I'm a bit concerned that the guest author has taken a very disjointed view of the Columbia River Basin and a functioning ecosystem.  No one knows about the intimate and complex relationships that exist within an ecosystem more than tribes.  It's these relationships that have, and continue to sustain the tribal communities that call the Columbia Basin home.  

Your comment "With less than 25 percent of the funding going toward those stocks, it is clear that this deal wasn't intended to address the actual ESA issues facing the Northwest," is troubling to me because it treats salmon as an independent component rather than a part of the entire system.  Logic tells me that if you do something to help the ecosystem for non-listed salmon, lamprey, sturgeon, trout and the many other species this MOA benefits-you will also benefit ESA-listed salmon.  They all require the same quality habitat, clean water and cool temperatures.  It seems terribly ignorant to think salmon exist in a vacuum and independent of anything else. Ecosystems are a series of complex relationships. One can not look to a single species and a single solution. Doing so misses the big picture.

The guest author did not put forward a disjointed view of the Columbia River Basin ecosystem.  On the contrary, the guest author was describing a Band Aid deal that will continue Columbia ecosystem fragmentation by leaving the dams in place.  Salmon are a keystone species that represent other species in the shared ecosystem by proxy.  Salmon are the focus of the Snake River Dam debate because of their importance economically, culturally and environmentally.  They are the charismatic megafauna that symbolize the entire ecosystem.  Salmon provide a rallying point show in vivid detail how dams kill fish.

A friend is an avid, long-time fisherman throughout the Northwest, ocean, river, stream, creek -- heck, for all I know he fishes in his bathtub too.  He had these comments on the deal in response to my asking him what it meant that the tribes were taking the deal to support all dam operations:

There are many ways to look at this.

 As you say, maybe they think it's a lost cause.

 Maybe the tribes who settled are accepting the notion that hatchery fish are an OK substitute for wild fish, and that they can do better by focusing on hatcheries and their output.

 Maybe they are cynical enough to say that since the existing runs in the mainstem Columbia (i.e., the product of hatcheries and the natural fish from the Hanford reach) are doing OK, let's take the free money and run, and screw the upstream runs and the tribes that care about them.

 As you originally hypothesized, maybe they believe Judge Redden still won't buy the phony science and solutions being proposed by BPA, and he will do the heavy lifting by forcing BPA to manage water and maybe even remove dams.

 Maybe they think the projects funded by the $900 million will solve the problems and will restore healthy runs.

Who knows which is right.  More to the point, who knows how it will play out over the next decade (2.5 fish generations).

Save your community: Cut greenhouse gas emissions 5% per year.

It should be noted that CM521's assertion, "No one knows about intimate and complex relationships within an ecosystem more than tribes," is hard to reconcile with Joseph Bogaard's point, that the crucial problem of the four dams on the lower Snake is now by agreement going to be neglected.

Or at least those four (allegedly all-wise) tribes who agreed to this decision are now partners in making the neglect institutional.  The Nez Perce, up the Snake in Idaho, rejected the agreement.  That the tribes cannot find a common position on this huge issue suggests that their decision-making is not necessarily any wiser or better than anyone else's.

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