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Tribes and Bushies reach Northwest salmon settlement

Posted at 5:19 PM on 08 Apr 2008

In exchange for four Native tribes dropping lawsuits, the Bush administration will spend $900 million over the next decade to help out Northwest salmon. The settlement reached Monday ends, for the time being, a decades-long legal battle over the best balance of tribal and commercial fishing rights, protection for salmon, and regional power demands in the Columbia River basin. The new plan does not affect four hydroelectric dams on the basin's Snake River, which environmentalists have long insisted must be torn down if salmon are going to see any benefit. The dam question will likely crop up again in early May, when the Bush administration brings a third try at a salmon-protecting plan to a district judge who has rejected two previous offerings as not protective enough.

sources: Associated Press, Seattle Times, Yakima Herald-Republic

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Comments: (4 comments)

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have a Gristmill account, log in below. If you don't have a Gristmill account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

"It's a sad day for me,"

said Oregon's Governor Ted Kulongoski.

The upriver Nez Perce in Idaho are none too pleased, either. How many salmon actually make it up the Snake River to where they live?

And $900 million over ten years, split among four tribes, is after all not a lot of money. So what really is in it for the four tribes who went along with this deal?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 11:59 PM on 08 Apr 2008

Follow the Money

Very ironic since the salmon stocks have collapsed at least as far north as the Columbia River - only 300 Columbia River Spring Chinook have returned this year. The entire "salmon recovery" effort has been a ridiculous sham, another way for the Bush Gang to divert taxpayer money to cronies and supporters. And everyone has played, from the large NGOs to the tribes and local governments. As one Colville Confederated Tribes elder told a local community meeting a couple of years ago here in the Okanogan Valley, "We don't give a f**k about the fish. We want the money."

There is a great book, SALMON 2100, which details a lot of the failures and offers creative, innovative solutions. The book comes from a project sponsored by EPA and the American Fisheries Society and headed by Dr. Robert T. Lackey with chapters written by 36 leading fisheries and community experts and included several well-attended conferences. When AFS saw the direction the project took, it was buried. The book could not be bought except by special order for about the first year after publication. When there were complaints, the book was listed on the AFS in-house online store, but Amazon still has only a few copies priced from $199.92 even though it's a 39.00 book if you can find it.
Buy the Book Salmon 2100 Project

Full disclosure - I'm a co-author, but we donated our work, so I get nothing from sales of the book.

by salmoncenter at 6:29 AM on 09 Apr 2008

Limits

The salmon fishing off of the California coast has been suspended this season because there are so few salmon.If the fish can't get upriver to spawn then there are no fish.Simple as that!It is simply a case of what is in it for people,nevermind the environment.

Why not ask why!?

by usandthem at 4:54 AM on 14 Apr 2008

"what's in it for people"

Exactly, UsAndThem.

Thinking of animals as a "resource" is NOT a sustainable way to live.

There is NO "sustainability," if animal rights are not fundamental.

Got that, SpaSh?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 5:53 AM on 14 Apr 2008

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