reminds me of ""War and Peace" in college...

Anyway the observations on politics are pretty good. The big missing link here is economics....unemployment....Boeing (leaving)..
farmers (irrigation)...developers (habitat loss)..
When you say that politicians don't care about fish you're right unless they can get a photo op out of it like Governor Locke and Norm Dicks did recently when the hatchery recommendations came out...they appropriated a bunch of money and made it sound like salmon were saved already (thanks to them of course)...Now we have the new water allocation bill that will please alot of the above and piss off fishermen...but to the politicians the interest groups above are way more important to their voter base than we fishermen. BUT if you portray the salmon in the same light as say the spotted owl like WT does so well you get more political attention.
So pandering to the correct interest group at the right time is a tough job for the politician. Hatcheries may get some long awaited reform in spite of these bafoons. Look to the fishing organizations to lead the way...(fingers crossed)..good civil discussion for the most part so far. (what happened?)