The Pacific Fishery Management Council last week recommended drastically curtailing the commercial salmon fishing season along a 700-mile stretch of the Pacific Coast between Oregon and Northern California. The move is intended to protect dwindling salmon populations in the Klamath River in Southern Oregon.
The chinook salmon population there has been steadily shrinking. In order to maintain stability for these animals, a reduced fishing schedule and various restrictions in areas where fishing occurs have become necessary, according to the Council.
However, salmon are not the only creatures dwindling in the region. Because of fishing limitations in Oregon and California, 80 percent of salmon fishermen in those areas have been forced to find other sources of employment, Glen Spain, a director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, told Reuters.
U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., has implored Gov. Ted Kulongoski to usurp federal recommendations and allow Oregonians to continue fishing in coastal communities within a three-mile line from the shore. Wu said both fishermen and workers in the tourism industry would likely experience a loss in jobs and profit because of the restrictions.
Tourism and fishing are both important aspects of the Oregon economy. Environmental balance should be a significant factor in creating policy involving public land. But as it turns out, federal politics and a significant lack of national policy-making consideration for Klamath River salmon in 2002 may be responsible for the currently dwindling population and the resulting recommendation of a reduced fishing season.
The Ukiah Daily Journal of California reported Monday that when water from the Klamath River was redirected to upper basin farmers in 2002, 80,000 salmon were killed in the process.
Mike Thompson, D-Calif., has invoked the federal Freedom of Information Act to request data related to those 2002 Klamath water decisions. The fishing season would not need to be cut short were it not for the “incompetence and gross mismanagement of the Klamath River” on behalf of the Bush administration, according to Thompson.
A solution to the water crises that threatened farmers in 2002 was certainly necessary. Farmers’ interests are just as important as fishermen’s concerns. Yet when the government restricted water from the Klamath Basin to area farmers in 2001 to aid populations of threatened fish, Bush’s adviser Karl Rove promised farmers (read Bush supporters) that they would get their water, and Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton personally visited the area to turn the water back on against the urgings of government biologists, according to the NewsHour report.
Kulongoski has said he will request federal disaster relief in order to “mitigate this economic disaster.” If Thompson is correct in his assumption that federal policy may be ultimately responsible for the now dwindling salmon population, it is only fair that Oregon and California are not the sole entities forced to deal with the Klamath mess.
Although reducing fishing along the Oregon/Northern California coastline may temporarily ensure higher salmon levels in the Klamath, a long-term solution is needed. The federal government should start by mandating that the electric utilities that built four hydroelectric dams during the 1950s should pay to install fish ladders there. Such a simple measure could have helped prevent this disaster. These utilities must also do their part to mitigate this escalating regional problem.