| Bush Beats Up On Fish |
|
Double trouble is coming from the Bush administration to salmon and the people who depend upon them in the Columbia and Klamath river watersheds.
|
| |
December 2004
One federal initiative proposes to eliminate as much as 90% of the critical habitat designated for some 26 populations of salmon and steelhead listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), while the other would eliminate any consideration of dam removal on the Columbia River to restore fish.
The apparent architect of the latest rollbacks, Mark Rutzick, the Bush-appointed special counsel to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), sued the agency to block salmon protections for years when he was an attorney for timber industry trade associations.
The rollbacks were greeted as a “huge change” by Russell Brooks, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which often represents industry groups in challenges against the EPA.
The 606-page proposal released on November 30 provides a 60-day comment period for public review. Plans for public hearings have yet to reach the NEC, but will be posted on the NEC website (www.yournec.org) when available.
Wrong Way
Tom Weseloh, North Coast manager for the sports fishing group California Trout, said the proposal “is a huge step backwards for efforts to restore the former abundance of salmon and steelhead.”
Glen Spain, northwest director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns., added that the Bush administration is erring in its economic analysis by failing to consider the benefits of restored salmon populations.
“Conservation makes good economic sense,” Spain said, “and we are a perfectly good example of this. Our livelihood is on the line.”
At least one economic study concludes that as many as 7,000 family-wage jobs have been lost in the Northwest fishing industry because of the decline of coho salmon.
The spiraling decline prompted the federal government to subsidize salmon fishers to invest in other saltwater catch. That led to more overfishing,which resulted in federal buyouts of fishing boats in recent years.
Bedfellows
In the most recent scenario since the advent of the Bush administration, special interest groups sue the government over environmental regulations. The administration then offers to settle by re-examining the rules, which it then rolls back. The script is being played out over fish and forests.
The current round of fishing rollbacks grew out of a lawsuit brought by the National Association of Homebuilders against rules to protect the critical habitat of the endangered fish.
In its new and narrower interpretation of the ESA, the White House wants to protect as “critical” only those waterways where salmon and steelhead are found now—and not those that are part of their historic range.
The administration at the same time has decided that dams no longer endanger wild fish runs, a sure sign that dam removal has been dropped as an option for recovering more than three dozen runs of salmon and steelhead.
“As cynical as I am, I’m actually surprised at how bad this is,” said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Death Sentence
“None of this is defensible,” according to Chris Frissell, a fisheries biologist with the Pacific Rivers Council. “There is no way it (the Bush plan) would come anywhere close to helping these fish recover.”
With sharply drawn sides, all are predicting more lawsuits over critical habitat, the most powerful tool of the ESA for controlling the impacts of logging, mining and development which already have made one-third of the nation’s lakes and one-quarter of the nation’s rivers polluted.
NMFS regional administrator James Lecky says that more litigation “is the one certainty.”
Other assaults on the Endangered Species Act are expected in the House of Representatives to be led by Republican California Congressmen Richard Pombo and Wally Herger. Rather than outright repeal of the popular law, its demise may come though what its foes will call “improving” amendments. |
|
Updated Tuesday, December 07, 2004 |
|
