October 9, 2004

Salmon and Science


More than a dozen species of salmon in the Columbia and Snake River
basins are at risk of extinction. One would think that these fish -
culturally significant to Indian tribes and commercially valuable to a large
regional fishing industry - could get a break. But they can't. A
recovery plan devised by the Clinton administration was tossed out in 2003 by
a federal judge who found its recommendations too speculative and
ordered the Bush administration to draw up a better one. The Bush plan may
be worse.
True, the administration proposes technological fixes to help fish over
and around the Columbia and Snake River dams. Yet its habitat
protections are no stronger and, worse, it removes from future consideration the
idea of breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River - an option
the Clinton plan held in reserve in case all other measures failed.
Finally, in a bizarre misreading of the Endangered Species Act, it abandons
salmon recovery as the goal of federal policy and asserts, in so many
words, that its only legal obligation is to keep the current rate of
decline from getting any worse.
Salmon seem especially disadvantaged by this administration's tendency
to bend science and the law to its political agenda. Despite a huge
fish kill in the lower Klamath River in Oregon in 2002, attributed by many
scientists to federal irrigation policies that robbed fish of the water
flows they needed, the Interior Department has yet to produce a
plausible long-term plan to redistribute scarce water in a manner that
satisfies all claimants.
And earlier this year, the administration proposed to count
hatchery-raised salmon in its assessments of wild salmon populations. This
mathematical commingling ignores crucial differences between wild and
manufactured fish. But it would instantly make wild salmon populations look
healthier than they are and give federal agencies a green light to lift
protections against commercial activities in the watersheds where wild
salmon spawn.
The decline of the once-abundant wild salmon runs of the Pacific
Northwest ranks high on any list of environmental blunders. Despite recent
healthy salmon runs, the result of unusually favorable weather and ocean
conditions, the trend line for many wild salmon species is still
downward. It will not be easy to turn this around. It will be harder still if
the federal government ignores its obligations.