The "driver " stock concept went out with Hoh v. Baldridge.
Simply put, AK will not cut back unless forced and enforced by the Feds. How much congressional pull does AK have. Ted Stevens used to control a lot.
The one group that really hasn't weighed in yet is the Greenpeace/Sea Shepard/ whale hugger/ grizzly fans/wolf fans. The resident Killer Whales need fish to survive. They're listed under ESA. Grizzly needs salmon to flourish. They're listed. Wolves do use salmon instead of ungulates. A month eating salmon saves how many ungulates for other (bipedal?) predators?
About 30 years ago the Fedarl Courts held, in Hawaii, that allowing sheep and goats to eat the seedling trees upon which an endangered bird fed was a take under ESA. That suggests that a court could decide that all the marine mixed stock salmon fisheries take Killer Whales and Grizzly. The neat thing is those fish can still be accessed in the rivers so no actual harvest needs to be lost, just some fisheries.
Along these lines, NMFS has written biological opinions concluding that a dam that "takes" ESA-listed Chinook salmon adversely affects ESA-listed killer whales, but does not jeopardize them. NMFS has also written biological opinions concluding that mixed stock salmon fisheries in WA state that harvest Chinook salmon adversely affect those killer whales, but also does not jeopardize them, all the while ignoring the take of Chinook by mixed stock salmon fisheries in BC and AK. If the US Government has determined that killer whales are endangered, then that same US government should use its influence to reduce the take of Chinook by those far flung salmon fisheries so that the killer whales forage base would return in greater abundance.
Previous Topic
Index
