SE trollers question award of legal fees to WFC from Chinook case

The Wild Fish Conservancy’s use of the Equal Access to Justice Act is alarming the small-boat fishermen who fought the conservancy’s lawsuit that sought to close the Southeast Alaska Chinook troll fishery to preserve migratory Chinook as prey for the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales that feed in waters near Puget Sound.

WFC, a membership-based nonprofit with offices in Duvall, Washington, filed that lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in U.S. District Court in Washington in 2020. For months in 2023, a District Court order in the case threatened to close the summer a...