[Vision2020] SALMON RECOVERY: SALVATION OR SUPPER?

[david sarff]

I suspect that the honorable Mr. Craig’s taste is something closely related 
to Pork.

D. Sarff



>>For Immediate Release                                                      
>>                                 Dan Whiting (202) 224-8078
>
>September 21, 2006                                                          
>                                Sid Smith    (208) 342-7985
>
>
>
>
>
>Salmon Recovery: Salvation or Supper?
>
>by Senator Larry Craig
>
>
>
>             After the spotted owl was listed as an endangered species in 
>the mid-1990s, a certain bumper sticker became popular throughout much of 
>the Pacific Northwest: "Spotted owl tastes like chicken."  Part of the 
>humor was the shock value - the outrageous suggestion that someone would 
>deliberately kill  a federally protected species, just to eat it.
>
>
>
>             Along the same lines, here's another true story:  Just 
>recently, a group of environmentalists gathered in Portland to call 
>attention to the plight of the Pacific Northwest's endangered salmon 
>populations by cooking up and eating.salmon.  Sometimes truth is indeed 
>stranger than fiction.
>
>
>
>             You're not alone if you see the inconsistency in a federal 
>policy that declares a species to be protected, requires massive sums of 
>money to protect and recover that species, yet still allows hundreds or 
>even thousands of them to be commercially harvested and eaten every year.
>
>
>
>             A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that 
>Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) will spend nearly $700 million on 
>fish and wildlife recovery this year.  For some Northwest power customers, 
>this expenditure adds 30 percent to their electric bills.  For a working 
>family struggling to make ends meet, or for a small business struggling to 
>create jobs or provide health insurance for its workers, 30 percent is a 
>substantial chunk of money.
>
>
>
>             Now, I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't spend money to save 
>the Northwest's salmon.  They must be saved, because they are an important 
>part of the culture and the history of our region.  That's why I continue 
>to examine whether our efforts to save them are really working.
>
>
>
>             We spend millions on federal salmon hatcheries, and those 
>hatcheries are successfully sustaining salmon populations.  In fact, about 
>two-thirds of all returning adults each year are hatchery fish.  But then, 
>we turn around and tell fishermen that they can catch and eat those same 
>hatchery salmon.  Do our hatcheries exist to help salmon populations 
>recover, or to put a salmon fillet on your plate?
>
>
>
>             In order to restore our salmon to even greater numbers than we 
>now have, we need to expand what we know about their full lifecycle.  
>Currently, our knowledge of their time in the ocean is woefully inadequate, 
>but we do know quite a bit about a salmon's life in our rivers.  Once we 
>know more about the salmon's time in the ocean, that will help us 
>understand which freshwater efforts make the most difference to help them.
>
>
>
>             We also know that some of the best salmon returns on record 
>have come in the last 10 years, more than 30 years after four dams were 
>built on the lower Snake River.  Breaching these dams would devastate the 
>regional economy, and it isn't even certain to improve survival, because it 
>would do nothing to alleviate other threats to salmon.  If the dams were 
>gone, predators - human and otherwise - and ocean conditions would still 
>claim huge numbers of fish.  Dam breaching is not the silver bullet 
>solution it's made out to be by its advocates.
>
>
>
>             Salmon can successfully navigate the dams because they are a 
>phenomenally flexible species.  Human beings are very adaptive too.  Let's 
>use this flexibility to learn more about salmon and improve our recovery 
>efforts.  We should throw away what doesn't work and find ways to improve 
>the measures that do.  We can save this species without breaching the dams 
>and strangling our economy.  We can get to the point where it actually 
>makes sense to have our salmon and eat it too.
>
>
>