Standoff over Columbia River salmon

[depakid]

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/04/chinook_salmon.html
Spring Salmon are the Columbia's most prized -- and controversial -- catch
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The Columbia's spring chinook run is one of the river's most endangered, most prized and most unpredictable. That spells trouble for the people who count on the fish.

They hunt all the way up to northern Alaska's near-freezing waters, lightning quick predators with triangles for teeth, devouring herring, krill and sardines, preparing for the journey home. Guided by signals that biologists still don't fully understand, they hit the mouth of the Columbia River and turn left. For fishermen, they're a herald of spring as rhythmic and mysterious as a crocus poking through Northwest soil.

Their firm flesh, prized on barbecues and white tablecloths from Portland to Atlanta, is loaded with oil and omega 3s, a stockpile that will push them over as many as eight dams and leave them with enough power to dig through layers of gravel with tail fins left in tatters.

They're Columbia River spring chinook, the first up in one of the world's greatest salmon rivers. Waiting for them are the fish people, men and women with livelihoods, religious ceremonies and lifelong passions that depend on their arrival. The spring chinook, pound for pound, are the Columbia's most valuable fish. But the wild salmon among them, down to an estimated 70,000 this year from millions not so long ago, are also one of the most likely to go extinct in the massive Columbia River system.

With so few to go around, they swim through a stew of politics and controversy that is fast reaching the boiling point. Fish managers project a near record run, post-dams, of about 300,000 wild and hatchery fish this spring. But the fish have been slow to arrive, worrying tribal fishermen who stand last in line above Bonneville Dam.

Meanwhile, sportfishermen are backing a bill in Oregon's Legislature to bump nontribal commercial fishermen, most in Astoria and other towns near the coast, off the river altogether and into side channels. That would allow more sportfishing. The Northwest's population is growing, putting more pressure on the river and the fish. And Endangered Species Act restrictions on fishing aren't getting any looser.

"We've got people at each others' throats," sportsfisherman Jim Martin says. "The conflict is getting worse and worse and worse."

MUCH MORE: http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/04/chinook_salmon.html

[Annces]

1. the political power is with the sports fishermen I would guess

because they have the money. I don't think you can be a conservationist and a sports fisher at the same time. In this day and age, the two are mutually exclusive.