Originally Posted By: Todd

I was unable to find a cost breakdown of how much of that $4M comes from each of those fisheries, but even if half of the money comes from the very short spring Chinook fishery (I think allotting it half the income is very generous on my part), it accounts for less than $2M of the total $13M that those commercial netters make.

It's interesting that Hatfield refers to the SAFE analysis...when independent economists and scientists reviewed the self-serving SAFE analysis, they found that it was fraught with inaccuracies, and failed to account for all of the economic costs of the SAFE program.

*SAFE is the Select Area Fishery Evaluation Project Economic Analysis, an economic analysis of a put-and-take commercial fisheries hatchery/netting project in the LCR.

When the IEAB looked at the analysis, they pointed out that the many costs of the fisheries were not accounted for, nor were the losses to recreational fishing economic benefits, nor were recreational fishing economic benefits explored.

Fish on...

Todd


I was trying to avoid making comments on this thread but --- Todd is on the right track. When a politician writes a letter and cites numbers go to the source of the numbers. I don't think Senator Hatfield is a biometrician or a social economist, the numbers were handed to him, probably the entire letter. When economic impact numbers are quoted, sports fishermen or gillnet fisheries, they are only as valid as the assumptions and methodology used to derive them. I suspect Todd looked at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council web site, reports and papers, independent science libraries, IEAB, SAFE review 2007. I am not going to post the links because if you care you should do some work. I could not find the final report cited in the senators letter but I think document 2005-8 is a draft. I should warn you that there are almost 200 pages to download, tables, and explanations of different models used to derive the statistics. I spent a few hours looking through the reports and then went out for a couple of pints to think about what it all meant. I am not an economist but I think the sports argument can be strong.

I think the key is to differentiate between Regional Economic Impact (REI), cited in the letter, and Net Economic Value (NEV). REI is a measure of the direct value of the fishery, of the value of services and support, the cost of equipment, and the value to the local economy of visitors. NEV is the direct value of the fish caught minus the cost of fuel, etc. As best I could determine, of the total REI for lower Columbia River spring chinook, sports caught fish contributed about 22% and gillnet fisheries Contributed 20%. For the four models this was consistent so that in terms of REI both fisheries are equal. NEV is a different story, for the gill net fishery Todd's number of 2 million dollars may be close. NEV for the sports fishery is zero dollars, by definition sports caught fish are not sold. At first glance one might think that this would justify the gillnet fishery but you have to look at what it cost to produce the fish. The cost for the hatchery operations, management, and fishery monitoring is far more per adult return than the market value of a landed fish. That cost is paid by the BPA rate payers and taxpayers of the northwest. Effectively the spring chinook gillnet fishery is a welfare program to support a few fishermen at public expense. It appears that the REI impact is equal for sports and gillnet caught fish so it seems to me that the public who pay for the fish should have first priority in harvest allocation.

My disclaimer, I am not an economist so I might not fully understand the analysis that were in the documents. The IEAB is the Independent Economic Analysis Board, one of three scientific groups that advises the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. I think that an argument to the commission citing IEAB work would carry more weight than a politicians letter.