the Whole Salmon Thing
Salmon on the Menu for Federal Court “Fish Friday”
By Public News Service|Deb Courson, 2-19-10
A Federal judge has put endangered Idaho wild salmon and steelhead on the court menu today, and he’s expressed hopes it will be the last time. Judge James Redden has asked for changes, based on the “best available science,” to the federal plan to keep endangered wild species from going extinct. He’s expressed doubts that plans submitted so far adequately meet requirements under the Endangered Species Act. A group of independent scientists released a report this week agreeing with that assessment.
Leanne Roulson is the president of the western division of the American Fisheries Society, which issued the report.
“Actions do not appear to be aggressive enough for addressing significant declines. Then, it suggests some examples for more aggressive actions.”
Those examples for preserving fish populations include habitat improvement that considers climate change, and better fish counts to track mortality. Federal plans so far have stated that the many dams along the Columbia and Snake Rivers have not harmed native fish - despite millions of fish disappearing, and some going extinct, as the dams were constructed. The Society’s focus, says Roulson, is rising above the political wrangling and concentrating on scientific data.
“We’re all about preserving and conserving the fisheries resource, while the political aspects of it are not really relevant to the stances we take or the opinions we put out there.”
The report also finds fault with the federal government’s reliance on so-called “rapid response” plans, which would be developed if fish numbers decreased. Roulson says populations already are on the decline and asks why wait to take action.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the agency responsible for updating the latest salmon plan, and it has the full report.
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This we know. 1,600,000 salmon and steelhead crossed Bonneville dam in 2009 and the jack salmon counts indicate that number or more will cross this year. Meanwhile, on the Sacramento (augmented by 2,500,000 acre feet of Klamath River water) and the San Joaquin river, the salmon and steelhead returns to all of the rivers fed by Sierra Nevada snowmelt will not hit 50,000 fish, down from 980,000 fish in 2002. The Klamath, despite the water taken from its watershed by Westland Irrigation District over 600 miles away and out of its watershed, will have a projected run of 100,000 summer and fall salmon, which is a pretty normal year in a watershed whose California landscape was severely altered by placer mining and a century of oversubscribed irrigation withdrawals. The outcome of all this is that the possibility of catching a California origin salmon off the Oregon Coast or the California Coast, has again resulted in no fishing in the ocean for chinook salmon.
The Columbia and Snake River chinook salmon are caught in the ocean off Alaska (that is why their troll season is limited), British Columbia (with limited fishing by international treaty) and off the Washington Coast with mostly an Indian only fishery allowed.
California, by Senatorial intervention, will make an effort to circumnavigate the ESA, good conservation practices, and will make a third year attempt at killing the remaining salmon in their Central Valley rivers. And on the same day Gov. Terminator was in Oregon to sign the Klamath River Water Treaty. To save salmon in California by limiting Oregon water use and to remove Oregon dams.
Pure political power trumps the environment protection laws. It is all in the news this week. Nobody messes with California agriculture. Nobody. Not even the Congress. Not even the Federal bench. So where is EarthJustice on this one? Where are the Enviro NGOs? Where are the saviours of salmon? How does the U.S. Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, get to dismiss those pesky ESA issues and dewater the Klamath River, the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River and all their tributaries, to run that water into canals and ditches, while San Francisco Bay, the estuary, and the ocean beyond go without the fresh water and terrestrial nutrients that once made that area a virtual smorgasboard of fisheries and sea life? Today, it is a big empty.