PORTLAND, Maine—Conservationists have won a round in a legal battle trying to force fishery regulators to offer more protection for declining populations of river herring.
A federal judge in Washington ruled Friday that that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hasn't done enough to protect river herring — a collective term referring to alewives, blueback herring, American shad and hickory shad — from commercial trawlers that catch Atlantic herring in the ocean.
The ruling will force regulators to take steps to give the fish added protections, said Roger Fleming, a Maine-based lawyer with Earthjustice who represented a recreational fisherman, a charter boat captain and the Ocean River Institute in the lawsuit, which was filed in 2011.
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