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We Have a Responsibility to Wild Salmon by Cathea Stanley The News Tribune, December 25, 2004

Despite Tim Harris’ attempt to tout the Bush administration’s most recent salmon policies as sound (Insight, 12-12), hundreds of credible fishery scientists see these plans for what they are: a road map to salmon extinction.

In the Columbia Basin, once the world’s most productive salmon area in the world, science now tells us that the two largest factors affecting the survival of our region’s wild salmon are ocean conditions and outmigrating conditions in the Snake and Columbia rivers.

Unlike ocean conditions, the Bonneville Power Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers control the quality of the habitat in the Snake and Columbia rivers during salmon migration.

Since our wild salmon haven’t evolved to negotiate the chopping turbines of our hydropower systems, which kill 10 percent of the entire run at each dam, we have a responsibility to curb this gross over-harvest with the science we currently have.

Related Pages:
Survival of Downstream Migration data from NOAA Fisheries, 12/21/00