Save Our Wild Salmon is a nationwide coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sportsfishing associations, businesses, river groups, and taxpayer advocates working collectively to restore self-sustaining, abundant, and harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead to rivers, streams and oceans of the Pacific Salmon states.
Feds would shut off tap on fishing economy Lewiston Tribune Editorial - April 2nd, 2010
Healthy steelhead and salmon runs have proved to be recession-proof for the economies of eastern Washington and north central Idaho. Unfortunately, politics may intervene.
In the last couple of years, more fish came back up the Snake and Clearwater rivers than in recent memory - and with them came anglers and angler dollars. In Clearwater County, anglers spent $679,600 for lodging in September and October. During the same two months in 2008, they spent $392,500. Just the tax on lodging in Asotin County generated $160,000 last year. In 2008, it produced $166,000. In Nez Perce County, lodging tax revenues reached $188,000 in 2008 and dropped just a little to $186,000 a year later.
You won't get much argument about steelhead and salmon runs being an economic engine. The argument is about how much. But take a conservative estimate based on University of Idaho, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Census Bureau studies and you'll get anglers spending an average of $83 a day, or almost $300 per fishing trip. More of them are coming. Three years ago, 8,805 out-of-staters purchased a three-day Idaho salmon/steelhead fishing permit. Last year, the total was up another 20 percent.
All of which serves as context to the Obama administration's ongoing efforts to diminish those runs. Of course, that's not the administration's intent. But that's the likely outcome. Biologists credit positive ocean conditions for record runs. But you can't control ocean conditions. You can influence what happens in the Snake River, and for the last three years, a federal judge has ordered fish spilled past the dams on the river. The Fish Passage Center credits that move with speeding the smolts toward the Pacific and depositing them in a healthier state.
No greater challenge faces managers of Pacific Northwest resources than restoration of salmon in the Columbia River.
We initially welcomed the Obama administration's request to federal Judge James Redden to delay his ruling and review the previous administration's salmon policies; a testament to President Obama's commitment -- given in speeches before hundreds of scientists across this nation -- to restore science to "its rightful place" in public policy decision making.
However, as retired career professionals with nearly 230 combined years of experience, we are saddened the commitment remains unfulfilled. That broken promise is no more evident than in the federal government's response to protecting the icon of the Northwest, the salmon and steelhead of the Columbia-Snake River Basin.
Clearly, other scientists concur. The Western Division of the American Fisheries Society, professionals who don't represent any special interest or organization, recently issued its own scientific peer review, criticizing the Obama administration's proposed changes to the previous administration's salmon policies.
The society stated that the administration has "not used the best scientific information" and found the plan "to be inadequate for ensuring the protection of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin."
The federal agencies have again chosen to protect the status quo over protecting salmon and steelhead by eliminating spill during key migration times. The science clearly demonstrates that spilling water over the dams increases the survival of young salmon migrating to the sea. The increased adult salmon returns over the past several years support the science. Since 2006, Redden has forced the federal government to provide this critical salmon protection, and the fish have responded even better then we predicted.
What don't we know about the Columbia salmon plan? Oregonian Op-Ed, March 19th, 2010
by Steven Hawley
The water supply for the Pacific Northwest for 2010 looks depressingly like it did in 2001. That was a profitable year for some of the Bonneville Power Administration's industrial customers. By laying off workers, shuttering their operations and selling their subsidized BPA power on the hyper-inflated spot electricity market, these "Direct Service Industry" clients themselves a cool $1.2 billion profit.
But a windfall for the aluminum industry was a downfall for salmon and the BPA. Mortality for out-migrating juvenile salmon topped 90 percent for some Snake River fish. The BPA hemorrhaged ratepayer money as if it were the Fed pulling out all the stops to save AIG, buying back dirt-cheap subsidized power contracts at going market rates. The power agency had commitments to supply 11,000 megawatts of power. But in a drought year, it had only 8,000 to give.
Ostensibly, those days are long gone. With the slumping economy, power demand is down. BPA customers flocked back to hydro after corporate deals made in the wake of deregulation proved too good to be true, allowing the agency to nurture a healthy rainy-day fund as well as meet its cumbersome debt payments to the U.S. Treasury. Best of all, the BPA claims it has finally solved the salmon crisis.
In a keynote address given last December to Northwest RiverPartners, a lobbying outfit representing Alcoa, Weyerhaeuser and many of the region's public and private utilities, BPA Administrator Steve Wright told the audience that the 2008 biological opinion -- known as a bi-op -- for Columbia and Snake River salmon, currently under review in federal court, should be celebrated "for its fidelity to the science, its allegiance to the law and its adherence to meaningful collaboration."
What records are available from that process suggests that there's a cork that might need to be popped from somewhere other than a champagne bottle. To acquire science that supports its bottom line, the BPA seems to have borrowed a familiar strategy from private industry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the agency charged with determining whether the federal plan for the hydro system won't further jeopardize endangered salmon runs. NOAA's salmon research depends to an alarming degree on the BPA's money.
According to its own records, over the past decade the BPA has given $83 million to the Northwest Division of NOAA-Fisheries. Another $51 million comes from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's a big investment in fidelity on behalf of federal defendants. But does the devotion flow to the legal standard of "the best available science"?
The best available evidence suggests not. In its review of the few new wrinkles added to the Bush-era bi-op by the Obama administration, the American Fisheries Society observed, "It appears that there is an undue emphasis on more monitoring and modeling than on implementing beneficial actions. A logical assumption therefore is that the primary output will be merely that [salmon population] declines are more accurately documented."
The commercial also features the Matilija Dam, a dam that Yvon and many others have been working to remove for more than 15 years. The outdated monstrosity sits upstream from Patagonia HQ on a tributary of the Ventura River. With its crumbling concrete and silt-filled reservoir, Matilija no longer serves any beneficial purpose. Its removal would allow native Steelhead to once again use the river to spawn, and give local beaches a much needed boost in sediments (more sand) from the Creek's steep canyons.
If successful, it would be largest dam yet to be removed in the United States.
We also recently learned that Yvon chose five organizations to receive the proceeds from this commercial, including Save Our Wild Salmon (SOS)! We are very appreciative of this generous gift, and want to make sure that you had a chance to see the commercial, learn about the takepart.com campaign, and help SOS at the same time.
HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP: As part of the Takepart.com, you have an opportunity every week through May to vote for organizations that you want to see receive additional funding. And you also have a chance to suggest that Save Our Wild Salmon be included in the next takepart.com
We are asking our supporters like you to: (1) REGISTER on the 'members project' with Takepart.com., (2) VOTE for Sierra Club (a key SOS partner on our campaign), and (3) SUBMIT your suggestion to takepart.com that it include "Save Our Wild Salmon" in their next fundraising campaign.
Thanks so much for your support! - Joseph and the 'Save Our Wild Salmon' Team
*** Los Angeles Times Editorial Board calls on Obama for a strong salmon plan, including the option to remove the four lower Snake River dams. ***
An upstream battle over chinook salmon
Thursday, March 11, 2010
"The federal government has spent $8 billion trying to restore salmon populations without fish ladders and hatcheries. It hasn't worked. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been trying to get federal courts to approve a plan, barely improved on since the court-rejected plan of the George W. Bush years, that would keep the fish on the edge of endangerment instead of bringing back a flourishing fishery.
A better solution for all of these creatures would be a strong plan from the Obama administration on recovery for the Columbia River salmon, including the possibility of breaching one or more dams along the lower Snake River."
Groups to Washington State: Give Endangered Salmon a Fighting Chance by Changing Water Releases
Petition Urges State Department of Ecology to Follow Oregon and Allow Scientifically Supported Water Releases to Get Baby Salmon Past Big Dams
March 8, 2010
Olympia, WA - Commercial and sport fishing associations, partnering with conservation groups, petitioned the Washington Department of Ecology today to help the downstream migration of endangered salmon by allowing water to be spilled over Columbia and Snake River dams at levels that will improve salmon survival.
Spilling water over the dams-- rather than forcing it through turbines and complex bypass systems-- is critical to aid endangered migrating salmon and steelhead because it is the safest and best way for baby salmon to get to sea. Extensive scientific studies show that fish do much better riding over the tops of the dams-- as they once did over the free-flowing Columbia's waterfalls-- than they do going through the deadly turbines.
"We are filing this petition to the Washington Department of Ecology to give salmon more of what they need to survive," said Glen Spain, Northwest Regional Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations (PCFFA), a trade organization for West Coast commercial fishing families. "Allowing more water (and fish) to flow over the dams and not go through the turbines will simply help these fish survive, as well as the coastal and inland communities who depend on them for their livelihoods."
Even in low water conditions, spilling water over the dams has helped produce some of the best returns of salmon and steelhead seen in many years. The returning salmon have given a shot-in- the-arm to sport and commercial fisheries in the Columbia River at a time when the rest of the West Coast salmon fishing picture has been a disaster.
"This petition needs to be granted -- and fast-- to help our Northwest salmon economy recover and become strong again," said Liz Hamilton, Executive Director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association. "Spill is a proven, effective action that will help to ensure that there will always be sustainable salmon runs for the people and communities that depend on them."
February 10, 2010 -- A federal judge told the Obama administration on Wednesday that its plan to help endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest was technically flawed, and he urged it to revise the proposal before he rules on its broader merits. Judge James Redden of United States District Court in Portland said the plan, an effort to modify but not replace one from the Bush administration, was procedurally improper. He gave the administration until next week to decide whether to modify its plan, and urged it to “do more” to protect salmon.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) -- The federal judge overseeing efforts to make the Columbia Basin's federal hydroelectric dams safer for salmon is giving the Obama administration one last chance to come up with something better that won't violate the Endangered Species Act.
U.S. District Judge James Redden in Portland on Wednesday gave NOAA Fisheries Service until Feb. 19 to decide whether to voluntarily take back their proposed improvements to the Bush administration plan, known as a biological opinion.
The judge said this can fix procedural problems with the Obama administration revisions that prevent him from considering them. But he added that there are deeper flaws, and urged the agency to produce a stronger plan based on the best available science, as the law requires.
"I will not sign an order of voluntary remand that effectively relieves Federal Defendants of their obligation to use the best available science and consider all important aspects of the problem," the judge wrote. "This court will not dictate the scope or substance of Federal Defendants' remand, but Federal Defendants must comply with the ESA in preparing any amended/supplemental biological opinion."
Redden warned NOAA fisheries that he will view with "heightened skepticism" any attempts to deal with the issues superficially.
The Obama administration's plan for the Columbia Basin doesn't go nearly far enough.
by Carl Safina
Recently, a photograph made its way to me on the Internet: In a surging Alaskan stream, a grizzly bear stands with a salmon in its jaws, and in the shallows, a wolf -- keeping its distance -- also hoists a thrashing salmon. Your eye goes to the bear, then the wolf. But the salmon convened the meeting. Without the salmon, you'd see only water.
When salmon return from the sea, their bodies are the ocean made flesh. Their tails propel ocean nutrients upstream and into forests, rivers and range lands, where they benefit hundreds of other species. Everything else in the photograph -- trees, bushes, all the animals and plants in the forest and the water -- contains ocean nutrients from salmon.
And now add orcas to the web of life fed by salmon. New research tells us that, before salmon hit the flowing streams, they are by far the most important food for resident killer whales along the Pacific Coast.
Olympia, WA - Commercial and sport fishing associations, partnering with conservation groups, petitioned the Washington Department of Ecology today to help the downstream migration of endangered salmon by allowing water to be spilled over Columbia and Snake River dams at levels that will improve salmon survival.
