A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Forest Service’s policies permitting gold mining in rivers in national forests violated the Endangered Species Act. The 7-to-4 decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, came in a lawsuit filed in 2004 by the Karuk Tribe of Northern California. The tribe had argued that some types of mining on the Klamath River, including suction dredging and motorized sluicing, posed risks to coho salmon, a federally protected species. Coho are important to the tribe for cultural, religious and subsistence reasons. The Forest Service had argued that the Mining Act of 1872 prevailed over the Endangered Species Act.