The news broke a couple days ago, and it wasn't good.
Federal regulators voted to impose severe restrictions on salmon fishing off the coasts of Oregon and Northern California to protect dwindling populations in the Klamath River.
"This is going to be a horrible year," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association. "It's not a total closure, but it's the closest thing to it."
The only reason that the salmon fishing season wasn't totally shut down was because federal regulators dropped the minimum number of Klamath river salmon from 35,000 to 21,000.
"It's going to be really tough," Newell said. "A lot of guys are going to lose their boats and go bankrupt."
How did this happen? Global Warming? Overfishing? Some other environmental disaster?
Nope. The reason is because of Washington politics, and the Bush Administration in particular.
It all started back in the summer of 2001. It was a drought year and federal regulators were forced to divert water promised to inland farmer of the Klamath River Basin in order to protect the salmon run. Environmental regulations demanded it happen.
Thousands of the farmers of that arid region
protested. The Bush administration largely ignored their plight. But that was because it wasn't an election year. 2002 was an
entirely different story.
At the time of the meeting, in January 2002, Mr. Rove had just returned from accompanying President Bush on a trip to Oregon, where they visited with a Republican senator facing re-election. Republican leaders there wanted to support their agricultural base by diverting water from the river basin to nearby farms, and Mr. Rove signaled that the administration did, too.
Three months later, Interior Secretary Gale Norton stood with Sen. Gordon Smith in Klamath Falls and opened the irrigation-system head gates that increased the water supply to 220,000 acres of farmland...
His remarks weren't entirely welcome -- especially by officials grappling with the competing arguments made by environmentalists, who wanted river levels high to protect endangered salmon, and Indian tribes, who depend on the salmon for their livelihoods. Neil McCaleb, then an assistant Interior secretary, recalls the "chilling effect" of Mr. Rove's remarks. Wayne Smith, then with the department's Bureau of Indian Affairs, says Mr. Rove reminded the managers of the need to "support our base." Both men since have left the department.
The
results were predictable, and were exactly what the environmental groups predicted.
A long-awaited analysis from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has identified low water flows as a prime culprit in a major salmon kill on the Klamath River in 2002...
An
estimated 70,000 salmon died that year after the Bush administration "ignored its own federal biologists and divert more water from the Klamath River for farm irrigation". The Bush Administration then went on to order that water continue to be diverted for another eight years. Despite the overwhelming evidence you can still find plenty of conservative groups out there that deny the water diversion was responsible for practically wiping out the Klamath basin salmon.
Only 24,000 fall chinook spawned naturally in the Klamath in 2004, followed by 27,000 last year. This year, fisheries managers predict 29,000 spawners.
Because it takes several years for salmon to reach peak reproducing age, the effects of this huge fish-kill only started last year when the National Marine Fisheries Service abbreviated the commercial salmon season. It cut the income of west coast fishermen "by 50 percent".
California and Oregon indian tribes, that have depended on salmon fishing for thousands of years, are also having their fishing quotas cut back by as much as half.
The good news is that a
recent court decision has "ordered the government to institute a Klamath River management plan immediately instead of waiting five more years".
If river levels fail to meet 100 percent of the water flow needed for the coho as determined by the National Marine Fisheries Service, then farmers who rely on the Klamath will have to do without.
That should not be a problem this year because a wet winter has left Northwest rivers swollen.[...]
Commercial fishing organizations and environmental groups sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 2002, alleging that the government's plan to wait eight years to provide the full amount of water needed for coho survival in the water-scarce basin was insufficient to ensure the salmon's survival.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals agreed last year, ruling the plan to be arbitrary and capricious and not supported by science. Judge Armstrong on Monday rejected government arguments that it had new explanations supporting its plan to wait until 2010 to ensure sufficient water levels for the coho and order the salmon to immediately have first dibs on the Klamath River.
In the meantime, the west coast fishing industry will continue to suffer.