Place: Pacific Northwest's salmon
Threat: Extinction
 The wild salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest are one
of America's most valuable natural resources, supporting
coastal commercial fishing economies, traditional Native
American cultures and providing endless hours of
enjoyment for recreational anglers.
According to the
Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, salmon and
steelhead anglers spend over $600 million per year in the
Northwest. The total economic contribution to the region in terms of hotel and motel
stays, restaurant meals, and other indirect fishing-related spending tops $3 billion per
year. Wild salmon are also critical components of the natural habitats of the region
providing food for not only people, but wildlife, and adding key nutrients to soils and
waters.
Unfortunately, over a century of mismanagement of the Pacific Salmon resource,
characterized by habitat loss, led to the listing of many U.S. stocks in 1992 under the
federal Endangered Species Act. With proper care and sound management based on the
best available science, America's wild salmon stocks can recover to historic populations.
However, to date the Bush administration has neglected to follow the advice of the
scientific community and take the steps necessary to ensure a future for wild salmon in
the United States.
Indeed, instead of investing in wild salmon the Bush administration has promoted the less
cost-effective practices of farming wild salmon in hatcheries, taking them out of the river
so they can be driven by truck around dams, and supporting practices that lead to the loss
of habitat, such as logging in national forest roadless areas.
“The Bush administration is actively promoting the practices that put wild salmon on the
federal endangered species list in the first places,” says Chase Davis with the Sierra Club
in Washington state.
All 35 species of threatened and endangered trout and salmon spend some portion of their
lifecycle in watersheds on federal lands. In fact, 50 percent of our nation’s native fish
habitat is found on these public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of
Land Management (BLM) National Park Service and other agencies.
“President Bush's ostensible devotion to salmon recovery is little more than a press
release and a facade," says Bill Arthur, with the Sierra Club in Seattle. "Press releases
don't work any better than pray-for-rain salmon recovery plans.”
There's a better way. The Bush administration can save wild salmon and billions in tax
dollars by taking the following steps.
- First, because national forest roadless areas have been proven to be critical to the
successful reproduction of wild salmon the Bush Administration should support
the landmark Roadless Area Conservation Rule that would maintain roadless,
wild forests in perpetuity.
- Second, the administration should support the partial removal of four outdated
dams on the Lower Snake River that cost the taxpayers millions each year to
maintain and impede salmon migrations.
- Third, the administration should reverse its directive to U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency Field Offices to apply the Clean
Water Act to headwater streams, streams that are essential to salmon
conservation.
- Fourth, the administration should support maintaining a strong federal
Endangered Species Act so that a safety net exists for wild salmon, and over 1000
other U.S. species threatened with extinction.
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