Feds' Plan to Recover Salmon & Steelhead "Profoundly Inept"
Contacts:
Brian Brooks, Idaho Wildlife Federation Executive Director bbrooks@idahowildlife.org
Becca Aceto, Idaho Wildlife Federation Communications & Outreach baceto@idahowildlife.org
For Immediate Release March 5, 2020.
BOISE – Idaho came out on the losing end of the recent Columbia River System Operations draft environmental impact statement (dEIS), released by the federal government on February 28.
Despite downward trending salmon and steelhead returns, the state’s first closed steelhead season due to abysmal returns in 2019, and 2020 returns that are predicted to be much of the same, the federal “action agencies” (Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau or Reclamation) concluded that minimal change will come to fish management, even as Idaho communities experience economic hardships and an uncertain future.
While the dEIS gave significant attention to industries of agriculture, subsidized barging, and power generation, Idaho’s (and WA and OR) rural fishing communities were literally left out of evaluating solutions. For all management alternatives and their Preferred Alternative, the economies of recreation and fishing (guiding, outfitting, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, boat shops, license fees, etc.) were not even accounted for despite existing, publicly available data.
“How the hell do you leave out the economic analysis of the primary industries impacted by the resource you are attempting to recover? They spent the last four years studying everything but fish and fishing economics. To say this is a failure is putting it too lightly. It’s profoundly inept,” said Brian Brooks, Executive Director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation.
The economic and cultural impacts of salmon and steelhead in Idaho must be given full consideration by the federal agencies that control this system. Previous EIS’s included such information, but this newest iteration does not. Moreover, the Preferred Alternative implements strategies already in use and makes small tweaks to reservoir releases in the higher tributaries.
Brooks continued, “Time and time again, the science reiterates that Idaho’s salmon and steelhead will not return in healthy numbers unless we give serious consideration to all factors affecting these fish. It’s not only a disappointment that the three agencies aren’t willing to provide solutions that work for all stakeholders, it’s fatal for those upriver in Idaho.”
To date, Bonneville Power Administration has spent $17 billion in fish recovery efforts to mitigate for downriver impacts with little to show for it. Yet despite evidence supporting a need for change, the draft plan seeks to continue with the same strategies and failed, irresponsible spending. Simply keeping salmon and steelhead on life support ignores the millions in economic benefits that healthy and harvestable returns would bring to Idaho.
“We have been hemorrhaging funds to reverse the downward trajectory of Idaho salmon and steelhead returns for decades,” said Garret Visser, IWF’s Conservation Program Coordinator. “It is obvious that minor tweaks to the current system will again fail to restore our once robust runs back to their former glory, and the agencies even admit as much. We cannot continue to move the goalposts and pat ourselves on the back while Idaho riverside communities take the hit.”
Idaho communities are speaking up, looking for leaders who are willing to ask hard questions and seek new and bold solutions that include all stakeholders, industries, and communities. The recently released draft environmental impact statement is not that plan.
Visser added, “We are at a crux in time for our region and the future of salmon and steelhead. Before us is an opportunity to work towards a viable future for all, not just a few. By omitting economic data for Idaho’s fish, it is clear this problem won’t be solved by the acting agencies. Our congressmen will have to pick up the reins.”