Rivers

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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Puyallup Tribe “scouring for survivors” after floods

A reporter from the Puyallup Herald tagged along with some researchers from the Puyallup Tribe as they conducted their first salmon surveys after the damaging winter floods:

One of the major problems biologists see with flooding is what’s known as “scour.” High and often fast-moving water will “dig out all the eggs that were laid down,” said Marks, ruining chances for increased numbers of young fish. He noted that coho and chum salmon spawning “were more or less lost” during the recent flood.
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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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Tired of Salmon?

OLYMPIA – There’s a new bug that’s been going around for the last couple years. State and federal elected officials and bureaucrats seem to be coming down with it more than anyone else.

It’s called “salmon fatigue” and from what I can tell, it’s a brain infection that makes you tired of trying to save the salmon.

If we cried about fatigue every time we came up against a difficult problem in this country, where would we be? I don’t understand how you can get tired of trying to save the salmon.

What those infected with salmon fatigue are really saying is “stop coming to me and talking about salmon.” (more…)

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Despite low chinook run, co-managers boost escapement

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NISQUALLY – Good harvest management by tribal and state salmon co-managers has led to more chinook reaching the spawning grounds on the Nisqually River this year despite fewer returning chinook.

“Overall fewer chinook returned Puget Sound-wide, but because we managed our fisheries the right way, we were able to reach our escapement goal,” said David Troutt, natural resources director for the Nisqually Tribe. Escapement is the number of salmon that are allowed to reach the spawning grounds.

Nisqually River chinook are part of a larger Puget Sound population of chinook that are listed as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act. (more…)

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