The NOAA Fisheries Service said Wednesday that it will accept a petition from the Cowlitz Indian Tribe to list smelt populations in Oregon, Washington and California for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The commercial harvest was up to 6 million pounds with an average of 2 million pounds until 1993. No tallies were kept for the sports dippers.The harvest by the commercials bottomed out at 200 pounds in 2005. The subsequent years have seen minor rebounding but nothing significant.
Cowlitz tribal chairman John Barnett puts the blame on the dams on the Cowlitz, "the sediment dredging on the Toutle River in response to the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the dams on the Cowlitz River.If the Cowlitz was allowed to flow like a natural river, all the sediment the Army Corps of Engineers is spending millions to dredge would be naturally cleaned out."
Tacoma Power officials who oversee the Mayfield and Mossyrock dams in East Lewis County , said river flow studies requested by Barnett were done in the late 1990's ,and found no connection. "There was no statisical relationship found between flows on the Cowlitz River and the abundance of smelt.",said Mark La Riviere,senior fisheries biologist with the utility.
Of note is the fact that NOAA rejected a similar petition filed by Sam Wright (Olympia) a retired state fish biologist in 1999.The reasons for this decline of the petition are not given.Although his petition did bring about the new,smaller sports limits and number of days to dip. It did not state any changes in the amount allowed to be taken commercially,SURPRISE!
A NOAA proposal could come by fall, followed by a year of peer review,public comment and public hearings.

Sounds like we may have another barn to rent out now that the door will be closed after the horse is gone. I wonder how much time, money and pressure will be put on NOAA by the commercial lobbyists on this one?