Save Our wild Salmon depends on your support and advocacy!
Public officials and decision-makers must pay close attention to the interests and priorities of their constituents. The more often that decision-makers hear from you—emails, phone calls, hand-written letters, social media posts, and more—the stronger we are.
Please take a moment now to take action to recover healthy and abundant salmon populations, restore resilient rivers and streams that these fish depend upon in the Columbia-Snake Basin, and ensure a more prosperous future for all people and communities.
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TAKE ACTION: Contact your legislators today; ask them to "include funding for the lower Snake River stakeholder forum in the final state budget!”
SOS has focused a lot of its limited resources in the Washington State legislature so far in 2019 - so we were elated to learn that the Senate has included full funding ($750K) in its version of the state budget for a lower Snake River stakeholder forum. Our work, however, is far from over. We need your help!
Background: After months of hard work with Governor Inslee’s Orca Task Force, we were gratified by its support for convening a forum in 2019 to bring together key stakeholders to detail the types of community investments (e.g. irrigation, energy, transportation…) that would be needed if/when the lower Snake River dams are removed. Gov. Inslee then included funding for the forum in his proposed budget in December. And now, thanks to our hard work, more than 43 state legislators today also support bringing people together to talk directly about options and opportunities for the lower Snake and its dams and salmon. SOS and its allies have been showing up and speaking up at the capitol: we testified in a House hearing a week ago and before Senate Ways and Means Committee last night – We're calling on legislators to include this low-cost, high-impact, much-needed funding in the state’s final budget. But we have a fight on our hands: The House and Senate must reconcile their different budget versions before the state budget can be approved. Our well-financed opponents are pulling out all the stops to block this funding and prevent people from talking to each other.
We need your help! If you live in Washington State: call and write your State Senator and two State Representatives. Ask them to actively support the very modest funding to convene lower Snake River stakeholder talks to bring people together to discuss and develop shared solutions for communities, salmon and orcas.
If you live outside Washington State: Call and write Governor Inslee. Thank him for his leadership to help critically endangered Southern Resident orcas and support lower Snake River stakeholder discussions, and ask him to fight hard to ensure they are fully funded in this year’s state budget.
Washington State residents, of course, can and should contact Governor Inslee too. Thank him for his leadership. Ask him to ensure that the funding stakeholder talks be included in the final state budget.
Tell them:
1. Chinook salmon populations continue to decline and Southern Resident orca are starving.
2. Scientists tell us that rebuilding robust chinook salmon populations in the Columbia-Snake River Basin is critical to protecting orca from extinction.
3. Support the very modest funding to convene lower Snake River stakeholder talks to bring people together to discuss and develop shared solutions for communities, salmon, and orca.
This battle over funding to bring people together to begin talks about solutions for the Snake River and its endangered salmon will be won or lost in the next 30 days. Contact your legislators and/or Governor Inslee today!
Share this message with your friends and family; you can all identify and connect your senator's office by calling the Washington State Legislative Hotline 1-800-562-6000 or visiting https://app.leg.wa.gov/districtfinder/.
Follow these links for further information on our activities in the legislature:
-- NGO letter to State Legislators calling to funding for stakeholder forum and spill.
-- Letter signed by 43 legislators supporting funding the forum and spill.
-- SOS factsheet about stakeholder talks and why they are important.
- Details
Federal Judge James Redden has rejected the Obama Administration's $10 billion Salmon and Steelhead Plan for the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The message is clear: the government's old efforts have failed, and it’s time for a science-driven, collaborative approach.
We are working with business leaders and allies in a coordinated response in support of the Judge’s ruling. Thousands of jobs in numerous industries hang in the balance. You can help.Please stand with businesses from across the country by adding your business to the national letter, requesting that President Obama change failure to success in Columbia and Snake River salmon recovery.
The best way to achieve a successful, practical, science-based, job-creating solution in the Columbia and Snake Rivers is through a multi-stakeholder collaboration. The Obama administration has a critical opportunity to protect this valuable natural resource while creating thousands of new jobs over the short- and long-term in a variety of sectors, including commercial and recreational fishing, outdoor recreation, natural foods and food service, clean energy infrastructure, tourism. We ask you to join a diverse coalition of wild salmon advocates and sign the national letter directed to President Obama, with ‘carbon-copies’ to Congress. The deadline is Monday, August 8th. Please contact Joseph Bogaard at joseph@wildsalmon.org or 206.286.4455 x103 to request additional information.
Last year, we faced the largest environmental disaster in our nation’s history: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In many ways, this tragedy helped renew a conversation about our energy future.While oil was spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Northwest was facing an incredibly stormy spring; lots of wind and rain led to a surplus of energy from both hydroelectric dams and wind turbines.
Yet, instead of using last spring’s abundance of power as an opportunity to expand and diversify the Northwest’s clean energy portfolio, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) – which manages much of the Northwest’s energy transmission – opted instead to undertake a planning process to deal with what it calls “over-generation.”
The result of this process is a protocol where, in times of high wind and high water, BPA will start shutting off wind turbines as a way to reduce surplus power on the region’s grid.
By putting wind power on the chopping block before pursuing any number of other viable alternatives, BPA is shielding dam energy at the expense of clean energy jobs and wild salmon.
And now, BPA is poised to implement this “over-generation” strategy. As temperatures rise this week and next, and more snowmelt fills the Snake and Columbia rivers, BPA will likely begin curtailing wind production – a move that harms Northwest renewable energy development and the good jobs that go with it.
If you or any scientist you know is interested in signing on, please send the following info to 2009scientistletter@wildsalmon.org by close of business on September 8th:
- Name
If you have any questions at all, please contact:
Documents and Links for More Context:
August XX, 2009
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary and Administrator National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce 1401 Constitution Avenue, Room 5128 Washington, DC 20230
Dear Dr. Lubchenco:
We, the undersigned scientists, are writing to voice our concern regarding the 2008 Biological Opinion (BiOp) for the Federal Columbia River Power System. We applaud the Obama Administration’s decision to review all aspects of the BiOp prior to determining how it will proceed on this complex issue. We would like to take this opportunity to share with you our perspective on the BiOp’s scientific content.
Many of us and our colleagues wrote in 1999 and 2000 to then-President Bill Clinton, and again in 2004 to then-President George W. Bush, cautioning that federal efforts were off course and unlikely to recover Endangered Species Act-listed salmon and steelhead populations. By failing to adequately address a primary source of salmon mortality – namely, the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers – those federal plans were unlikely to avert extinction, much less restore abundant, self-sustaining, harvestable populations of these species. We now find ourselves repeating that warning, but with much less sand in the hourglass.
After a federal court invalidated the 2004 BiOp, the judge overseeing the remand of that plan urged the Bush administration to prepare an effective, scientifically-defensible plan that adequately addressed the effects of the federal hydropower system on listed salmon and steelhead. Unfortunately, the result of that remand, the 2008 BiOp currently under your agency’s review, does not meet this objective.
In our opinion, the 2008 BiOp suffers from several scientific deficiencies:
First, NOAA failed to employ the best available science in its jeopardy analysis. NOAA’s own recovery planning process confirmed the need to link the jeopardy analysis to the basic survival and recovery needs of the species, yet NOAA instead adopted a never-before-used “trending toward recovery” benchmark as its jeopardy standard. For the purposes of the 2008 BiOp, “trending toward recovery” could be satisfied if only one additional fish survives the journey back to its natal waters when compared with the previous year. The BiOp does not actually measure the chances that federal dam operations will allow the species to recover, nor does it include a timeframe in which to achieve recovery, nor does it recognize the increased risk associated with populations that remain at very low abundance over time. This flaw is compounded by the BiOp’s use of a time series that generally begins during poor ocean conditions and ends with more favorable ocean conditions. Using this approach, a population can be deemed to be recovering in the near-term while actually heading toward extinction over a longer time frame. This overly optimistic assumption veers sharply from the Endangered Species Act’s precautionary principle and is at odds with sound conservation biology.
Second, like the 2004 BiOp, the 2008 BiOp continues to rely on unproven, speculative benefits from expensive technological fixes at the federal dams and projected future benefits from undefined habitat mitigation actions to make up for the massive harm caused by the dams. The vast majority of these hoped-for gains come from actions proposed to be undertaken between 2011 and 2018 – actions that are not even identified in the BiOp. Further, like its predecessors, the 2008 BiOp relies heavily on truck and barge transportation of juvenile salmon and steelhead, despite growing scientific evidence that this practice harms juvenile fish in some years and in most years provides little or no benefit. Though it may be easier on some level to continue avoiding restoration obligations by transporting fish around the dams (therefore minimizing the need to provide suitable in-river conditions), a science-based, risk-averse management strategy should focus instead on keeping salmon in their natural habitat wherever possible, while making that habitat healthy and safe.
Third, the BiOp rolls back certain in-river protections that have been shown to help young salmon better survive their ocean-bound migration. The 2008 BiOp approves a set of dam operations that curtails both flow regimes mandated by past BiOps and spill measures required by court order since 2005. While these protections may not be enough to restore key populations, they have helped buy some additional time for Columbia and Snake salmon. Instead of being decreased, interim spill and flow measures should be bolstered to further reduce harm to fish while the measures necessary to assure salmon survival and recovery are developed and implemented.
Finally, the 2008 BiOp adopts what can perhaps best be described as a reckless approach to the impacts of climate change on Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead. While the BiOp acknowledges climate change’s likely effects on Columbia Basin salmon, it also assumes that the Pacific Northwest’s climate conditions will not differ significantly from the regional warming experienced over the past 22 years. As you know, this assumption runs counter to the conclusions of scientific bodies ranging from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Independent Scientific Advisory Board, as well as those highlighted in the recent report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. It also contrasts sharply with the approach NOAA used in its Central Valley Project Biological Opinion (June 2009). Based on the scientific consensus that the Columbia Basin will become even warmer and drier over the next several decades, resulting in significant threats to coldwater fish such as salmon and steelhead, any responsible plan for protecting and restoring the Basin’s most imperiled fish must adopt a more realistic approach to addressing these conditions and ensuring that salmon populations are robust enough to withstand anticipated changes in habitat.
Federal salmon recovery strategies must start with a commitment to restoring abundant, self-sustaining, harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead. The approach outlined in the 2008 BiOp is unlikely to bring the Northwest any closer to achieving that goal, and may instead take us much further away from it. As federal district court Judge James Redden wrote in a recent letter to parties involved in litigation over the 2008 BiOp, “Federal Defendants have spent the better part of the last decade treading water, and avoiding their obligations under the Endangered Species Act…We simply cannot afford to waste another decade. All of us know that aggressive action is necessary to save this vital resource, and now is the time to make that happen.” We share Judge Redden’s sense of urgency, and believe that meaningful progress on Columbia Basin salmon recovery will require significant changes to the 2008 BiOp.
As you and your agency review the 2008 BiOp, we sincerely hope that you will carefully consider the predominance of scientific evidence pointing to the harmful biological impacts of the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. All scientifically sound actions to protect and restore salmon (including, but not limited to, the removal of the four lower Snake River dams) must receive equal and impartial consideration in any comprehensive plan to restore wild salmon and steelhead to the Columbia Basin.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration of our views.
Sincerely,
On May 1st, 2009, over 30 organizations and businesses, representing hundreds of thousands of individuals across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Alaska, signed a letter to President Obama that continued the call for his leadership on salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake Rivers.The Signers:
| Pat Ford Executive Director Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition Boise, Idaho Bill Arthur Deputy Field Director Sierra Club Seattle, Washington Jim Adams Executive Director, Pacific Region National Wildlife Federation Seattle, Washington Bill Sedivy Executive Director Idaho Rivers United Boise, Idaho Liz Hamilton Executive Director Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association Oregon City, Oregon Norman E. Ritchie Government Affairs Director Association of Northwest Steelheaders Portland, Oregon Raelene Gold President Federation of Western Outdoor Clubs Shoreline, Washington R.P. Van Gytenbeek President Federation of Fly Fishers Livingston, Montana Dustin Aherin President Citizens for Progress Lewiston, Idaho Joe Scott International Conservation Director Conservation Northwest Bellingham, Washington Rachael Osborn Executive Director Center for Environmental Law & Policy Spokane, Washington Rich Simms President Wild Steelhead Coalition Kirkland, Washington Bert Bowler Independent Advocate Snake River Salmon Solutions Boise, Idaho Rick Johnson Executive Director Idaho Conservation League Boise, Idaho Brent Fenty Executive Director Oregon Natural Desert Association Bend, Oregon Gary McFarlane Director Friends of the Clearwater Moscow, Idaho |
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Sara Patton |
