US Appeals Court: Feds Erred In Hawaii Fishery Expansion

Federal agencies were wrong to allow Hawaii’s longline swordfish industry to expand fishing efforts while allowing the hooking or entangling of more endangered sea turtles, a U.S. appeals court ruled. The panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to consider scientific data that showed the loggerhead turtle population would significantly decline when it set limits for the industry. The judges also said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally allowed the industry to kill protected migratory birds. Two conservation groups in a 2012 lawsuit challenged the rule that doubled limits on how many endangered sea turtles Hawaii’s longline swordfish fishery can accidentally hook. The 9th Circuit panel affirmed a separate decision saying another endangered species, leatherback turtles, wouldn’t be jeopardized. The conservation groups were disappointed by that, Achitoff said. Judge Consuelo Callahan dissented regarding migratory birds and loggerhead turtles, saying the majority’s conclusion is a “classic example of the judiciary exceeding its authority by substituting an agency’s judgments with its own.”...more