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For wild salmon, more business as usual
 by Michael Blumm
October 07, 2009
The Obama administration's recent salmon plan for the Columbia and Snake Rivers largely ratified the Bush administration's plan and disappointed salmon advocates who had hoped for more effective action to restore the endangered fish runs. Instead, the plan promises business as usual in the operation of Columbia Basin dams. "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss."
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 Fishermen, salmon stakeholders take to Capitol Hill, lobby for Snake River salmon recovery and river restoration
Business community calls on Congress for solutions to the Columbia-Snake salmon crisis
Washington, D.C. — On Monday, Oct. 5, a group of salmon stakeholders from across the nation will take to the halls of Congress to urge representatives to support the Salmon Solutions and Planning Act (SSPA; H.R. 3503). The bill would provide Congress and federal agencies with up-to-date, thorough information about how best to protect and restore wild salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia and Snake River Basin.
“We’re talking about much more than a fish here, this is my job and thousands of others, it’s an iconic species and a way of life. The Obama administration missed the opportunity to take on this challenge and restore a river, recover healthy salmon and steelhead populations, and protect our jobs and salmon economy,” said Jeff Hickman, a Northwest steelhead guide and Regional Conservation Organizer for the Sierra Club. “Yeah, we’re disappointed, but we have hope and that’s why we’re here. There is strong support in the region for a bold solution to this crisis and we don’t have the time for more political side-stepping. We need to meet this challenge head on, and that starts with the studies and actions in this bill.” See Hickman’s message to President Obama about Snake River salmon recovery.
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 Ensuring salmon recovery, not an “insurance policy”
by Bobby Hayden
On healthcare, the Obama administration’s current call for change is based on the notion that doing nothing means Americans will continue to pay the price – in both cost and quality of care. That we can all agree upon. Unfortunately this notion is not being applied in the Northwest to the administration’s new plan for Columbia and Snake River salmon. After roughly $10 billion in American taxpayer and Northwest energy ratepayer money spent on measures that have brought wild salmon and the salmon economy no closer to lasting recovery, it’s time for a new direction.
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 We need to both help salmon and produce cleaner energy
By Steve Weiss of the Northwest Energy Coalition
The Register Guard - Appeared in print: Sunday, Sep 27, 2009
Like the confluence of mighty rivers, regional processes involving two Northwest icons — wild salmon and clean energy — are converging.
Two weeks ago, the Obama administration delivered its salmon strategy for the Columbia and Snake rivers to U.S. District Court Judge James Redden. After a four-month review, Obama’s salmon team has adopted the rejected Bush administration plan as its own.
The Bush-turned-Obama plan embraces the failed programs of the past. Keeping expectations low, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration chief Jane Lubchenco assures us the plan will “prevent further declines.” In other words, ratepayers and taxpayers will remain on the hook for roughly $1 billion a year for the next 10 years to, at best, merely maintain Columbia Basin wild salmon and steelhead at their already seriously imperiled levels.
The Obama strategy does not even aspire to rebuild the 13 threatened and endangered populations to healthy and fishable levels. The new plan, like the old one, leaves our fishermen heading straight for the rocks. Talk about a jobless recovery.
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Editorial
September 19, 2009
The Obama administration has submitted an amended version of a Bush administration plan to rescue 13 endangered and threatened salmon species in the Pacific Northwest. The fish may be better off under this plan. But under the Endangered Species Act, better off is not enough. The act requires the government to make every effort to ensure a species’ long-term survival.
Judge James A. Redden of Federal District Court in Oregon will decide whether the plan meets that requirement. We do not believe that it does. Judge Redden has already rejected two federal plans for restoring salmon, one from the Clinton administration and one from the Bush administration. He was on the verge of ruling on a second Bush plan when the Obama administration asked for time to review it and strengthen it where necessary.
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Obama science goes schizophrenic on salmon restoration
A Biological Opinion factors in the effect of climate change on California salmon runs and the orcas that depend on them. So why is the recent BiOp by NOAA on the Columbia and Snake so oblivious?
By Daniel Jack Chasan
Has the Obama administration gone schizophrenic on salmon? Wild-salmon advocates who were disappointed when the Obama administration defended the last Bush Biological Opinion on Columbia River dam operations say that the government not only could have done better, it did better, just a few months back. They point to the government's recent Biological Opinion on operation of the Central Valley Project and California State Water Project as examples of what NOAA should have done here.
The California opinion looks at impacts on salmon and other fish in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems, and on the Southern Resident Killer Whales (aka Puget Sound orcas) that eat some of those salmon. It is “better and I would say significantly better” than what the government has done on the Columbia, says Earthjustice attorney Steve Mashuda. It's “not necessarily a road map” for dealing with all the Columbia's particular problems, but it does address some crucial issues “probably in the best way we know how.” You can expect salmon advocates to use some of the approaches and some of the science that NOAA employed in California to attack what NOAA has done — or failed to do — in the Northwest.
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Obama administration follows flawed Bush salmon plan despite scientific, economic and legal failings
Administration avoids sound science and legal guidance
PORTLAND, Ore. — Today a broad coalition of businesses, clean energy advocates, and fishing and conservation groups voiced grave disappointment the Obama administration’s decision to follow a flawed Bush 2008 biological opinion for the Columbia-Snake Rivers. The plan has been criticized by scientists and the courts, and runs counter to the advice of Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), more than 70 members of Congress, three former Northwest governors, thousands of scientists, and more than 200 businesses from across the nation. The groups are joined in the litigation by the State of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho.
NOAA Fisheries today filed documents with the U.S. Federal District Court in Portland, Oregon indicating that the federal government would continue to support an old Bush-era federal salmon plan, with only minor, cosmetic changes. The decision includes support for the Bush-era scientific analysis, legal standard, and disregard for the impacts of dam operations and climate change on salmon.
Salmon advocates have long argued that this plan remains illegal under the Endangered Species Act and largely ignores the impact federal dams have on listed salmon and steelhead in the Columbia-Snake River Basin. In fact, this plan allows the roll-back of current in-river salmon protections. District Court Judge James Redden has agreed with salmon advocates in challenges to two prior plans.
“This was a test for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke — on both economics and science — and this plan failed on both accounts,” said Zeke Grader, Executive Director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “This decision will no doubt leave salmon in the perilous decline they have been in for years and communities up and down the coast and inland to Idaho will continue to suffer. For an administration so set on protecting and restoring jobs, this decision is a huge mistake and a clear signal to fishermen that their jobs don’t count.”
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Meet the new boss:
same as the old boss
The Caddis Fly - Oregon Fly Fishing Blog
by Karl Mueller
We’ve all been there before. The hope that a fresh face will bring needed changes and make our lives better. So it was in the Columbia-Snake basin. Hopes ran high as the Obama administration declared that it would place science before politics...
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 Obama Administration's Science Checklist for the
Columbia & Snake Rivers Salmon Plan
If you had the opportunity to chart a new and prosperous course for wild salmon, Northwest communities, and American taxpayers, would you take it?
For the better part of two decades now, the federal government has answered that question with a "No". It has repeatedly failed to do what is necessary to recover imperiled salmon in the Columbia-Snake River Basin. The last two administrations have avoided making the right choices for salmon and salmon-based communities, harming both fish and people along the way.
Today, the Obama administration is on the cusp of deciding whether it will opt to craft a new, lawful, science-based plan or stick with the current federal salmon plan, a plan that it inherited from the Bush administration. If President Obama’s Commerce Department is serious about salmon recovery, here are the Top 10 actions it must take to repair the deeply flawed Bush plan in order to restore salmon and meet the needs of the people of the Northwest and nation.
The Salmon Plan should include these actions:
#1 Prepare for Lower Snake River Dam Removal – Thousands of scientists have supported a call for removal of the four lower Snake River dams. In 2000, the Clinton administration identified lower Snake River dam removal as the surest and best way to ensure the survival and recovery of Snake River salmon and steelhead. The Obama administration should move forward today to seek Congressional authorization for dam removal, commence the engineering and economic studies for dam removal, bring stakeholders together to address any impacts of dam removal, and be ready to implement that action within the next five years unless salmon and steelhead are exceeding specific biologically-based performance standards (see below). It is an unacceptable risk to salmon — and to salmon-related jobs up and down the West Coast — to continue to avoid an action that the science so clearly says is necessary to protect and restore these fish. Removing the four lower Snake dams is the quickest way to bring back the salmon, salmon jobs and salmon dollars that have been lost in the last several decades.
#2 Create Salmon Standards that Measure Real Progress – Current “performance standards” in the 2008 salmon plan are set at levels that the federal agencies’ own 2005 progress report says they are already meeting — meaning that under these standards, salmon are already saved even at their current very low numbers. This “lowest common denominator” approach is obviously not enough to restore salmon and steelhead throughout the Columbia-Snake River Basin. We need to set biological performance standards that mean something and will actually require greater salmon survival at the dams and elsewhere, not the same or less. If salmon populations were exceeding adequate scientific standards, removal of the Snake River dams might not be necessary. Without such rigorous standards, however, the plan is inadequate both legally and for the future existence of salmon.
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Judge James Redden: Steelhead God
by Rob Elam
August 2009
The interweb fishing boards are ablaze with news of the huge Columbia River steelhead returns. And while any steeleheader worth his whiskey should be planning a fall trip (or several) to the diverse tributaries of the Big C, we might pause to consider: wouldn't it be cool if every August was this promising?
If there is a god responsible for this year's bounty, his name is U.S. District Court Judge James Redden. This year’s bonus returns are largely the result of spilling more water over dams when this year's returning fish were migrating out to the ocean as juveniles. Judge Redden ordered in-river flow improvements after conservation and fishing groups fought to have them instituted—over the vehement objections of federal agencies.
Read more at The Flyfish Journal.
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