The June 21 story “$700 million plan to help salmon habitat faces new challenge” is very anti-dam for sure. The Associated Press writer, while blaming the dams, fails to acknowledge the benefits of the dams, such as recreation and more important for the metro area, flood control. Also the writer did not address a big issue in the salmon problem: the miles of gill nets in the dam pools from the Bridge of the Gods to McNary Dam.
In the early 1940s, gill nets/drift nets were outlawed in the Bonneville pool. A check of fish count records from Bonneville Dam will show an increase in returns beginning soon after. Then in the late 1950s, Native Americans began commercially fishing in the pool. Here one needs to check the records from both McNary and Bonneville dams to see the results. If memory serves, the native fishery at Celilo Falls was a subsistence fishery, and no fish could be sold, and the Native Americans were paid quite well for the fishing rights when The Dalles Dam flooded the falls.
So I am at a loss as to how the commercial fishery began, but if the salmon are to recover, the gill nets need to stop.
Fred Cloe
Skamania
