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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>SalmonAid
organizes to fight threat of extinction<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>Oakland
Tribune-6/21/09<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>By
Sean Maher<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
plight of declining salmon populations and the commercial fishers they support
up and down the West Coast drew hundreds of people to Jack London Square on
Saturday and Sunday for the second annual SalmonAid Festival, organizers said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
festival featured food, music and a message of conservation. Some salmon
populations around the Central Valley are down 90 percent over the past eight
years, SalmonAid Foundation President Jonathan Rosenfield said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
issues facing wild salmon throughout California and as far north as Alaska
involve many local interests represented by more than 2,000 small nonprofit
organizations. The foundation first put together the event last year to unite
their voices and help consumers, politicians and the media understand the
enormity of the issue, Rosenfield said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"One
of the major issues we're asking the state and federal governments to tackle is
water management in the state of California," Rosenfield said. "We
have huge amounts of water being diverted from the greater Bay Area into the
Central Valley for big agricultural corporations to grow crops out there that
don't make sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"For
example, you're seeing a lot of water used to grow grapes, which need a
constant water supply to grow," he said. "We don't need to be growing
grapes in the desert during a drought."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Salmon
don't need a lot of tender care to survive, Rosenfield said — they are
"a hearty, tenacious, adaptable <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>species."
They just need access to their spawning grounds and relatively clean water in
the rivers they travel to get there. But as rivers dry up or are blocked by
dams, or are even pushed into reversed flows by powerful pumps, that access
gets cut off, and generations fail to reproduce.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"It's
hard to predict extinctions to some degree, or sometimes to know if it's not
already too late to stop them from happening," Rosenfield said. "But
as a Ph.D. conservation biologist, I think that unless we seriously turn things
around in the next four or five years, we'll begin to see extinctions occur on
a grand scale, across an entire family of species. We're witnessing an
ecosystem in collapse."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Meanwhile,
the rise in farmed salmon has begun to threaten natural food supplies and an
industry and tradition of outdoor, open-seas fishing, said restaurant owner
Kenny Belov of the nonprofit Fish or Cut Bait. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The
nonprofit began with four partner restaurants last year and has expanded to 26,
including Baja Taqueria in Piedmont. All the eateries have committed to buying
only wild salmon, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>"Salmon
are carnivorous fish, so to feed them in farms, we're going out into the ocean
and pulling out millions of anchovies, herring and smelt to feed the salmon.
These are fish we could be using to feed the world — they're very healthy
for you," Belov said. "But instead we're using them to feed farmed
salmon, which either escape or end up on people's plates full of chemicals and
hormones that aren't healthy."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Wild
salmon is much more expensive than farmed salmon, and Belov conceded that may
make choosing wild salmon a harder choice for restaurants and consumers in a
troubled economy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As
a partial solution he suggested buying other locally caught wild fish as they
come in season, such as halibut and albacore tuna. A full list of sustainable
fish and the calendar for their seasons is available online at <a
href="http://www.focb.org">www.focb.org</a>. The SalmonAid Foundation's Web
site is <a href="http://www.salmonaid.org">www.salmonaid.org</a> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Byron
Leydecker, JcT</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Chair, Friends
of Trinity River</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>PO Box 2327</span></i><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>Mill Valley, CA
94942-2327</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 383 4810
land</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>415 519 4810
cell</span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bwl3@comcast.net"><span style='color:blue'>bwl3@comcast.net</span></a></span></i></b><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="mailto:bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org"><span style='color:blue'>bleydecker@stanfordalumni.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'>(secondary)</span></i><b><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;color:gray'><a
href="http://fotr.org/"><span style='color:blue'>http://www.fotr.org</span></a>
</span></i></b><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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