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<H2><A
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<H2>Salmon refuges may be curbed</H2>
<H3>Commercial interests protest, but U.S. says fisheries won't suffer.</H3>
<H4>By David Whitney -- Bee Washington Bureau<BR><I>Published 2:15 am PST
Wednesday, December 1, 2004</I></H4>WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is
proposing drastic reductions in critical habitat areas for endangered West Coast
salmon and steelhead trout, a move commercial fishing interests said ignores the
economic and environmental benefits of restored salmon and healthy rivers.
<P>The reductions could amount to as much as 90 percent of the habitat once
designated in California for the fish, said Jim Lecky, assistant regional
manager for the Southwest Region of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and
as much as 80 percent of the once-designated critical habitat in the Pacific
Northwest.
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<TD></SCRIPT></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV><IMG height=2
src="http://ads.sacbee.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_lx.ads/www.sacbee.com/content/politics/208884357/Button20/Sacbee/sbc_336_rem_dec_4/sbc_336x280_rem_more.html/34303339366234363431616531643730?_RM_EMPTY_"
width=2> While the impact of the reductions is unclear, potentially it could
lead to such things as relaxed regulation of logging operations that silt rivers
and streams or fewer new requirements for watershed improvements by operators of
hydroelectric dams as a condition for re-licensing.
<P>But the proposed reductions don't mean that huge amounts of riverbank and
protected watershed are suddenly going to be opened to development, said the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas the National
Marine Fisheries Service.
<P>That's because much of the riverbanks and streams that would fall outside
critical habitat areas under the proposal already are protected under other
state or federal policies, such as environmental or agricultural regulations.
<P>The changes also would not harm fish populations, federal fishery managers
said.
<P>The reductions are a result of better information and mapping about where
fish actually go in the rivers, federal fishery managers say.
<P>That information has allowed the agency to scale back the areas where the
most work and the highest protections are needed to save the fish from
extinction.
<P>"This proposal seeks to protect critical salmon habitats and meet the
economic needs of the citizens of the Pacific Northwest and California," said
Bill Hogarth, fisheries administrator for the NOAA.
<P>The proposal follows improved fish stocks throughout the West over the last
four years, fishery managers said.
<P>"Since 2000, 13 of the 16 listed runs of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and
three of the four Northern and Central California runs for which NOAA Fisheries
has recent data, have experienced significant improved numbers," the agency
said.
<P>But Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation
of Fishermen's Associations in Eugene, Ore., said he has grave misgivings about
the administration's intentions. The federation is one of the organizations that
has gone to court repeatedly over how the agency has handled endangered fish.
<P>"The problem with the administration is that it has grossly overestimated the
cost and underestimated or eliminated any consideration of the benefits of
salmon restoration to the West Coast economy," Spain said. "The administration
has a long history of either ignoring critical habitat designations or cutting
them back for specious economic reasons."
<P>Spain said that in the case of critical habitat studies for bull trout, "the
political appointees in the administration actually ordered the economists to
eliminate all discussion of the benefits of restoration and emphasize only the
costs."
<P>Recovery of salmon species through habitat restoration has a cost to
landowners, Spain said. "But it also has cost the commercial fishing industry
tens of thousands of jobs to lose these stocks" in an industry that was once
worth $1 billion a year, he said.
<P>Additionally, restoration of the fish habitat has considerable value in the
form of cleaner water for drinking and recreation, and healthy rivers that
minimize washouts and siltation, Spain said.
<P>"As goes salmon, so goes much of the West's resource-based economy," he said.
<P>Lecky of the National Marine Fisheries Service acknowledged that economic
data have not been wrapped into the agency's new proposal.
<P>"We looked at the biological benefits but didn't monetize all of them," he
said. And because the economic impacts were not done for all the species, he
said, the agency decided not to include any in its proposal.
<P>The proposal, which will be published in the Federal Record today, calls for
a 60-day public comment period. Any final designations are certain to be months
away, maybe years, because more lawsuits are virtually inevitable.
<P>The administration was under a time crunch to get the proposal out. In a
settlement to one of the long string of lawsuits, Tuesday was the deadline for
releasing the newly proposed designations.
<P>The agency is proposing separate rules for the 13 species listed in
Washington, Oregon and Idaho and the seven species listed in California. While
the salmon runs at issue in California are in rivers in the northern and central
parts of the state, steelhead trout are found as far south as Camp Pendleton
near San Diego, which is being excluded largely on national security grounds.
<P>Despite the proposed reductions, the federal cost of administering the
Endangered Species Act program for the fish still will amount to as much as $500
million a year - as much as $200 million of that in California.
<P>In the Pacific Northwest, administration officials concluded that the massive
hydroelectric dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers do not jeopardize fish
survival and will not come down. The plan relies instead on making improvements
at the Snake River dams and four other dams downstream on the Columbia to aid
the migration of juvenile salmon.
<P>By the end of the decade, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans on
installing "fish slides" or weirs at all eight dams that will guide the young
salmon away from turbines and spillways.
<P>The plan also calls for spilling water over the dams and increasing river
flows to flush the fish downstream to the ocean, for continued barging of fish
past the dams and for habitat improvements.
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<BLOCKQUOTE class=atw>
<H4>About the writer:</H4>
<UL>
<LI>The Bee's David Whitney can be reached at (202) 383-0004 or <A
href="mailto:dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com"><FONT
color=#cc0000>dwhitney@mcclatchydc.com</FONT></A>. Les Blumenthal of The Bee
Washington Bureau contributed to this report.
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