This is going to get real interesting really quick if the court adopts the tribal position without modification.

Their argument is that their opportunity is limited by habitat issues (in this case the culverts). Even if the feds closed all non-tribal fisheries in the Pacific, Puget Sound and Puget Sound rivers the habitat is so trashed on many of the Puget Sound rivers that even without any fishing runs would not be any where enough to support any thing close to half of the historic numbers.

Using the Stillaguamish as an example the co-managers following the ESA listing in 1990 of Puget Sound Chinook developed estimates that under properly functioning habitat conditions (PFC) the river would support 30,000 Chinook. From the estimates I have seen the current habitat can not support more than 1,000 fish (without any fishing). Restoring the basin's salmon habitat to support that number of fish would make the economic impacts from replacing those culverts look like pocket change.

Could see immediate bans on any further development, no more logging, no more water withdrawals (including domestic wells), no replacement of infrastructure, etc. We are arriving at Stage 2 of Boldt; the Tribes will find themselves in a very strong position to play lets make a deal with little to no input from non-tribal citizens.

Curt