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 king salmon troll fishery. The nonprofit wanted federal regulators, or the courts, to close the 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 organization with offices in Duvall, Washington, filed its lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in U.S. District Court in Washington state in 2020. For months in 2023, a District Court order in the case threatened to close the summer and winter king troll fishery in Southeast Alaska.

Ultimately, an appeals court ruling allowed the Southeast fishery to continue as usual while NMFS updated the scientific documentation it uses to authorize the fishery.

This past November a U.S. District Court judge ordered the federal government to pay $1.6 million in attorney fees to WFC to cover its costs in its years-long lawsuit, pursuant to the Endangered Species Act and the Equal Access to Justice Act.

“It’s egregious to see WFC reimbursed for its costs,” said Tyler Emerson, treasurer of the Alaska Trollers Association, which intervened as a defendant in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit “caused an incredible amount of anxiety up and down the coastline,” Sitka fisherman Jeff Farvour said. “There’s financial impacts, and emotional or mental impacts, to Southeast fishermen and communities.”

Southeast communities contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to support NMFS and the other defendants in the lawsuit, in defense of the hook-and-line king fishery.

The conservancy “largely lost the case,” Farvour said. “Yet they demanded $2.3 million and were awarded over $1.6 million.”

“The ones who they attacked — small rural Southeast Alaska communities, sustainable small-boat fisheries, tribes, the state of Alaska and others — are left paying their own bills with no recourse to cover their costs,” Farvour said. “It’s unbelievable that the Equal Access to Justice Act can be used this way.”

The justice act was enacted in 1980 with the intent of allowing veterans, Social Security beneficiaries and other plaintiffs with limited income to seek attorney fees in a public interest lawsuit against the federal government, regardless of whether they were the prevailing party in the lawsuit.

Over the years, environmental groups have advanced their missions by utilizing the law in suing the federal government over its protections for endangered species and their habitats.

Emma Helverson, executive director of the Wild Fish Conservancy, said in an email to the Sitka Sentinel that the law “ensures that individuals and nonprofit organizations can hold the federal government accountable to the law.”

The Wild Fish Conservancy’s 2020 lawsuit argued that federal managers failed to address how the Southeast troll fishery that intercepts migratory king salmon could harm endangered killer whales that feed in waters near Puget Sound and harm specific king populations that spawn in Washington and Oregon rivers.

In May 2023, a U.S. District Court judge threatened to close the Southeast Alaska troll fishery for kings by vacating the NMFS “incidental take statement” that authorized the fishery despite its potential effect on those species.

In late June 2023 the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a last-minute stay in the case, allowing the summer fishery to open as scheduled, while providing time for the NMFS to craft new scientific documentation authorizing the fishery.

In August 2024, an appeals court panel reversed the District Court judge’s decision from May 2023 that would have effectively shut down the fishery in Southeast Alaska. The appeals court ruled in favor of the federal and state fishery managers whose management had been challenged by the WFC lawsuit.

In late 2024 NMFS said it had finished revamping its scientific documentation for the state-managed fishery to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act.

In 2024, WFC filed a motion in the case requesting a $2.3 million award for the attorneys; fees and costs it incurred in suing the federal government.

WFC’s $2.3 million bill cited the cost of 4,686 hours of casework (at hourly rates between $260 and $750), and 320 hours of work by other legal counsel from 2020 through late 2025.

Defendants argued that those rates were “inflated,” and asked the court to reduce the award by 25%

District Court Judge Richard A. Jones decided in a Nov. 21 order that WFC is entitled to $1.6 million in attorneys’ fees.

Jones’ order followed with a court report that determined the award of more than $1.6 million is appropriate because WFC had “some degree of success on the merits” of its case.

A NMFS official said court-ordered attorneys’ fees and costs “either comes from (federal) agency funds, or from the Department of Justice’s judgment fund,” which pays settlements and judgments in lawsuits against the government.