“We all benefit from shellfish agreement”
Bill Taylor and Billy Frank had a oped piece in the Seattle PI this morning on the shellfish settlement: Puget Sound shellfish growers and 17 Indian tribes have reached a…
Puget Sound Treaty Indian Tribes, Shellfish Growers Reach Pact
OLYMPIA (May 18, 2007) – Puget Sound treaty Indian tribes and commercial shellfish growers have finalized an agreement that will protect and enhance the resource while resolving legal issues from a federal court ruling that re-affirmed treaty-reserved tribal shellfish harvest rights. The pact resolves lingering legal issues from a 1994 federal court ruling that upheld the tribes’ treaty-reserved shellfish harvest rights. The agreement preserves the health of the shellfish industry, recognizes the importance to the tribes of their shellfish harvest rights and provides greater shellfish harvest opportunities for everyone in the state.
Tribes Won’t Stop Fishing, Recovery Efforts
October 18, 2002
Treaty Indian salmon fishermen are struggling. There’s no market for our product.
We can’t compete with cheaper farmed Atlantic salmon, even though everyone knows that our Pacific salmon is better – better tasting and better for you.
All of our salmon comes onto the market in about a six-month period. Then it’s gone. Farmed salmon – from Chile and Norway and elsewhere – is heavily subsidized by those countries and is available year round. Restaurants and grocery stores like farmed salmon because it’s uniform in size and color. It can be sent almost anywhere in the world overnight. And it’s cheap.