Northwest

Billy Frank Jr. in the PI: Hands off the roadless areas

Billy Frank Jr, chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, wrote a piece about the importance of roadless areas in the Seattle PI:

There seems to be an excess of optimism around these days. People feel like we’ve turned a page, that things we considered not possible are now possible.

One of the previously hopeless fights I hope ends soon is the long legal battle over the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which has the potential to protect more than two million acres of pristine forests in Washington.
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Tribes, salmon and floods

Eric De Place at the Sightline Daily Score blog writes an interesting piece about salmon and floods:

…when I wrote that the costs of doing nothing about climate change outstrip the costs of fixing the problem, one person wrote asking for hard numbers. How do we know for certain which is more expensive? Maybe it will be cheaper to abandon ship, so to speak: move everyone (and everything) out of flood-prone areas and forget about reducing emissions. (more…)

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Annual Report

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This report is an overview of the natural resources management activities of the treaty tribes in western Washington. The tribes and their Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission are active in all…

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Culverts add obstacles to salmon, state, politics

The Seattle Times today reports on the culvert case ruling and the challenges of replacing fish-blocking culverts:

More than 1,676 culverts from Neah Bay to Walla Walla block more than 2,377 miles of potential salmon habitat. And those are just the culverts owned by the state Department of Transportation. Pipes owned and maintained by other state and local agencies add to the problem.

It’s been a well-known problem for years. But culverts recently became a big, costly liability for the state.

Last summer, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo S. Martinez agreed with 20 of the state’s Indian tribes that the state has a duty to fix problem culverts because they diminish salmon runs, and that violates the tribes’ fishing rights guaranteed by treaties signed in the 19th century.

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