| Bailing Out Klamath Salmon |
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by Tim McKay
A conservationist coalition last month sought to step into a federal lawsuit aimed at dismantling endangered species protection for coho salmon in the Klamath-Trinity and Rogue river systems.
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March 2002
The NEC and other groups want intervenor status so they can present arguments, defend restoration efforts and eventually appeal in a case brought by the ultra-conservative Pacific Legal Foundation.
The foundation is trying to extend to other river systems an Oregon district court ruling which effectively said that hatchery-born coho are the same as threatened wild fish when it comes to creating safeguards.
“Wise-use” groups have since tried to use the decision, which is under appeal, to strip protection from dwindling salmon and steelhead stocks up and down the West Coast.
No Help
The conservationists acted on the assumption that the White House will not mount a defense of the imperiled fish because it wants to appease anti-environmental constituents.
“If rolling back environmental protections were an Olympic sport, the Bush administration would be a gold medal winner,” said Bob Hunter of Water Watch, one of the intervenor groups.
Many fisheries scientists have scoffed at the foundation view that wild salmon don’t need protection as long as hatcheries churn out millions of fish in concrete tanks. Many believe that hatchery practices have actually led to the decline of wild salmon.
The fish in the Klamath Basin suffer from the ill effects of severe water pollution, dams and chronic low flows that have led to intense competition for water allocations.
Bad Water
A draft study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) cited severe pollution as the most serious threat to Klamath fish. Even increased flows will harm salmon, it added, because incoming irrigation water is laced with pesticides, fertilizers and animal waste--and is too hot.
“It does not matter if they are hatchery salmon or wild salmon. If you put them in the Klamath River, there is a good chance they will die,” according to fishermen’s representative Glen Spain.
The decline of coho has cost 3,700 family-wage jobs in the region’s fishing industry, with major impacts to Fort Bragg, Eureka and Crescent City in California and Brookings in Oregon.
The draft NAS report criticized the argument that fish needed more water in 2001. But it also volunteered that the Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) draft biological assessment for the 2002 water year, which calls for giving first water rights to irrigators in spite of its consequences for endangered fish, isn’t supported by science either.
In a subsequent letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a coalition of conservation groups said that the BOR’s plan for 2002 “relies on a discredited legal theory--that Reclamation has a contractual obligation to provide full water deliveries to irrigators on the Klamath Project, regardless of the needs of endangered species, the effects of tribal trust resources, or other applicable environmental laws.” |
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Updated Thursday, March 21, 2002 |
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