Curt,

I agree, whatever the reason for his actions with him endorsing this action the public will now listen to why we should have NO GILLNETS in our waters, instead of pandering to the few that would continue to rape our public resources for private profit!


Fishy

After reading and dissecting each sentence to try to get the full meaning of the Oregon Governors letter, I totally agree with Director Anderson’s appropriate response and possibly misinterpreted tone.


The feds:
1) supply grant money supporting selective commercial gear testing.
2) are required to have a recovery plan for any fish listed.
3) might have a different idea on how status quo recovery is working at this time.

In short,
The carrot of possible more fish for recreational fishers in the main stem found in the body of the letter reeks of a Trojan horse filled with gill netters trying to gain a foothold on the off channel areas ----aka-- SAFE areas.

Me the Dirt Bag??????????

Oh Please I'm not the one supporting a phony ballot measure that starts off with a full paragraph on how critically endangered salmon are in the Columbia Basin. Now just read back here and see just how worried people are about protecting those fish. 200 million pissed away and counting.

Very true; great that this issue is gaining the visibility it deserves.

That said, his involvement at this time warrants a high degree of suspicion. Is he merely trying to jump on the bandwagon as a politician (rather innocuous) or trying to dilute the initiative effort by lending his support to an alternate approach thereby potentially causing confusion amongst the voters? My vote is the latter and my guess is that his involvement now is in direct response to requests from the gillnet industry which sees this issue getting away from them.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/free/betsy-...19bb2963f4.html



Gillnet Lobby dosen't appear to be to happy either, to me it looks like he just took the safe road and went back to HSRG it's all in the report.

Oh Oh, Having Paid altogether way too many taxes under Goobeenor MediaWhore, I'm on M's side again I wouldn't be too surprised that he is just trying to blunt the effort, i.e., Re-Direct.

Kitzhabers proposal and the Gillnet Ban Initiative are by no means mutually exclusive.

The Guv's plan to take the commercials off the mainstem into off-channel "SAFE" areas could very well come to fruition WITH simultanoeous passage of the initiative banning the use of gillnets. They can BOTH happen!

Talk about hitting a homer outta the ballpark!

Call me a ridiculously hopeful optimist, but hey, if a guy's gonna dream, he may as well dream BIG!
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Now, don't forget to make that contribution....

https://www.c-esystems.com/stopgillnetting/donation.aspx

Here's a thought as to how this might eventually work "out".

The listed fish have maximum impacts set. At least in recent years, most of the take is given to the tribes.

One of the reasons for going selective is so that more hatchery fish can be taken per dead listed fish. If all fisheries are selective, this is a good thing.

But, if the tribes persist in fishing non-selectively they will need more listed impact fish in order for them to harvest more hatchery fish. I doubt that the tribes would voluntarily give up harvest of hatchery fish.

Below is the boilerplate response I got from the Inslee campaign. It did not answer my question, and the link to Inslee's supposed plan regarding maritime industries was not helpful. I've followed up asking if they have an actual response to my yes/no question.



"Thank you for contacting our campaign about commercial fisheries.

Washington’s commercial fishing industries play an important, yet often unheralded role in our state’s economy. The industry employs boat builders, gear makers, electricians, welders, processors, and anglers. They work in some of the most sustainably managed fisheries on theplanet, providing affordable protein for people throughout the world. Washington State must recognize the importance of the commercial fishing industry, and work with it to sustain its future prosperity.

Jay has released a plan to grow a thriving maritime sector, including commercial fisheries. We encourage you to read it at JayInslee.com/priorities.

Again, thank you for your comments. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us. For more information about Jay, please check our website as it is regularly updated at www.jayinslee.com.

Sincerely,

Eric"

They are not mutually exclusive but unfortunately neither does anything to restore wild fish runs. It is nothing more than a harvest allocation battle. A few historical facts have to be remembered. When congress mandated that mitigation to replace salmon lost by building dams it was to replace salmon lost to the lower river commercial fisheries. It has only been in the past few decades that mitigation was extended to upriver users, mostly the tribes. The majority of the Columbia Basin salmon hatcheries are federally funded through the Northwest Power Planning Council.. The lower river harvest is essentially 100% funded by electric rate payers, maybe they should decide harvest allocation, its politics. If governor Kitzhaber is interested in salmon conservation he could take steps to reduce pesticide, herbicides, and personal care products discharges in Oregon. The same can be said for Washington.

Oregon Pesticides

You sure have a nice way of saying, "I ain't buyin' it."

The way commercials twist words around, when they state allocating the river’s resources to wealthy sport fishermen, are they really saying..

Sport fishermen distribute the majority of economic value--- wealth--- to the surrounding Columbia River region.

Then I would agree with that proven true second statement.

I don't understand......

Are the ballot measure to ban gill nets and the Gov's proposal mutually exclusive, or not?

If the gill net ban passes, and becomes law, how would this affect the Gov's proposal? Seems like major parts of his proposal would be dead, since gill nets would not be allowed even in the SAFE areas (as I understand it). So the "carrot and stick approach" becomes just a stick.
So I'm not sure the Commission or ODFW or the Gov could LEGALLY support much of the Gov's proposal if the people of Oregon (thru the ballot box) ban gill nets entirely from the Lower C.

However, if the Oregon ballot measure to ban gill nets FAILS, my sense is the Commission will toss the Gov's proposal into the recycling bin. And the Gov won't complain. After all, if the people of Oregon fail to ban gill nets in the lower Columbia, why should the Gov, the Commission, or ODFW support it? Thus, my confusion.

Perhaps someone who knows both the gill net ban petition and the Gov's proposal can provide some additional discussion.

Both this gillnet ban initiative and Gov. Kitzhaber's proposal, mutually exclusive or not, are just smoke and mirrors that won't do anything to help recover ESA fish in the Columbia River.

LB, not sure why you think there's any pressure on tribal fishers to go to seines, because there's not...not any...they could care less what you, the Governor, or the CCA thinks about seines. They only get cues from the Feds, and only a little.

Citori, the Governor's letter is exactly the opposite of "the day the gillnets died"...he's trying to make sure that they don't.

This is just all window dressing, and pretending there's any recovery involved takes a level of misunderstanding that is, unfortunately, common among sportfishers...it hasn't changed in decades, and isn't likely to change, ever, unfortunately.

The effects that the various fisheries have on ESA recovery for the great majority of the Columbia River stocks is approximately "zero" in comparison to all the other things that are causing the decline of those fish stocks every single day, and those who control the actual causes of decline love seeing actual time and energy being put into quibbling over the crumbs.

If you want to make an actual effect on whatever damage the commercial fisheries are doing to the runs (and there certainly is some, it's just not really any worse than what the sportfisheries are doing, and both pale in comparison to the actual damaging causes), then do what is the only thing that makes sense...

Get rid of the non-tribal commercial fisheries in the Columbia River entirely. They serve no purpose other than to enrich a few on the backs of the many.

Period.

The "the public deserves fish!" argument is lame, not to mention wrong, on two levels.

First, no they don't...just like they don't deserve commercially hunted elk, or ducks, or whales.

Second, if they simply must buy a spring Chinook, then the tribal fishery produces plenty of fish for the public, since that's what the tribal fishers do with their catch, sell it to the public.

Killing the fish in one type of net instead of the other doesn't do jackshit.

Why sporties would waste so much time and money pursuing something that is such a waste of time is beyond me, but I suspect it is mainly centered around the fantasy that gillnets are why we have ESA fish runs in the Columbia River.

Fish on...

Todd

P.S. The fact, however, that the Governor would talk about using the fish to accomplish the most economic benefits, which is clearly by allocating them to the sportfishery, is by far the best part of this entire discussion...and lends further reason to get rid of the non-tribal commercial fisheries altogether, not just re-paint their boats and call it good.

CCA's Measure for the most part would end the terminals fisheries that make up the bulk of the fishing time and catch for Oregon's Inland Gillnet Fisherman. The Gov's proposal is HSRG which states move more fish to the terminals and develop selective gear for the mainstem except the allocation away from the supposed gravel to the sport. I'm sure this letter didn't come from pressure from the gillnet fisherman, I'm hearing the tribes are prepared to sue if it's passed and ODFW it's self is worried because they have many employees that would be with out jobs.

Every net catches and kills unintended quarry, and when the quotas are set by the amount of dead unintended quarry, it doesn't matter if they were killed by dynamite or by showing them re-runs of Friends until they expire.

And, as I noted above, no matter how many fish the gillnetters kill, or the seiners, or the sporties, or all of them combined, it isn't a drop in the bucket overall compared to the real causes of the stock declines, and these proposals do nothing at all to address anything of actual value reversing the stock declines.

Fish on...

Todd

The fact of the matter is that banning gillnets is an attempt at a wholesale re-allocation of as many fish as possible to the sportfishery.

I support this as a goal wholeheartedly, but I know that this goal has nothing to do with recovery, none at all.

It makes sense culturally, it makes sense socially, and it makes sense economically...but it does not recover anything...and those who either keep saying that when they know it's patently false, or believe it without actually thinking about it due to their fantasies about gillnets being what is causing the decline of Columbia River stocks, need to just be honest about what is going on here.

To better accomplish what this initiative will accomplish would be to get rid of the non-tribal commercial fishers altogether.

There's no need for subterfuge, no need for made up arguments, and no need for perpetuating the myth that once the gillnets are gone everything will be hunky dory (or actually improve much at all, if at all).

Just say "There is no reason for this industry to exist, and it costs us billions of dollars in lost revenue to have it. It is hereby gone."

Hard? Yes. Honest? Yes.

Fish on...

Todd

Hey I could live with that except I would add that the Big Energy Projects that are funding this fraud are planning on taking the impacts for themselves and if any are left over sports can have them.

It will be interesting to see how this looks 5 yrs from now. I feel Todd hits the nail, as this won't recover a single fish (as the impacts will still be used by whoever is allowed to take fish out of the water). However, SBD might have the real point ... those impacts might not be awarded to fisheries at all. I mean didn't we get Canada to lay off a bit on the last US/Canada treaty, but those impacts didn't go to fisheries at all, did they?

And the other aspect of this is, will hatchery production have to go down?...aren't part of the HSRG recommendations that hatchery fish spawning numbers need to go down, and how effective are sport fisheries at taking all the available hatchery fish? I realize these questions are mostly hypothetical, & it would be nice to simply get rid of the nets, but I always worry about the law of unintended consequences. When fighting for more fish in your boat than the other guys' boat....I'm just wary of what I can't think of is all. Interesting indeed.

There shouldn't be ANYWHERE that gill nets are allowed period!