[env-trinity] The Register Guard - 1/10/07

[Byron Leydecker]

Help fishing industry

A Register-Guard Editorial

The Register Guard - 1/10/07

 

Bottom of Form

If the West Coast's beleaguered fishing industry doesn't get federal
disaster assistance soon, there may be no fleet left when - and if - the
salmon some day return. 

 

Last year, Congress spent oceans of time discussing the plight of coastal
fisheries and restructured the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and
Management Act, the premier federal law regulating ocean fisheries. Thanks
to a monumental push by Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Gordon Smith, R-Ore.; and
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the law included a formal declaration that the West
Coast fishing industry is facing an economic disaster. 

 

Yet Congress failed to approve a single dollar of actual aid for the
fishermen, seafood processors, communities and businesses that lost tens of
millions of dollars when the federal government imposed sharp fishing
restrictions on a 700-mile stretch of the coasts of Oregon and California.
It's a glaring example of dysfunctional governance: recognizing a full-bore
disaster and then doing nothing to help. 

 

At least Oregon heard the cry of fishermen. In Salem, the legislative
Emergency Board last year approved $1 million in emergency assistance.
Despite controversy over how the money was distributed, the money has helped
some fishermen, although many remain on the brink of losing their boats and
livelihoods. 

Much more assistance is needed, along with a full-throttle federal effort to
fix the real cause of the salmon crisis: a Klamath River that once supported
vibrant salmon runs but that, thanks to federal mismanagement, has become
one of the nation's most troubled waterways. 

 

Last week, Wyden, Smith and Boxer introduced a bill to provide more than $60
million in immediate assistance. With early salmon return data indicating
that fishing will remain severely restricted for the 2007 season, Congress
should waste no time in approving an aid package that is critical to the
fishing industry - and to coastal communities in Oregon and California. 

 

Ultimately, however, the future of the fishing industry depends on restoring
Klamath salmon runs, which have suffered precipitous declines because of
drought, a proliferation of disease and parasites that afflict fish, dams
that hinder migration and river flows lowered by excessive water diversions
to farmers. 

 

In revising the Magnuson-Stevens Act, lawmakers had the foresight to include
an unprecedented order for federal fishery managers to fast-track a recovery
plan for endangered Klamath coho runs. The new Democratic majority in
Congress should flex its oversight muscles to make sure the Bush
administration actually produces a plan that will restore the Klamath's
former bumper crops of salmon. Lawmakers should keep firmly in mind that it
was the administration's mismanagement of the Klamath that led to the
current salmon crisis. 

 

Congress must act soon to save both the West Coast's salmon fishing industry
and the Klamath River. Time's running short for both.

 

 

Byron Leydecker

Friends of Trinity River, Chair

California Trout,Inc., Advisor

PO Box 2327

Mill Valley, CA 94942-2327

415 383 4810 ph

415 383 9562 fx

 <mailto:bwl3 at comcast.net> bwl3 at comcast.net

 <mailto:bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org> bleydecker at stanfordalumni.org
(secondary)

http:// <http://www.fotr.org> www.fotr.org

http:// <http://www.caltrout.org> www.caltrout.org 

 

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