v6 FEMA and salmon and orcas

 FEMA making Orcas and Salmon extinct

This week marks the tenth anniversary of this conclusion made by the U.S. government against the government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Let me say this again: 

one branch of the federal government found, a decade ago, that another branch of the federal government was jeopardizing 16 species of endangered or threatened salmon in Oregon and the Southern Resident Killer Whales (orcas).

This is not an environmental group or group of activists accusing FEMA. The determination was made in April 2016 by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NMFS is charged (by Congress) with recovering marine-related endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The US Fish and Wildlife Service manages terrestrial, freshwater, and avian endangered species.

What does jeopardizing mean?

Jeopardizing does not mean that the NFIP (an insurance program) is actively wiping out the species. Rather, it means that the program in Oregon is preventing the species from recovering. A jeopardy finding for a program means that the program, if unchanged, would push a species past its "tipping point," making its continued existence unlikely. In other words, make its extinction likely. So it’s an indirect effect.

What is the NFIP?

It is a federally subsidized (taxpayer-subsidized) insurance program for properties in high-risk flood areas. See my earlier post explaining the NFIP. https://witawops.blogspot.com/2026/03/fema-floods-fine-print-and-fiction-of.html

When and How did the Government come to this conclusion

Disclaimer: the views expressed in this post are solely my own, published under my first amendment rights, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Government or any of its current or former federal agencies. 

The NFIP and the ESA have had a very long and sordid history. Environmental groups first accused the NFIP of hurting endangered species in Florida in 1990. FEMA fought this all the way to the court of appeals, and lost. Florida Key Deer v. Stickney, 864 F. Supp. 1222 https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/864/1222/1459160/

Lawsuits then sprouted up in other parts of Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Washington (Puget Sound), Oregon, and California. They focused on a range of endangered species: deer, turtles, salmon, orcas, and even desert species. (Ask your favorite AI for details). But the bottom line was the same.

How does an Insurance program affect species?

Put simply, the insurance program indirectly encourages people to build in the floodplain because it provides cheap, subsidized insurance that the private sector would not provide. The theory is that if there was no insurance program, fewer people would build there. Floodplains also provide important habitat for species. Using the death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts analogy, each development in the floodplain takes away habitat from those species. The species are basically being squeezed out of their habitat and closer towards extinction. 

FEMA gets caught in the middle because Congress created the NFIP decades before FEMA existed, then gave it to FEMA to run after 9/11. FEMA has no choice but to implement the program. But Congress also created the ESA which requires federal agencies to ensure that their programs are not jeopardizing endangered species. 

So what about this case in Oregon?

In Oregon, the environmental groups sued FEMA in 2009. FEMA settled, probably because it realized it had lost in multiple states, and agreed to comply with the ESA. It began this process by submitting an analysis to NMFS in 2013. Read that here. 

https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema.gov_or-nfip-pba-final-version_201303.pdf

In 2016 NMFS completed its analysis and rejected FEMA’s conclusion. It issued a jeopardy finding in what is called a biological opinion (BiOp). The law requires that a jeopardy finding be accompanied by a list of things that the federal agency has to do to fix the problem. You can read the BiOp and fix-it-list here. https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2022-01/2016-04-14-fema-nfip-nwr-2011-3197.pdf Or you can read NMFS’s simplified fact sheet about it here https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2022-02/oregon-fema-biop-qa-2016.pdf

From 2016…2026

FEMA claims (see Chapter 1 of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) published in 2025), https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/environmental-historic/nepa/environmental-impact-statement-2 

that it first developed a plan to implement the fix-it-list in 2018, then again in 2021, and then again in 2025, which it analyzed and published with the EIS. See my earlier blog post on the summary of the EIS and how difficult a simple decision can actually be.

 https://witawops.blogspot.com/2025/08/difficult-government-decision-making.html. Or, see FEMA’s own summary packet here with a really good synopsis of the difficulties involved. https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/documents/fema_r10_oregon-nfip-environmental-impact-statement-briefing-information-packet_082025.pdf

In my nutshell, FEMA has two choices. Change nothing and drive these species to extinction or change the requirements for developing in the 100-year floodplain, making it very very costly and difficult to build. This would affect housing, roads, public infrastructure and everything else. Coming at a time when we have a housing crisis and out-of-control costs from tariffs, inflation, wars, etc. the communities and developers in Oregon are livid. Here is their perspective. https://floodplainprotection.org/