Keta, you are right on about the 'backroom deal' scenario. And I have heard that it involves more than just the Columbia Tribal Commission backing off a potential lawsuit over lack of salmon recovery effort - it also includes dropping the 'big hammer threat' bluff factor, by them backing off threatened lawsuits to force the removal of some dams on the Columbia system! Where I believe the Feds are lacking in smarts and nads is that they should know that the Tribes don't really want the dams taken down either - because they need a LOT of electricity to run their profitable gambling casinos, and more importantly they likely would lose the opportunity to gain a huge Gov. payoff if the wild fish go extinct despite them winning such a threatened suit to remove dams; leaving their nets as the then main culprit if the wild fish still go extinct. We need much better representation in Washington D.C. to help get us sportfishers back our lawful fishing rights to half of the harvestable fish! But then again, most of those cheeseheads in Washington D.C. don't fish much, so no skin off their browned noses, eh?. ... Also very notable here is the Tribal attitude: if the Feds give them 6 1/2 times the allocation of Columbia springers than non-Indians instead of the lawful equal split, they will sign an agreement to drop lawsuits. This shows just how much they care about salmon recovery - including the wild fish! Why else would they go along with an agreement to allow non-Indians 2% ESA impact on the Col. springers only if they could up their impact to 13% from last year's 8% - pushing the total wild springer kill ESA impact up from last year's 9% (8 + 1 for us) to this year's large 15% nate kill. Are we seeing a pattern of tell tale Tribal bottom lines here yet? YES!