'm not sure what WFC hopes to gain from this latest lawsuit. After all, recovery plans don't recover species; they are guidance documents. Looking at the 10-year goals of the Chinook plan and what has actually been achieved in these nine years doesn't impress me nor make me very hopeful that PS Chinook will actually recover in the foreseeable future.

NMFS can show that the PS steelhead planning process is in the works. The technical recovery team was convened several years ago, and their draft reports will be finalized soon. And then development of the recovery plan will move forward, toward whatever end, but I don't see how it will do any more for steelhead than the Chinook plan has done for Chinook. I think people, including the TRT, are going to be very disappointed to learn that most PS river systems are presently at their wild steelhead carrying capacity, and that it would take a massive shift in freshwater habitat productivity, capacity, and diversity to significantly "recover" some of the former system-wide carrying capacity. There are some exceptions; given the recent very low marine survival rates, a few streams with extremely low spawning escapements are likely severely underseeded and below carrying capacity.

I'm biased of course, but I think this lawsuit is going to do about as much good for steelhead as pissing up a rope.

Sg