Save Our Wild Salmon

Save Our Wild Salmon
is a nationwide coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sportsfishing associations, businesses, river groups, and taxpayer advocates working collectively to restore self-sustaining, abundant, and harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead to rivers, streams and oceans of the Pacific Salmon states.

SOS Partners:

Alaska Trollers Association

American Rivers

American Whitewater

Association of Northwest

Steelheaders

Columbia Riverkeeper

Defenders of Wildlife

Earthjustice

Federation of Fly Fishers

Friends of the Clearwater

Friends of the Earth

Idaho Rivers United

Idaho Steelhead and Salmon

Unlimited

Lands Council

The Mountaineers

National Wildlife Federation

Natural Resources Defense

Council

Northwest Sportfishing

Industry Association

NW Energy Coalition

Orca Network

Oregon Guides and Packers

Oregon Natural Desert

Association

Oregon Wild

Pacific Coast Federation of

Fishermen's Associations

Salmon For All

Sierra Club

SPAWN

Taxpayers For Common

Sense

Trout Unlimited

Washington Trollers

Association

Washington Wilderness

Coalition

Washington Wildlife

Federation

Wild Steelhead Coalition

Salmon, water, energy policies should be considered together

Viewpoint in The News Tribune

by Sara Patton

The News Tribune raised a critical issue in its Aug. 21 editorial, “Snake River dams: Don’t forget the carbon.”

The fact is that Washington citizens working to ensure that wild salmon remain in our rivers are equally committed to a carbon-free energy future. The good news is that we can affordably save salmon and cut climate emissions while creating a wealth of good jobs in both the energy and salmon sectors.

Running the gauntlet:

Snake River sockeye salmon fighting for survival.

Rhett Lawrence, Policy Analyst

Save Our Wild Salmon

Surviving an epic journey to their natal waters, encouraging numbers of sockeye salmon are reaching Idaho’s Redfish Lake – swimming more than 900 miles and gaining nearly 7,000 feet in elevation. With more than 450 of these magnificent fish having arrived at Redfish and a nearby hatchery as of August 17, we have reason to hope that this year’s numbers might even exceed last year’s impressive return of nearly 600 sockeye, which was the highest count in a generation. Given that only four fish survived to Redfish Lake in 2007, and only three in 2006, these numbers are heartening indeed. But before we declare victory for Snake River sockeye, a little perspective is in order.

Increased steelhead run encouraging, but recovery at risk under proposed NOAA plan

Statement to the press from Liz Hamilton, Executive Director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, in response to the large number of steelhead returning over Bonneville Dam this week:

“We cannot equate one good year with true recovery. Most Columbia River wild fish populations are no further from extinction today than when the first populations were listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) more than 15 years ago.

This year’s bonus returns are largely the result of spilling more water over dams when these fish were migrating out to the ocean as juveniles. U.S. District Court Judge James Redden ordered those in-river improvements after conservation and fishing groups fought to have them instituted — over the vehement objections of federal agencies.

Washington Outdoor and Fishing Businesses Ask Senators Murray and Cantwell for Leadership on Columbia-Snake Salmon Recovery

SPOKANE, Wash. — Today more than 30 outdoor recreation and fishing businesses from the state of Washington wrote to Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell thanking them for their work in protecting the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and urging their leadership to restore wild Columbia-Snake salmon and steelhead. The businesses on the letter range from across the state, including Spokane, Sequim, Granger, Longview, Seattle and Tacoma.

Doing away with dams

San Francisco Chronicle Editorial,

Sunday, August 16, 2009

President Obama is playing for time before wading into one of the oldest - and most far-reaching - disputes in the West's water wars: the fate of four dams on the Snake River in Washington. But eventually he and his policy team should muster the courage to go with a sweeping but science-backed option: Take down the string of outmoded structures that impede salmon.

Obama administration receives misleading information, reports, and guidance from Bonneville Power Administration and other federal agencies

Information runs counter to findings by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council

In recent presentations to the Obama administration, and in an effort to lobby the administration to adopt the Bush salmon plan, Bonneville Power Administration regional officials and other regional agency executives provided misleading and outdated information regarding alternatives to the Bush administration salmon plan for the Columbia & Snake Rivers.

Salmon Test

The New York Times Editorial, August 12, 2009

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration must notify a federal court next month whether it will do what is necessary to save endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest. The decision will tell us a lot about how the administration sees its obligations under the Endangered Species Act. The Bush team evaded its responsibilities with amazing acts of legal casuistry.

A dozen salmon species in the Columbia River Basin have been declared endangered or threatened - their spawning grounds destroyed by logging and commercial development, and their route to the sea made more arduous by a gauntlet of hydroelectric dams.

Giving Snake River salmon a lift

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES Editorial

August 12, 2009

Hauling truckloads of hitchhiking juvenile salmon around dams is one silly way to save a species. And it doesn't work either.

As four dams were built along the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington from the late 1950s to early 1970s, it took only a few yearsfor the river's healthy salmon populations to plummet. By the mid-1990s, the populations of four types of salmon had been declared endangered or threatened. The federal expenditure of $8 billion since then for fish ladders, hatcheries, habitat restoration and, yes, trucks and barges to transport the salmon around the dams has not restored the fish.

Salmon: A dam shame

Boston Globe Editorial, August 10th, 2009

In a court hearing Friday, President Obama can put an end to the Bush administration’s scofflaw approach to the Endangered Species Act and help bring the Pacific Northwest’s wild salmon back from the threat of extinction. In the 17 years since wild salmon were declared endangered in the Columbia-Snake River basin, the federal government has gone so far as to put them on air-conditioned barges to move them past dams. But the $8 billion spent so far on such measures has been to little avail. The basic problem is the dams, which obstruct the movement of the salmon between the rivers and the ocean. These dams need to go.

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