I have to sigh, so give me a second. It is a very difficult and frustrating excercise to engage people who -- I'm sorry -- don't seem particularly predisposed to listening. But you asked fair questions, and I will try to address them fairly. And I'm sorry if this seems a trifle paranoid, but that's where I expect the fairness to end. So I'm going to try and make this complete, so I don't have to post about it again.

First I want to say that I find your questions more than a little ironic. On the one hand WT is unfairly and without basis accused of simply jumping into court as part of some type of get rich scheme, without ever trying to constructively engage or cooperate with organizations or entities we disagree with. Then when it turns out that we have been constructively and cooperatively engaged with some of those types of entities, that seems to suggest to you some new form perfidy. We have also in the past accepted money from and worked with WDFW, NMFS, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Weyerhauser Corp, several Tribes in addition to the ones you mentioned, Jefferson, King, Snohomish, and Island Counties. Please, make of all that whatever you will. WT's record of committment to wild fish preservation and recovery speaks for itself to anyone open minded enough to research it.

OK. The Yakimas net spring chinook in the Yakima (Yakima spring chinook are not actually listed under the ESA), and they are also running anexperimental spring chinook hatchery that WT is very concerned about. We serve on a peer review panel that monitors the performance of the hatchery, and are trying to keep the Yakimas honest over the hatchery. I don't think we make them all that happy. I don't think we accept any money from them for this, but maybe I'm wrong, or maybe you're refering to something else that I've missed. We were I believe contracted by the Sklallams and Jefferson County to carry out field research in Jefferson County to determine what small streams in the county still held fish, and collect other data, including the presence of fish-passage barriers, so the Sklallams and Jefferson County could develop and prioritize a habitat protection and restoration plan for listed chinook, summer chum, and other depressed fish poulations.

BPA is under federal mandate to provide funding for scientific research into, among other things, the current state of wild fish populations throughout the Columbia Basin. We applied for and recieved funding to conduct a multi-year field research project to identify and catalog the remaing resident trout populations in the headwaters of several sub-basins throughout the drainage. One of the accomplishments of the project was to extend the known range of native westslope cutthroat farther west in Washington than had previously been recorded. Under contract to Seattle Public Utilities, WT carried out similar research to the Sklallam/Jefferson project within the city limits of Seattle (that didn't keep us from challenging the adequacy of Seattle's Habitat Conservation Plan for the Cedar River watershed, or to push for the best possible mangement --including decreased production from proposed levels -- of the proposed Cedar River sockeye hatchery). We are also continuing to do annual spawning surveys for SPU in Seattle's creeks. Our data contributed to uncovering the problem of pre-spawn mortality in Seattle's creeks due to degraded water quality. You may have read about it in recent issues of the Seattle PI.

WT gets these funding awards and contracts because we do good work,even though the entities who award us these grants and contracts know they can expect no favoritism from us as advocates if we see a need to challenge their policy decisions, on an entire range of issues, from land and water use, to fisheries, to hatcheries.

I hope I've answered your questions. I'm sure many on this board will be able to glean from this response new evidence of my dishonesty, and WT's distortion of the system toward some nefarious end. I surrender to their tender mercies. You obviously did enough research to find out where we've recieved some funding. I hope you'll take the trouble to research the facts I've presented here before deciding for yourself whether your satisfied with my answers.

Ramon Vanden Brulle,
Washington Trout