Friends of the Cowlitz

Running Fast and Raising Dust
Written by Jim Goerg, Publishing Editor for "The Reel News)

Being a "native" of the "Sportsfishing Nation" here in the Pacific Northwest, it never ceases to amaze me that even with the disgusting management of our fisheries resources and the incompetence, coupled with favoritism towards selected user groups by fish and wildlife department heads, we still have a near -year-around fisheries of one sort or another. Can you imagine what it would be like if our resources wee truly managed for conservation, economics and the citizen majority???
Just this last month in Washington State, the F&W Commission heard testimony for nearly four hours on how to allocate returning salmon stocks to Oregon and Washington's common border; the Columbia River: (The Commission's decisions wont be announced until after this is printed.) The few river commercial gillnetters (dinosaurs in their world-wide industry) and the few tribes believe they should be entitled to the lion's share of a limited resource. The recreational fishing families, the ones that protect the resource and make fishing economically viable, believe the commercial take is waaay too high, and rightfully so.
Oregon and Washington's fish managers are trying to coordinate policy development to adopt new allocation guidelines. I am not holding my breath on that one.
One of the overriding issues over the years has been "salmon recovery" across the Northwest. That is, protecting and restoring salmon populations and their habitat. Last December Washington's Governor Christine Gregoire was giddy when she announced HER Salmon Recovery Funding Board had awarded more than $60 million in grants for salmon recovery. That figure more than doubled the grants awarded in 2005 (26.6 million) which was a non-election year: Just under $10 million of the sixty was awarded to eleven Indian tribes-the same tribes that contributed heavily to her election campaign four years ago.
Do you think there is any connection that the grants awarded may eventually lead to a favorable injection of tribal funding for her campaign war chest for this years re-election attempt?
I'm no financial wizard but I have a fair knowledge of dollars and cents, and common sense too. If we truly want to promote salmon recovery in the Northwest, we might consider starting by stopping the mass-murders of the resource-the nets! Habitat restoration is good and needed but it does the salmon no good if they are strangled and slaughtered before they get to return to the habitat. Can you imagine if just part of the $60 million was used to buy out the commercial netters? Would $10 million remove the tribal nets from stringers across the rivers? Could the $60 million triple in economic value from recreation anglers if there was a more viable and longer fishery? In my opinion, (and Friends of the Cowlitz also) that would be money WELL SPENT on salmon recovery.
In the past four years Gregoire has done some things well regarding Washington's fish and wildlife, the most important being replacement of some stale and bias commissioners. On the other hand, the new commissioners have yet to prove their worth and they still have not called for resignation of, who many believe the leading source of Washington States resource management, the F&W Director:
Another 4-year old campaign promise was to promote the marking of hatchery salmon-ALL hatchery salmon-whether they were coming from state, tribal or federal hatcheries, all within her borders. It hasn't happened and I wonder why.