A guest column by Pete Soverel and David Moskowitz of The Conservation Angler.
regarding the latest round of kicking the can down the road on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
Thirty years ago, tribes and conservation organizations had to submit petitions listing Snake River salmon under the Endangered Species Act because the federal agencies would not take action to prevent the extinction of sockeye and Chinook returning to the Snake River.
Those same federal agencies have now proposed — for the fifth time — some extremely modest tweaks to the system of dams and reservoirs that have nearly ruined the West’s greatest rivers and our wild salmon and steelhead.
This repeated federal ineptitude has resulted in a collaborative call for political leadership from both conservation organizations and utility companies who signed a letter calling for regional dialogue to solve the Columbia River’s fish issues
Sadly, that letter — and the new 5,000-page federal plan — are almost completely devoid of a commitment to recover wild salmon and steelhead — the term “wild” notably absent.
LINK (via: The Astorian)
There is a (often misquoted, as “jaw jaw” and “war war” – early 1950s line by the great Anglo-American, World War II war-leader, Winston Spencer Churchill – “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”.
It almost always is, of course, but nowadays, when it comes to salmon (both Atlantic and Pacific) and anything that tries to make a life in the hard-pressed oceans at least, war might just be the better option – an all-nations-in-this-together world war against our own environmental and climatic, “It’s not happening…” idiocy, which, if we are not very careful, is going to see wild versions of our Homo sapiens selves going life-not-worth-living extinct before too very long, and not merely the “canary in the coal mine” – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/ – watch out, fellas, I’m falling off my perch here, salmon.
Though, of course, this matter will have to be discussed by well-lunched men in suits at interminable length and endless reports commissioned and duly submitted for discussion at some future Salmon Savers and Stakeholders Seminar on the other side of the world and further discussion about this initial discussion to be had at the next gathering of the jabbering clans at a new glitzy location a few months later…
Same as it ever was.