Not all, fortunately, but enough to put our fish and wildlife resources in jeopardy.

First, the legislature slashed the WDFW budget by 30 percent last year. Everything from enforcement to salmon recovery suffered from that budget bashing. Then, this year, the legislature tried to completely dissolve the agency by “merging” it (along with the State Parks Department) into the Department of Natural Resources.

Putting recreation-focused interests under the management of an agency whose core responsibility is resource extraction makes no sense at all. Nor does it make sense to put fish and wildlife management in the hands of a single elected official who has no training in wildlife management issues. Preventing that type of mismanagement is exactly why the voters of Washington put substantial decision making responsibility in the hands of a Fish and Wildlife Commission representing all stakeholders.

Fortunately the public outcry over the proposed merger legislation (Senate Bill 6813) effectively killed the bill (at least the portion pertaining to the dissolution of WDFW). But now, those same bi-partisan legislators who were blocked from axing the department have turned their axes on to the department’s budget.

Last year, the general fund allocations to the department were slashed from $110 million to just $80 million. Now, the backers of the recently killed SB 6813 want to cut upwards of $10.8 million more from the already decimated WDFW budget. That means we’d see nearly 40 percent budget cuts for the department in the last biennium.

According to the Department, these additional cuts will jeopardize future salmon production with the closure of up to 5 hatcheries, impacting Grays Harbor, Coastal and Puget Sound fisheries. In addition, the number of enforcement officers will be reduced and staffing levels for important salmon recovery efforts will be lower. Many department facilities and public lands would be closed, popular lakes wouldn’t get stocked with trout, and youth education efforts would be reduced.

Bottom line: NO other state agency has seen cuts this deep, or this aggressive. The Senate cuts will cripple the Department’s ability to successfully manage our fish and wildlife resources and will have a long-term negative impact on all endangered species recovery efforts in our State.

If you care about public lands, wildlife and fisheries, now is the time to take action. Call, email or write your local state senator and/or representative and tell them you oppose these draconian cuts to our state’s wild resources.

Use this link to contact your elected officials:

A diverse group of  hunting, fishing and environmental groups, along with an array of businesses (outdoor gear manufacturers, retailers, guide services, travel companies, etc), work, teamed up to fight Bush-era rules that opened the Bristol Bay area of Alaska to hardrock mining and other exploitive uses.

The coaltion of group – numbering the hundreds – representes tens of millions of America’s conservationists,  anglers, hunters, hikers, outfitters, guides, lodge owners and outdoor industry members. Today, this group formally petitioned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Bob Abbey to protect from mining 1.1 million acres of federal fish and wildlife habitat near Bristol Bay, Alaska. Trout Unlimited (TU), one of the leaders of the coalition, described the Bristol Bay area as  “a large swath of BLM land near one of the world’s most productive salmon and rainbow trout fisheries.”

According to a TU press release, the letter to  Salazar  expressed deep concern that during their final days in office, Bush Administration officials finalized a plan to remove existing protections for fish and wildlife on the BLM lands and to open the area for mining. The group called on Salazar to direct Abbey to reverse that decision.

“Sport fishing in Bristol Bay is a $60 million business while commercial fishing pumps another $300 million into the economy,” said Chris Wood, Chief Operating Officer of Trout Unlimited.  “One out of four wild fish sold in America comes from Bristol Bay.  Thousands of Alaska Native families depend on the area for subsistence.  Never before have commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and subsistence users been so united on a single issue. Secretary Salazar and Director Abbey have a chance to do the right thing for Alaska Natives, commercial fishermen, and recreational anglers and hunters who come to Alaska from all over the world.”

TU’s press release continues:

The acreage under consideration has been closed to mineral development for more than three decades. In Nov. 2008, just weeks before leaving office, Bush Administration officials finalized a plan to lift the prohibition on mining. The BLM plan for its lands around Bristol Bay is especially troubling in light of a proposal to build one of the world’s largest open-pit copper and gold mines in virtually the same area. The Pebble deposit is located on state land in the headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak Rivers, systems that host some of the biggest runs of sockeye and king salmon left on the planet. The developers (Anglo American and Northern Dynasty) recently stated that they are months away from applying for state permits to build the giant mine. The controversial project poses the risk of acid mine drainage, a catastrophic release of mine waste, and irreparable harm from habitat alteration to the Bristol Bay watershed.

“The Pebble mine is bad enough but to have the BLM opening the door for a mining district in Bristol Bay is simply unacceptable. My business and so many others like it out here depend on the world-class salmon and trophy-sized trout that this area is famous for. You can’t have a mining district without putting these fish at serious risk,” said Brian Kraft, owner of the Alaska Sportsman’s Lodge and Bear Trail Lodge, both in the Bristol Bay region.

In addition to the threat Bristol Bay faces from proposed offshore oil and gas development and the Pebble project, the signatories to the Salazar letter maintain that opening the BLM lands to mining creates enormous potential for a development rush in the watershed. They believe the cumulative impacts to Bristol Bay over time could destroy the fishery. The group wants Salazar to maintain the mining prohibition while the BLM works to produce a better land use plan for Bristol Bay that will generate economic opportunity while conserving commercial, sport and indigenous fishing traditions for future generations.

“Director Abbey has the opportunity to protect Bristol Bay and make these biologically important federal lands permanently off-limits to mining. This fishery is too rare, too productive, and too valuable to put it at risk,” said Gary Berlin, President of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association.

FInd out more about Trout Unlimited here: www.tu.org

Those words, written by U.S. District Judge James Redden  in a letter issued May 18, 2009, were addressed to various factions fighting over the recover plans for the Pacific Salmon, listed as endangered under the ESA. Redden went on to suggest that if the states, tribes, federal agencies, private business, commercial and recreational fishermen, and other stakeholders can’t agree to recover plan soon, the courts may need to step in and take drastic action – including ordering the removal of dams from area rivers (especially four contentious fish-killed dams on the lower Snake River).

Redden’s letter focused on the specific policies (or lack thereof) within the  2008 Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion issued by the Bush Administration as a half-assed answer to the issue of the ESA listing of salmon. The Redden letter expounds on the problems with this multi-jurisdictional approach to problem solving. “Only recently have they begun to commit the kind of financial and political capital necessary to save these threatened and endangered species, some of which are on the brink of extinction. We simply cannot afford to waste another decade.”

One problem is there is little consensus of what should be done. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire praises the Bush policy. She told the EPA just this spring that the Bush policy would ensure the survival of 13 species of salmon while preserving dams and business opportunities. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, though, said just this week that that policy is weak, fraught with policy problems, and lacks a scientific foundation.

Redden praised the ongoing efforts to cooperate and find collaborative solutions to a very difficult problem. But he also noted that in the end, if progress isn’t made – and soon – his court may have the final say on what actions are taken to ensure the legal requirements  of the ESA listing are met.  What are some of those requirements?  Redden says, “Federal agencies must put together a contingency plan to study specific alternative hydro actions, such as (augmenting river) flow and/or reservoir draw downs as well as what it will take to breach the lower Snake River dams if all other measures fail.”

Washington, Oregon, Idaho, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a host of tribal councils, and the Bonneville Power Administration, and others must work together to make hard decisions on this crucial problem. Otherwise, the courts will!

We know these incredible fish are born in rivers, migrate to the ocean and eventually return to the river of their birth to produce a new generation.  But under that broad overview, what’s really going on? How do these incredible fish perform this massive cyclical journey? 

Biologists have struggled to answer these questions in large part because its been impossible to track individual fish through the entire cycle – or even through significant parts of the cycle. Until now.

The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking Project (POST) has developed new technologies and new techniques to shed new light on the secret’s of salmon.

The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking Project is a non-profit organization facilitating the development and coordination of a large-scale acoustic telemetry network along the entire length of the West Coast of North America. It works operationally through contractors engineering and deploying the array, and collaboratively through principle investigators conducting specific research projects using the array. 

Scientists working with POST developed and refined miniature tagging and tracking processes that allow them to follow salmon through vast distances and highly dissimilar waters – from as far as the Rocky Mountain headwaters of USA’s Columbia River through the ocean to the coast of Alaska.

Across to POST’s reports, “In 2006, researchers implanted the new tags in 1,000 juvenile Chinook salmon (www.eol.org/taxa/17154704) roughly the same length and half the weight of a frankfurter hot dog – 14 centimeters long, 20-30 grams weight – for a study in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers, and followed their journeys. 

“Among the many studied, two tagged juveniles survived a 2,500 km trip that took more than three months – from the upper reaches of the Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River) in Idaho, out to sea then north along the continental shelf to Alaska. ”

“The two swam about the same distance as from London to Istanbul or Moscow, from Auckland to Melbourne, from Beijing to Hanoi, or from New York City to Austin, Texas.”

The research unveiled some incredible new findings. For instance, the report says, two species of juvenile salmon migrating through the Columbia River’s eight dams survived the freshwater and early marine portions of their journey to the ocean as well as those in the un-dammed Fraser River, challenging widely-held notions about factors affecting salmon abundance.

In fact, more survived in the Columbia once distance or travel time was taken into account – and survival was greater during migration within the hydropower system than below the dammed section. 

Evidence does not yet suffice to tell whether the Fraser has a problem that cuts salmon survival to that of a heavily dammed river, or whether factors other than dams play a larger, unsuspected role in salmon survival. 

 The full summary of POST report, with links to the data, can be found here.