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The Orca-Salmon-Dam-Dredging Controversy by Doris Smith Lynden Tribune, April 7, 2022

Eco-bureaucrats create work for themselves so they can retain political power,
continue graft within government circles, and perpetuate anti-economic views.

A huge ecological impediment called Save the Orca blocks our emergency measure.

To save the orca killer whales, Gov. Jay Inslee wants to remove four major dams on the lower Snake River.

His ecobureaucratic thought process runs like this:

1. the orca love Chinook salmon,
2. the Snake River has not been doing as well as other rivers on its salmon runs,
3. removing the four dams on the lower Snake River will improve Chinook salmon runs, and then,
4. there will be more yummy Chinook salmon for orcas. Never mind the economic ruin to our lives by removing dams.

These orcas must be very important.

In 1995, the resident orca population located off the coasts of British Columbia and Washington state were counted and numbered at 98, but in August 2021, the count had dropped to 74.

The ratio here is one orca per one- to-two thousand square miles of coastal waters. The orca portion of Inslee's $1.1 billion amounts to about $13.5 million dollars per whale and does not include additional money spent within numerous Washington State ecobureaucratic task force offices and private organizations which are fundraising to save the orca.

Then a big surprise occurred. Someone spilled the beans: the orca eat other salmon and fish besides Chinook.

So now, besides the many millions spent to save the Chinook salmon for the orca, ecobureaucrats insist that river maintenance and sediment removal, which are both needed to reduce flooding, will roil river water with toxic chemicals, thus hurting salmon, as well leaving salmon stranded within dredging pools.

This claim comprises a lawsuit against dredging, submitted to the Ninth Federal District Court, by Bob Ferguson, Washington state's attorney general.

Remarkably, in rebuttal to such a claim, EPA scientists Claudia Wise and Joseph Green testify that dredging and river maintenance benefit the habitat of salmon and other species by improving rivers.

Dredging creates new spawning opportunities for salmon by leaving little pockets on river bottoms where these fish may safely and easily spawn.

Wise and Green estimate that proper dredging of our Oregon and Washington State rivers (never during spawning season) would dramatically increase salmon runs within 5-10 years to greater levels than in Alaska and British Columbia.

Seventy-four orca, living in the ocean, appear to be blocking sediment removal from the Nooksack riverbed, even though dredging it would feed them better.

No, the welfare of orcas does not block dredging.

Rather, ecobureaucrats block dredging to make the situation worse, both for the salmon and the orcas, in order to create work for themselves so they can retain political power, continue graft within government circles, and perpetuate anti-economic views.

Civilzation is nature's worst enemy. All wild things vanish when she comes. Where great forests once lived nothing stands but burned stumps -- a black shroud of death. The iron heel of civilization has stamped out nations of men, but it has never been able to wipe out pictures, and Paxson was one of the men gifted to make them.

-- Charles M. Russell, "An Appreciation of Edgar S. Paxson" part of a post-mortem tribute,
"Passing of Paxson, Montana Artist," MNA distributed 1/24/19, MHS microfilm: Jordan Gazette.