PLF Argues Common Sense on Coho Salmon

Pacific Legal Foundation ^ | Feb. 6, 02 | Pacific Legal Foundation

[laureldrive]

Just received the latest email advisory from PLFoundation, re Klamath crisis:

Commentary and news from Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org)

The PLF Sentry

Vol. 2, No. 4, February 6, 2002

PLF ARGUES COMMON SENSE ON COHO SALMON

Pacific Legal Foundation this week filed a federal lawsuit to remove Klamath Basin coho salmon from the federal endangered species list. PLF asked for review by Judge Michael J. Hogan, who issued a landmark ruling last year in favor of PLF's request to delist Oregon coastal salmon.

PLF's argument is pure common sense: Klamath salmon aren't imperiled because they're born in abundance in local hatcheries. Once born, hatchery-produced salmon follow the same cycle of life as salmon born in streams. They swim to the sea, get food, and return to spawn. They interbreed with stream-born salmon, and there are no genetic differences between salmon born in the wild and those from hatcheries.

Ending the ill-considered "threatened" status for Klamath-area coho would remove much of the pressure for extreme, human-unfriendly measures -- such as last year's cutoff of irrigation to hundreds of farms -- designed to get more water to the salmon. (As it happens, an interim National Academy of Sciences report to be released this week finds that the feds had "no substantial scientific foundation" for ordering the water cutoff -- a conclusion that won't surprise the private wildlife biologists who'd been saying just the same thing for some time.)

By its lawsuit this week, PLF is "simply seeking to end the nonsense and restore common sense" to water management in the Klamath Basin, PLF attorney Russell Brooks told the Associated Press.

PLF's lawsuit drew extensive coverage on television and radio in the Northwest; Fox News Channel sent a camera to the announcement news conference; and articles appeared in newspapers across the country, including the New York Times.

See the New York Times front page article, along with coverage from the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Portland Oregonian and Associated Press:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/06/national/06KLAM.html (free registration with NY Times required) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/04/science/04SALM.html (free registration with NY Times required)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/06/MN235474.DTL

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000009290feb06.story

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/101300019332203242.xml

________________ The PLF Sentry is published by Pacific Legal Foundation and may be redistributed in its entirety with proper attribution to PLF. If you have been forwarded this e-mail message from a friend and would like to subscribe to receive future issues of The PLF Sentry, visit our homepage at http://www.pacificlegal.org.

Established in 1973, PLF provides a voice in the courts that speaks for less government and the preservation of free enterprise, private property rights and individual liberties. PLF is the oldest, largest and, in the words of the Washington Post, "perhaps most influential" public interest law foundation of its kind.

[Grampa Dave]

What a novel approach, common sense, real data and real science instead of enviral knee jerk excuses for Rural cleansing.

[Deb]

Will the PLF be able to shop for sympathetic judges like the enemy does? Let's hope this falls to a Reagan judge.

[DoughtyOne]

Exactly!

[laureldrive]

Let's hope this falls to a Reagan judge"""

That's for sure. Even Bush (Sr.) judges generally aren't that reliable. (Clarence Thomas excepted!).

[ThreePantherEightyDuce]

This is a very poor argument for removal of protection for salmon. Hatchery salmon lack the spawning instinct so ingrained in the species they all return to the same rivers they were hatched in.

If humans make it impossible for salmon to use rivers in the manner they always have as part of their life cycle they are leaning too hard on rivers, and the riparian areas that provide water to them.

This gambit will fail, unless we are now to consider animals as dependent on humans as any domestic animal to be fully wild and self-dependent.

An excellent argument can be made on the suckerfish that is more directly linked to the water situation in the Klamath basin. That lake is very very shallow. It is in the last part of the life cycle of a lake as it gradually fills in to become lowlands and eventually part of the terrain. If a natural process endangers a species, how can you call for ESA protection? That is an issue what will have to be dealt with eventually.

I hope salmon keep their listing, and I would go so far as to say that the decommission and removal of some dams on many rivers is something that should be seriously looked at to help salmon return to viability as a wild species with some of the numbers and vigor they once had when the rivers ran black with their numbers when returning to spawn.

[laureldrive]

Hatchery salmon lack the spawning instinct so ingrained in the species they all return to the same rivers they were hatched in. """"

I've heard differently.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

bump

[cake_crumb]

"What a novel approach, common sense, real data and real science instead of enviral knee jerk excuses for Rural cleansing."

Yeah...now we'll see if such a devious scheme actually WORKS.

Good luck, defenders of Klamath Falls, and defenders against enviro-wacko-ism EVERYWHERE!!

BUMP

[Deb]

Since the farmers have decades-old federal rights to the water, it doesn't matter how bottom-feeding sucker fish ebb and flow. They are being used as a political pawn in any event, and the people claiming to care about their status are liars and frauds.

And what possible difference can it make whether salmon are bred in hatcheries or in the wild? If you're going to say the fabulousness of the river salmon trump the rights of farmers who produce food for the entire country...you'll be crying alone. This is just another in a continuing march to destroy American industries one at a time and bring farmers under the control and mercy of the federal govenment.

When it's all done and the Democrats have succeeded in turning the US into a communist state, do you really think anyone will be lamenting the fate of fish? Check with the Chinese.

[Carry_Okie]

Hatchery salmon lack the spawning instinct so ingrained in the species they all return to the same rivers they were hatched in.

This is only partly true. It usually takes three generations for introduced fish to spawn in their nest streams in survivable numbers. Until that time, a large fraction strays out of their home streams. Even after stream habituation, the fraction of strays varies from 10-30% depending upon the weather conditions and the stream. Before you argue with this, realize that it would have to be so for salmon to colonize streams newly created after glacial retreat which they do very successfully.

Further, the behavioral distinctions of hatchery smolt versus instream bred fish are apparently immaterial to ocean survival, which has been the issue for the fish over the last decade or two.

Finally, nearly all instream bred fish are nearly totally cross-bred with or comprised of hatchery stock. This is because so many native stocks were essentially wiped out in the last century.

In short, the case you cite is total propaganda and misinformation. Should you want to know better you might want to buy Jim Buchal's book, The Great Salmon Hoax.

[CyberSpartacus]

Not one salmon is worth any human. Including enviro-nazi's.

[backhoe]

Here's a Note to Activists:

Want to do something? Go here:

Ignorance Making You Ill? Cure It!

for links, tools, & instructions about how to contact a pile of different people, and how to send a link to this story right here ( or anywhere else ) to a "mass email" using Outlook Express.

[ThreePantherEightyDuce]

My argument is a valid one. If a species slips into dependency for humans to exist, it is not viable or wild any longer. This is why the focus of species preservation such as that for the condor is always to keep it in the wild.

The salmon issue generally is more in the purview of the argument concerning logging more then it is for farmers growing potatoes. Silt from clearcuts, and heat in over cut riparian areas are a much bigger problem concerning salmon recovery then what is happening at Klamath Lake.

As I deal primarily with issues of forestland I seriously worry about bad ideas like this one concerning a possible Coho delisting.

I tend to take the lead from the native Americans of that area who consider this primarily a local matter better handled by local people then the Federal Government.

From what I am to understand, there are other species that could be coming up for possible ESA listing concerning Klamath Lake, so it will be interesting to see how this scrap develops.

[balrog666]

...to help salmon return to viability as a wild species with some of the numbers and vigor they once

What difference does it make whether they are from a hatchery or the wild? They taste the same either way.

[nov7freedomday]

"An excellent argument can be made on the suckerfish that is more directly linked to the water situation in the Klamath basin. That lake is very very shallow. It is in the last part of the life cycle of a lake as it gradually fills in to become lowlands and eventually part of the terrain. If a natural process endangers a species, how can you call for ESA protection? That is an issue what will have to be dealt with eventually."

It is my understanding that the lake was originally MAN MADE to provide irrigation for the farmers back in the 1930's. If MAN created an environment for the salmon and sucker fish to thrive in the first place, then any loss in the salmon and/or sucker fish in the Klamath Basin is just a reduction in the gain the population experienced from MAN's efforts.

EUREKA!!! This must be the same genetic intellectual flaw which causes liberals to think that a reduction in the increase in government spending is a cut. Now if we can just map that flaw in the DNA strand we might be able to find a cure for liberalism.

[BJClinton]

Hatchery salmon lack the spawning instinct so ingrained in the species they all return to the same rivers they were hatched in.

It depends on the trout species. The hybrid steelhead trout you find in your local grocery store would fit your description. The Coho salmon this article refers to do return to their hatcheries and other rivers to spawn.

If humans make it impossible for salmon to use rivers in the manner they always have as part of their life cycle they are leaning too hard on rivers, and the riparian areas that provide water to them.

Agreed. But we need real, long term solutions. The FedGov and states in the Pacific NW have spent billions on preserving species in the region using a bunch of half-baked, stop-gap measures. Hatcheries and tiered chanels around dams/irrigation systems could be part of a long term solution.

unless we are now to consider animals as dependent on humans

We do it all of the time. The wolves in Yellowstone NP are an example. A better example would be the big game animals of the west. Many were nearing extinction when wildlife management policies were put into place to promote their survival. Now elk, moose and mule deer are so prolific hunting limits are being reduced to cull the large herds. In central Texas we actually have a problem with deer over-population.

[ThreePantherEightyDuce]

Unravel the quilt of life enough, then cockroaches and rats will have a better set of survival odds as a species then humans will.

Nobody is saying that humans should be allowed to go extinct before salmon disappear. But if humans lack the self-restraint to at least be good stewards of the non-human world of life, then just where the heck is the ethical limit at of what can be done to what, just to make a buck to be set at anyways?

I understand the temptations to view this issue in a simplistic way, but that is not how the salmon, or the thinking behind the ESA works.

[BJClinton]

It is my understanding that the lake was originally MAN MADE...

The lake was man made, but the river is natural. The river's level of flow is the cause of the debate.

[Deb]

Your arguments are absurd and now include the cause of the noble and tragic red man. What hogwash. These political indian tribes were compromised long ago by activist lawyers who use them the way they use every other created victim.

Equating the condor to the suckerfish is a further absurdity, but at least you now admit to being part of the marxist sub-culture. Your whine about "clearcutting" silt betrays your motives. Clearcutting has been outlawed for years and the only time it's done is when there's a forest fire. As you must know, not allowing the thinning of the forests has caused the recent catastrophic fires which destroyed the trees you people pretend to care for.

PS: Klamath lake was man-made, so your whole premise is baloney.