Obama Administration Loves Salmon — Will Give Salmon a River to Run!

Fishing and salmon advocates are stoked! Today, Obama administration and NOAA officials said that they would spill much-needed water over hydropower dams on the Columbia-Snake Rivers to save baby salmon and steelhead. Officials said that they love salmon just so gosh-durn much, that they'd do anything to save them, including a study of the removal of four aging dams on the Lower Snake River. Right on Obama, we really wanna spawn-a!

APRIL FOOLS!
The Obama administration is going to keep trucking... fish that is. Ridiculous, no?

Oregon Gubenatorial Candidates Discuss What's at Stake for Salmon

Together with Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, Oregon Wild, Oregon Environmental Council, and Environment Oregon, the Oregon League of Conservation Voters hosted an Environmental Gubernatorial Debate on Tuesday, and salmon were a hot topic.

Over 1,000 people watch as gubernatorial candidates Allen Alley, Bill Bradbury and John Kitzhaber debated a variety of issues, but the three spent a fair amount of time focusing on Oregon's iconic species, from watershed issues to what the impact of climate change is on these fish.

When asked "what would you do to protect and bring back Oregon salmon?" by panelist Bob Van Dyk, Professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University and Forest Policy Adviser for the Wild Salmon Center, Alley responded with

"How much does it cost and how much are we willing to spend?"

We'd counter that by asking, what's the cost of NOT protecting salmon? We're hoping the discussion continues throughout the race!

You can watch the whole debate here. Salmon discussion starts around 44:00.

Damn Those Dams: We Love Our Rivers Wild + Free-Flowing!

Via the Under Solen blog:

Photo courtesy Save Our Wild Salmon. © Matt Leidecker

I started my love affair with rivers at a very early age — spending every day possible splashing, swimming, boating or camping on wild waterways in the Inland Northwest.

My mother and I used to stand on the bridge above Spokane Falls and let the spray hit our face. And I’ll never forget the day she told me that salmon used to make it all the way to these falls — massive 100-pound “June hogs” — but I would never see those salmon in my lifetime. Grand Coulee dam, upon its completion, successfully cut off salmon populations from their upstream spawning grounds and stifled one of the most powerful rivers in the world.

From that moment, my passion for rivers and salmon snowballed to where we are today. It is why we’re working with the kick-ass folks of Save Our Wild Salmon, who have channeled their passion to one river — the Snake River that begins in the heart of the Tetons and flows through the rugged Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho to feed the mighty Columbia. This dedicated group is taking on the federal government to remove four dams, restore a free-flowing Snake River and recover the iconic Snake River salmon in the rugged Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho.

Chris Kassar feels the power of the raw free flowing Rio Baker at the beautiful water fall - Hydro Asyens proposal to put a dam here would forever change Chile's longest and wildest river. Courtesy Rios Libres.

And today, I read a post over on the Osprey blog from Craig Childs who is on the Rio Baker in Patagonia with the Rios Libres group working to protect the free-flowing river from proposed hydropower dams:

I don’t know why I want this river to run. I could not sit at a table with a microphone and explain it. I don’t know why the heart breaks when we have drawn and quartered yet another landscape, named it as ours, used it to fuel our every global ambition from paper clips to plastic cups. But god do I want this river to move, another dark thread binding the surface of this planet, another path uninterrupted.

Read more about the Rio Baker…

That is exactly why we’re fighting so hard for free-flowing rivers. Because our heart demands it. Because we’re it. We’re the last generation who can save these rivers for our kids and grandkids. To the folks at Save Our Wild Salmon: Keep up the good fight. We’re with you every step of the way!

Scientists call out Obama's 2010 plans for salmon

Federal approach still harms salmon

Oregonian Op-Ed - March 22, 2010
Op-Ed co-written by Rod Sando, Doug DeHart,
Dan Diggs, Jim Martin, Bill Shake, and Don Swartz

*Read the science review from AFS mentioned in the op-ed.

No greater challenge faces managers of Pacific Northwest resources than restoration of salmon in the Columbia River.

We initially welcomed the Obama administration's request to federal Judge James Redden to delay his ruling and review the previous administration's salmon policies; a testament to President Obama's commitment -- given in speeches before hundreds of scientists across this nation -- to restore science to "its rightful place" in public policy decision making.

However, as retired career professionals with nearly 230 combined years of experience, we are saddened the commitment remains unfulfilled. That broken promise is no more evident than in the federal government's response to protecting the icon of the Northwest, the salmon and steelhead of the Columbia-Snake River Basin.

Clearly, other scientists concur. The Western Division of the American Fisheries Society, professionals who don't represent any special interest or organization, recently issued its own scientific peer review, criticizing the Obama administration's proposed changes to the previous administration's salmon policies.

The society stated that the administration has "not used the best scientific information" and found the plan "to be inadequate for ensuring the protection of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River Basin."

The federal agencies have again chosen to protect the status quo over protecting salmon and steelhead by eliminating spill during key migration times. The science clearly demonstrates that spilling water over the dams increases the survival of young salmon migrating to the sea. The increased adult salmon returns over the past several years support the science. Since 2006, Redden has forced the federal government to provide this critical salmon protection, and the fish have responded even better then we predicted.

The year 2010, like 2007, will see limited snowpack and lower flows for the salmon journey. But, in 2007, Redden ordered federal agencies to spill water over the dams to aid salmon. This strategy eased survival risks and contributed to increased returns of threatened sockeye, steelhead and chinook.

Court-ordered spill has instituted a share-the-risk approach to salmon management that has proved its value for several years. Continuing spill, even in low-flow years, is an investment in the future.

Anything less is regression to failed past policies. The federal proposal to eliminate this key salmon protection when so many listed fish are in the river does not pass a scientific red-face test.

The job of the federal agencies is to protect and restore salmon and steelhead to the Columbia-Snake River Basin. This job requires the federal government to put less effort into protecting the status quo and more into protecting the listed salmon and steelhead.

Rod Sando is retired director of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Co-authors were: Doug DeHart, retired chief of fisheries, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Dan Diggs, retired assistant regional fisheries director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Jim Martin, retired chief of fisheries, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; Bill Shake, retired assistant regional fisheries director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and Don Swartz, retired fisheries manager, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Why is Bonneville Power crafting salmon science?

What don't we know about the Columbia salmon plan?
Oregonian Op-Ed
March 19, 2010
by Steven Hawley

The water supply for the Pacific Northwest for 2010 looks depressingly like it did in 2001. That was a profitable year for some of the Bonneville Power Administration's industrial customers. By laying off workers, shuttering their operations and selling their subsidized BPA power on the hyper-inflated spot electricity market, these "Direct Service Industry" clients themselves a cool $1.2 billion profit.

But a windfall for the aluminum industry was a downfall for salmon and the BPA. Mortality for out-migrating juvenile salmon topped 90 percent for some Snake River fish. The BPA hemorrhaged ratepayer money as if it were the Fed pulling out all the stops to save AIG, buying back dirt-cheap subsidized power contracts at going market rates. The power agency had commitments to supply 11,000 megawatts of power. But in a drought year, it had only 8,000 to give.

Ostensibly, those days are long gone. With the slumping economy, power demand is down. BPA customers flocked back to hydro after corporate deals made in the wake of deregulation proved too good to be true, allowing the agency to nurture a healthy rainy-day fund as well as meet its cumbersome debt payments to the U.S. Treasury. Best of all, the BPA claims it has finally solved the salmon crisis.

In a keynote address given last December to Northwest RiverPartners, a lobbying outfit representing Alcoa, Weyerhaeuser and many of the region's public and private utilities, BPA Administrator Steve Wright told the audience that the 2008 biological opinion -- known as a bi-op -- for Columbia and Snake River salmon, currently under review in federal court, should be celebrated "for its fidelity to the science, its allegiance to the law and its adherence to meaningful collaboration."

What records are available from that process suggests that there's a cork that might need to be popped from somewhere other than a champagne bottle. To acquire science that supports its bottom line, the BPA seems to have borrowed a familiar strategy from private industry. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the agency charged with determining whether the federal plan for the hydro system won't further jeopardize endangered salmon runs. NOAA's salmon research depends to an alarming degree on the BPA's money.

According to its own records, over the past decade the BPA has given $83 million to the Northwest Division of NOAA-Fisheries. Another $51 million comes from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's a big investment in fidelity on behalf of federal defendants. But does the devotion flow to the legal standard of "the best available science"?

The best available evidence suggests not. In its review of the few new wrinkles added to the Bush-era bi-op by the Obama administration, the American Fisheries Society observed, "It appears that there is an undue emphasis on more monitoring and modeling than on implementing beneficial actions. A logical assumption therefore is that the primary output will be merely that [salmon population] declines are more accurately documented."

Read more of Hawley's op-ed in the Oregonian