5-Year Review for Eulachon

On 18 March 2010, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published a final rule in the Federal Register (75 FR 13012) to list the southern distinct population segment (DPS) of eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) (NMFS 2010). This listing encompassed all subpopulations of eulachon within the states of Washington, Oregon, and California and extended from the Skeena River in British Columbia south to the Mad River in Northern California (Figure 1). The Biological Review Team (BRT) concluded that the major threats to the of eulachon, included climate change impacts on ocean conditions and freshwater habitat, bycatch in offshore shrimp trawl fisheries, changes in downstream flow-timing and intensity due to dams or water diversions, and predation. These threats, together with large declines in abundance, indicated to the BRT that the southern DPS of eulachon was at moderate risk of extinction throughout all of its range (Gustafson et al. 2010, 2012). These factors collectively led the NMFS listing of the southern DPS of eulachon as a threatened species under the Federal ESA.