SOS Actions - Week of April 25th

1) Is Your Member of Congress a Salmon Champ?
2) Tell Congressman DeFazio to change his position on NW salmon recovery.
3) Host a Watch Party! - Salmon: Running the Gauntlet premieres this Sunday on PBS.

1) Is Your Member of Congress a Salmon Champ?

Americans deserve real solutions to the crisis facing endangered wild salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia-Snake River Basin. Congress has an enormous opportunity to help recover wild salmon and steelhead in this region – once the largest salmon watershed in the world – while creating new living-wage jobs and building a clean energy future.

Your representative can be a champion for salmon and salmon-dependent communities in the 112th Congress. Urge her/him to support legislation that gives imperiled salmon a shot at recovery – while also protecting communities, regional economies, and American taxpayers. Columbia-Snake wild salmon are among the most resilient, determined creatures on earth, but today they hover at 1% of their historic numbers. These fish need all the help they can get, starting in Washington, DC.

Take Action Here.

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2) Tell Congressman DeFazio to change his position on Columbia-Snake salmon recovery

Congressman DeFazio is at it again.  And we wish that was a good thing, but it's not.

Congressman DeFazio has long been a leader on natural resource issues representing Oregon's 4th Congressional District.  As a senior member of both the House Natural Resources Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, he could play an important role in bringing about lasting recovery of wild salmon in the Snake River Basin and the communities that depend on them.

But over the last several years, Congressman DeFazio has chosen to support federal agency failures in the Columbia-Snake Basin instead of making a break with the past to embrace a broader set of solutions that can help recover salmon, invest in clean energy, protect communities, and restore our economy.  He has actively worked in Congress to limit the progress of a key studies bill for Snake River salmon and communities. DeFazio has also - again - weighed in negatively for Columbia-Snake salmon.

Read a recent oped piece in the Eugene Weekly on DeFazio's role in the salmon crisis.

Send a message to Congressman DeFazio here.

You can also give Congressman DeFazio's office a call: 202.225.6416
Ask Rep. DeFazio to change course and support an all-options approach to wild salmon and steelhead recovery in the Columbia and Snake Rivers. 

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3) Host a Watch Party! - Salmon: Running the Gauntlet premieres this Sunday on PBS. 

What are you doing next Sunday, May 1st?

We are encouraging folks across the country to organize watch parties with friends and family on May 1st to view the premiere of Salmon: Running the Gauntlet at 8pm on PBS (check local listings).

Salmon: Running the Gauntlet takes critical look at the extraordinary efforts to save Columbia and Snake River salmon. Check out the preview below...

Going beyond the debate over how to save an endangered species, Nature takes a timely look at the Columbia-Snake salmon crisis in Salmon: Running the Gauntlet from filmmaker Jim Norton. The story of salmon is one of the nature stories of our time – how we became entangled in the life of creatures at once resilient and fragile, manipulated and wild, and whether they, and we, might recover from that intrusion. After broadcast, the program will stream at pbs.org/nature.

Salmon: Running the Gauntlet airs Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. Check your local listings.

RSVP on Facebook here.

Are you setting up a watch party?  If so, let me know: bobby@wildsalmon.org

More information here: http://video.pbs.org/video/1862122371/

Enjoy the show!