John...you wrote:

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.

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...and you must have spent the evening doing the exact same thing I did this morning...substitute a pot of coffee for the couple of pints, and I bet we duplicated efforts pretty nicely.

The NEV is the key component to the critics of the SAFE...the costs outweigh the benefits considerably, but the benefits are local, while the costs are borne by the public...a modern day tragedy of the commons.

The public pays for the fish, and then the commercial gillnetters go and catch them, and then sell them to the public...the public pays twice, and gets almost no return on their investment.

For the sporties, we spend so much more than the public invests that it's a no brainer as to what fishery makes the most economic sense...and also conspicuously left off of the SAFE report is this truth: much of the money we spend also has great REI benefits...we buy gas, bait, lodging, and tackle locally. I bet a marine supply store on the lower Columbia River sells more $$ in herring every day than they'd make if they sold a new motor every day...it adds up, big time.

Since the SAFE being cited was only used to prop up the gillnet fisheries, it purposely left those benefits off.

The REI is good for sporties, and the NEV is on the plus side...economically, it's a no brainer: all of us are subsidizing a few of them, and while doing so, we are denying millions of dollars of productivity to the local and statewide economies.

DO NOT let them tell you that they are doing it for the non-fishing public and for restaurants...the tribal fishery produces more than enough fish to feed the public and stock restaurants...it's just a BS rhetorical story they pull out every time it is pointed out that they provide no necessary service other than to the few of them who get the benefits.

Fish on...

Todd