The most appropriate response might be to read the court decisions as written by the Court and decide for yourselves whether the news is good or bad. I would hope the 9th Circut would have a website so their decisions would be widely circulated. If anyone knows of such a site, it might be worth posting.

I'm not sure what the court decisions mean since I haven't read them yet but I am a bit concerned by the summary of the Chehalis opinion. If the court ruled that the Chehalis Tribe cannot take their fish from the treaty share of the allocation, then it must come from the non-treaty share. But those fish are the sport angler allocation. Those are OUR fish.

The next question is whether the State of Washington has an obligation to provide a tribal fishery absent a treaty reserved right. I'm not sure. But I suspect the State will provide them with something since the State provides both a non-treaty commercial and sport fishery without a "treaty right". Remember, the Tribes have a right to fish while for the rest of us, fishing is a privledge. If the State provides that same privledge to the Chehalis Tribe, every fish they allocate is one less fish for the sport or commercial folks. In effect, the Chehalis opinion may mean more fish for the tribes and less fish for the sport anglers. To some folks this might be good news. But I suspect the majority of the BB readers wouldn't view it that way.


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MSB