It’s the end of another long campaign season. Hopefully the attention of our politicians — both new and returning — will shift quickly to the critical work of governance by reaching across the aisle, using creativity and innovation, and bringing diverse constituencies together to craft effective, pragmatic solutions.
As a fishing guide who makes my living on the lower Columbia River, I urge our political leaders to begin work now to tackle one of our region’s most vexing problems: Columbia Basin salmon recovery. It’s time to start a dialogue among Northwest people about how to restore salmon, boost clean energy, improve inland transportation, and create good jobs in all these sectors. Only a dialogue that directly engages people and communities can lead to actions that jointly pursue these goals rather than pit them against each other.
Across two decades and three administrations, federal agencies have led somewhat half-hearted efforts to protect endangered Columbia and Snake River salmon and steelhead populations from extinction — and protect the many jobs and businesses those efforts support. Despite big spending, these programs haven’t worked. Four of five plans have been rejected by the courts. Costing more than $12 billion so far, it’s our nation’s most expensive endangered species program. Thousands of commercial, recreational and tribal fishing jobs in the region have been lost as wild salmon populations — and fishing opportunity — have declined. Perhaps the most telling evidence are the salmon themselves. Nearly all our imperiled salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake rivers remain at levels far below those needed for recovery.
For our Northwest fishing sector and other important regional industries, uncertainty has been another byproduct of this repeated failure to protect and restore salmon. As a small-business owner, I can tell you that this uncertainty has been bad for business. We all know more must be done in the Columbia Basin to rebuild healthy populations, but we have yet to achieve an effective, science-based plan that meets the demands of the law.