Salmon Plan In Danger
Uh-oh, here we go again!
Even with the extinction clock ticking loudly, the Bush Administration and some Northwest Members of Congress once again ignore years of sound science with regard to the implementation of measures that we know are still needed to save threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead of the Columbia and Snake River Basins.
Based on our successful lawsuit with allies to force the federal government to draft a scientifically credible salmon plan, which our region and the fish have been waiting many years for now, a federal judge has given the Bush Administration until October 2006 to come up with a new plan.
However, the latest announcement from “Bush, Inc.” and NOAA Fisheries is that their latest and greatest recovery plan should really address the negative impacts that come from our region’s hatchery programs and from fish harvest plans.
Sadly, we’ve heard these same lame plans recycled time and time again. Certainly no one would disagree that our over reliance on hatcheries has had negative impacts on wild fish recovery and that better management practices could be helpful, but overall this announcement from Bush continues to ignore the facts.
For example, in recent decades, all salmon and steelhead fishing has been more and more tightly regulated with restrictions going all the way up to Alaska in order to protect Snake Basin fish. Illegal catch is tiny or non-existent and the government’s own studies have already proven this to be the case.
Moreover, all Snake Basin Chinook salmon and steelhead from hatcheries are marked (by clipping the adipose fin) so that harvesters can practice catch-and-release of wild fish, therefore further minimizing the impacts that can occur from harvest.
Similarly, drift-nets were banned in 1991, designating such boats as pirates under the International Law of the Sea. When the world's navies, including the U.S., intercept and confiscate drift-net boats, fish in the holds are counted—with numbers of salmon running very small.
The American Indian Tribes do use gillnets, but only a few days each year and certainly not stretched across the river, in order to catch relatively abundant fall Chinook salmon going to the Hanford Reach.
For decades, the Tribes have consistently reduced their salmon and steelhead harvest. Under the "Boldt decisions" of 1974, 1985, and 1994, the Tribes receive half of the fish determined by regulators to be available for harvest—not half of all the adult salmon as alleged by opponents.
While conservationists support greater selective harvest of hatchery fish as well as lesser incidental catch of wild salmon, a complete shutdown of fishing is neither practical nor legal. To destroy our fishing industries—commercial, sport, and Tribal—on an experiment which most scientists regard with skepticism if not cynicism simply blames the victims, and begs for expensive compensation to them.
A harvest shutdown would directly violate both the 1999 Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada and the 19th century treaties with Columbia Basin Tribes as interpreted by the courts.
On the other hand, there is a large amount of documented science that shows that the greatest negative impact to salmon recovery is the operation of the eight dams and hydropower systems on the Lower Snake and Lower Columbia Rivers. In fact, it’s already been proven and documented by the government that these eight dams account for up to 80% of the mortality of salmon and steelhead.
Strangely, though not at all surprising, Bush’s new plan makes no mention of any changes that could take place at the dams, including modifying how we run the dams or removing altogether the four low value, high cost dams on the Lower Snake River while simultaneously thoroughly mitigating the consequences this decision would have. We’re hopeful that the judge presiding over our case continues to see through Bush’s attempts at getting around the real issues here.
However, in the interim, we have been successful getting the judge to order the spilling of more water over federal dams on the Lower Snake River and at dams on the Columbia River. In 2005, the court ordered more water to be spilled at the dams in order to assist young salmon that are forced to swim over 8 large dams on their journey to the ocean.
Scientists released the results of the spill program clearly demonstrating in quantifiable terms that the increased spill significantly increased the survival of young salmon and steelhead through the hydropower system. That young fish survive better swimming in the river than they do being trapped and transported downstream (wasting taxpayer and ratepayer dollars!) in the back of truck on I-84 or in the holding tank of a barge probably comes as no surprise to most reasonable folks, but then again Northwest Members of Congress and particularly the Bush Administration have both been really slow to catch on to this fact.
Please help us to remind them by contacting Governor Gregoire. She has been doing a great job standing up to the fatally flawed plans that continue to be served up by the Bush Administration, but we need to strongly encourage her to do even more. We need her to stand up against these bad proposals from Bush, as well as fill the huge political void for salmon recovery that is exacerbated by the complete absence of leadership from the Northwest Congressional delegation.
Please call and write to Gov. Gregoire and ask her to do more for the big fish. Please tell her to not fall for ineffective salmon recovery plans that inappropriately target fish harvest plans as the silver bullet for salmon recovery when it’s the eight federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers that are killing the largest runs of salmon and steelhead known to humankind.
Contact: Governor Christine Gregoire, Office of the Governor, PO Box 40002, Olympia, WA 98504-0002; (360) 902-4111; www.governor.wa.gov/contact/govemail.htm
