Friday River Wrap-Up

What's hot on the rivers this week? Here's our weekly river wrap-up.

10 Endangered Vacations: Salmon Fishing on the Snake River -- The Daily Green rounds up some of the best vacations that are currently under threat... what's the main reason salmon fishing on the Snake River is at risk? "In a word: Dams." We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Milestone Toward Elwha Dam Removal -- Oregon Public Broadcasting takes a look at the latest steps towards dam removal in Washington. Glines Canyon Dam and Elwha Dam are the two nation's biggest hydroelectric dams scheduled for destruction to date.

San Joaquin River's Flow Extends to Pacific Again -- A historic moment in California: "The San Joaquin River is now flowing from Friant Dam to the Pacific Ocean, reaching the first milestone in a plan to bring back Chinook salmon... It has been decades since the river flowed continuously from the dam to the ocean during spring, summer and fall without the help of an unusually wet year."

Get the latest and greatest in salmon and river news by following us on Twitter.

[Photo via: Fresno Bee]

We Love the Snake River! Win Mountain Khakis Gear By Showing Us Your Favorite Rivers

The folks at Save Our Wild Salmon and Mountain Khakis love free-flowing rivers. Rivers are the lifeblood that connect our nation — flowing from mountains to the sea and crossing state and country borders.

Our favorite? We love the rugged Snake River. Its headwaters begin in the wildlands of Wyoming, fed by meltwater from the Tetons, and its waters flow through the Rocky Mountains of Idaho and the Palouse prairies of Eastern Washington before feeding into the mighty Columbia River.

But what makes the Snake River even more impressive? It is home to the legendary Snake River sockeye. Snake River sockeye have the most epic migration path of any salmon on Earth — swimming more than 900 miles inland and climbing 7,000 feet in elevation to spawn in the rugged Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho.

There are not many issues today that people can agree on. But for 20 years, a diverse coalition of commercial, sport and recreational fishing groups, outdoor industry businesses, conservation organizations, and clean energy and taxpayer advocates have joined forces to save an icon of the American West — Snake River salmon and the waters they return to each year.

But we’re sure you’ve got your favorite river; a pristine, wild waterway where you love to play and celebrate the outdoors. Maybe it’s right down the road from your house, or it’s on the other side of the world, a river where you experienced your most memorable travel moment. It might even be a river watershed that you spend time volunteering to protect. Wherever it is, we want to see it!

To show you just how much we love the Snake River and its salmon, and celebrate all the beautiful rivers to be found around the world, we’re giving away some sweet gear from Mountain Khakis!

Between April 1 and April 30, send us a photo of your favorite river. As a little incentive we’ll be featuring a photo on our blog each week and we’ll be giving away some cool Mountain Khakis schwag throughout the month!

On April 30, we’ll give away our grand prize — a pair of MK Snake River pants!

Entering is easy! To submit, upload your photo(s) to the Save Our Wild Salmon We Love Rivers Flickr Pool. Make sure your photo has a title and a description of why it's your favorite river. We look forward to seeing your work and the rivers that you love!

To win you must be a U.S. resident or have a U.S shipping address. Sorry!

Salmon & Steelhead: An Economic Engine

The Lewiston Tribune released a great editorial today, expanding on something folks in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon know full well: salmon and steelhead mean business for families and communities throughout the region. Read on...

Lewiston Tribune Editorial - April 2nd, 2010
Feds would shut off tap on fishing economy

Healthy steelhead and salmon runs have proved to be recession-proof for the economies of eastern Washington and north central Idaho. Unfortunately, politics may intervene.

In the last couple of years, more fish came back up the Snake and Clearwater rivers than in recent memory - and with them came anglers and angler dollars. In Clearwater County, anglers spent $679,600 for lodging in September and October. During the same two months in 2008, they spent $392,500. Just the tax on lodging in Asotin County generated $160,000 last year. In 2008, it produced $166,000. In Nez Perce County, lodging tax revenues reached $188,000 in 2008 and dropped just a little to $186,000 a year later.

You won't get much argument about steelhead and salmon runs being an economic engine. The argument is about how much. But take a conservative estimate based on University of Idaho, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Census Bureau studies and you'll get anglers spending an average of $83 a day, or almost $300 per fishing trip. More of them are coming. Three years ago, 8,805 out-of-staters purchased a three-day Idaho salmon/steelhead fishing permit. Last year, the total was up another 20 percent.

All of which serves as context to the Obama administration's ongoing efforts to diminish those runs. Of course, that's not the administration's intent. But that's the likely outcome. Biologists credit positive ocean conditions for record runs. But you can't control ocean conditions. You can influence what happens in the Snake River, and for the last three years, a federal judge has ordered fish spilled past the dams on the river. The Fish Passage Center credits that move with speeding the smolts toward the Pacific and depositing them in a healthier state.

The alternative is barging the young fish around the dams to the sea, a process that spreads disease. Federal officials tried that for almost 20 years with mixed results. While steelhead tolerate barging, salmon do not fare as well.

But with a low snowpack, the Obama administration says spilling fish past the dams is a luxury. It's proposing to cut off spill on May 1, two weeks after the fish migration starts and about three months sooner than last year.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Services has submitted this plan to the Northwest Power Planning Council's Independent Scientific Advisory Board. Less spill means more barging. "In our review, we concluded that the two-week period of no spill and maximum transportation of steelhead would adversely impact a significant proportion of the total migration of juvenile salmon and steelhead remaining in-river," the Fish Passage Center concluded. "Given that such a high proportion of yearling chinook, sockeye, coho and lamprey juveniles pass these collector projects during this time, it is highly likely that eliminating spring spill from May 1 until the initiation of summer spill would significantly increase the proportion of these populations that would be transported."

An adverse ruling no doubt would send fish advocates back to the courts to continue spill. In the meantime, expect to hear debate about the impact of spill - and diminished electrical power generation - as a drain on the region's economy. Perhaps. But this much is clear. Spill equals more fish and fish are providing a lifeline to Washington and Idaho communities now struggling with unemployment and few prospects. Fish aren't the only critters endangered by more barging. - M.T.

Friday River Wrap-Up

While we're busy trying to protect salmon on the Snake River, there is plenty of other great work happening on other rivers around the country. So we're devoting every Friday to giving you some of the highlights. Here's what made us happy this week:

Many of State's High Hazard Dams Go Uninspected - Article featuring the great work of one of our great partners, American Rivers

“Where dams are no longer doing what they were built to do, let’s remove them, rather than fix them,’’ said Alison Bowden, who directs the freshwater program for The Nature Conservancy. “Sometimes, the real hazard is created because the dam is there.’’

Celebrate Rivers: Did You Know 600,000 River Miles Are Impounded Behind Dams? - Taking a look at the impact of dams from a paddler's perspective via Epicocity Project

Torpedo the Dams -- To Prevent More Floods - A great Op-Ed in the Boston Globe

D.C Bag Tax Collects $150,000 in January for River Cleanup - Less single-use plastic and more money for river cleanups. We love it!

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[Photo via: Epicocity Project]

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?