Thursday, Columbia Riverkeeper filed the nation’s first lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator Scott Pruitt, Columbia Riverkeeper et al. v. Pruitt. Pruitt has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Conservation groups announced plans Monday to sue the Environmental Protection Agency. They say the agency isn’t doing enough to protect salmon from high water temperatures on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Warm water can be deadly for salmon.
These salmon started out as regular Chinooks but have had their growth regulation gene modified with the DNA from the ocean pout fish. This extra bit of DNA, called a promoter , help boost the expression of the salmon’s growth gene, making the fish get bigger, faster. In fact, these salmon reach harvest size in half the time as their conventional cousins.