January 24, 2020
Mr. Jim Kramer
c/o Ross Strategic
1325 Fourth Ave., Suite 1600
Seattle, WA 98101
J.T. Austin, Natural Resource Policy Advisor
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504
Dear Mr. Kramer and Ms. Austin,
Our organizations represent the commercial salmon fishing industries in Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska. We are writing to thank you for your efforts to plan and implement the Lower Snake River Stakeholder Process over the past eight months and to share with you some of our thoughts about the Draft Report. We appreciate Governor Inslee’s commitment to protecting and restoring the Southern Resident orcas and the salmon populations they rely upon. Protecting orcas from extinction will require rebuilding abundant salmon populations across the Pacific Northwest by protecting, reconnecting and restoring the rivers and streams that salmon need to complete their life cycle.
As the Governor’s Southern Resident Orca Recovery Task Force recognized, restoring the lower Snake River in southeast Washington State is one of our very best salmon recovery opportunities anywhere on the West Coast today. It would recover 140 miles of mainstem river habitat and reconnect endangered salmon and steelhead populations with more than 5,000 miles of largely pristine, protected spawning and rearing habitat upstream in central Idaho, northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. Scientists predict that restoring adequate access for salmon to this once highly productive habitat would result in annual returns of fall and spring/summer Chinook between 600,000 and 1.1 million adults. Rebuilding this type of salmon abundance would deliver huge benefits to endangered orcas, to Northwest ecosystems and to scores of coastal communities from California to Alaska that rely on commercial fishing. All too often, the policy response to declining salmon populations has been to increase hatchery production while reducing harvest. Time and experience have shown us that hatcheries alone are no substitute for productive well-managed salmon habitat (e.g. Hanford Reach). In addition, the steady reduction of fishing opportunity over the last 40 years has hurt many rural coastal communities that may have few alternative economic development options. Far too little attention has been paid to protecting and restoring mainstem river reaches like the lower Snake River.
It should come as no surprise that commercial fishermen are writing to you about restoring salmon habitat. Fishermen, after all, were responsible for the Bonneville Dam having fish ladders and the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation Act having Essential Fish Habitat conservation provisions. Fishermen have a direct stake in the health of the Columbia-Snake River Basin. Salmon spend most of their lives in the ocean in mixed stock schools that range thousands of miles from their natal streams. As such, we fish on stocks that originate from many rivers, including the Columbia and Snake. When salmon populations decline and our fishing opportunities close, we all suffer. For this reason, we all support the protection and restoration of salmon habitat from Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest down through Washington, Oregon and California.
After reviewing the draft version of the Lower Snake River Dams Stakeholder Engagement Report, we appreciate the hard work it took to produce it. Its presentation of the different stakeholder perspectives represents an important step toward increased understanding around a highly complex and difficult issue. We strongly believe that these kinds of conversations must continue. It is essential that people must build trust and work together on inclusive solutions that work for wild salmon and orcas – and coastal and inland communities. We all share a serious concern regarding the Draft Report that we urge you to address in the final version. We find that the Draft Report fails to properly emphasize the role and importance of the commercial fishing sector as critical, longstanding stakeholders in the Columbia-Snake River Basin salmon management and recovery activities. Our members have made tremendous economic, personal and community sacrifices over the past seven decades in order to respond to – and to protect and conserve – declining salmon populations. Our communities today are suffering as a result: reduced harvest means less business activity, job losses – and the stresses that often come with economic downturns and sense of despair. For instance, there were over 3,000 commercial salmon trollers in Washington 30 years ago. Today there are barely 100 left. The Columbia River gillnet fishery has suffered to a greater extent with almost no current day access to historic resources. That dramatic decline can be measured in jobs, and businesses and opportunities lost in many rural coastal communities. It is critical that the final report describe and acknowledge these kinds of impacts to help put other impacts in perspective.
On a more positive note, meaningful salmon recovery – like what a restored lower Snake River would deliver - could be an important economic development opportunity not just for our families and our coastal communities but also for other river communities from the coast to central Idaho. This important and positive story must also be better reflected in the final report. We would like to see a final report that, for example, includes a specific section dedicated to highlighting the important historic relationship that salmon dependent communities have with the Columbia-Snake Basin, the sacrifices that we’ve made and the opportunity that restoring the lower Snake River and healthy fisheries could mean for communities both on the coast and inland. Appropriately, agriculture has a substantive section dedicated to its role in Washington’s economy and its relationship to the Snake and Columbia Rivers. We ask you to include a similar look at the role and status of salmon fishing industries and communities in the final report as well. Salmon recovery IS economic development on the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California and inland in Idaho as well.
We were disappointed by the small number salmon fishermen that were interviewed for the draft report. Fellow stakeholders and the public remain poorly informed about how fisheries are managed or how declining salmon populations impact coastal and inland fishing communities. The better this is understood by all, the greater our chances of finding real solutions that work for everybody so we can all leverage the opportunities before us today. We have included a number of documents with this letter that help illustrate the importance of the salmon and steelhead fishing culture and economy in Washington and the Pacific Northwest, the losses that have been suffered and sacrifices made, and the opportunity that salmon/steelhead recovery represents, especially for rural communities that today often have few other options - in central Idaho, along the lower Columbia River, on the WA coast, and as far north as Alaska. We appreciate your hard work to host this conversation on what has long been a contentious subject. Increased dialogue and mutual understanding is a critical first step toward collaboration and the development of solutions that can work for us all.
We encourage Governor Inslee to continue his engagement and leadership on this important matter after the release of the final report in March – and we are committed to working with you and others in our region to develop win-win solutions that will assure a vibrant future for both our fishing and our farming communities.
Sincerely,
Linda Behnken
Executive Director
Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association
Sitka, AK
Amy Daugherty
Executive Director
Alaska Trollers Association
Juneau, AK
Joel Kawahara
Vice President
Coastal Trollers Association
Quilcene, WA
Noah Oppenheim
Executive Director
Pacific Coast Federation of
Fishermen’s Associations
San Francisco, CA
CC:
The Honorable Jay Inslee, Washington State
The Honorable Patty Murray, United States Senate
The Honorable Maria Cantwell, United States Senate
The Honorable Derek Kilmer, House of Representatives
The Honorable Rick Larsen, House of Representatives
The Honorable Pramila Jayapal, House of Representatives
The Honorable Denny Heck, House of Representatives
The Honorable Kate Brown, Oregon State
The Honorable Ron Wyden, United States Senate
The Honorable Jeff Merkley, United States Senate
The Honorable Peter DeFazio, House of Representatives
The Honorable Suzanne Bonamici, House of Representatives
The Honorable Mike Dunleavy, Alaska State
The Honorable Lisa Murkowski, United States Senate
The Honorable Dan Sullivan, United States Senate
The Honorable Don Young, House of Representatives
