Posted on 11/25/2002 9:25:29 PM PST by churchillbuff
Salmon Removal From Threatened List Urged By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A group of Northwest businesses and farmers asked a federal judge Monday to remove chinook salmon from a list of threatened species, arguing that failure to include fish raised in hatcheries in number of chinook has kept the count artificially low.
Common Sense Salmon Recovery argued in U.S. District Court that the National Marine Fisheries Service acted illegally when it refused to combine hatchery and wild salmon in determining whether the chinook should be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
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``Chinook salmon are abundant (in the Pacific Northwest). In fact we're currently seeing record returns'' of salmon, said Russell Brooks, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm that intervened in the case on behalf of private property owners and several counties in Washington state.
The government's refusal to count hatchery fish means, in effect, that bureaucrats are ``wading into a stream and picking and choosing which individual fish to protect and which to ignore,'' Brooks said.
Under the fisheries service policy, only wild salmon are protected. Brooks said excluding those grown in hatcheries is illogical at best.
``These hatchery and wild fish are the same species,'' he said.
While hatchery salmon can interbreed with wild salmon, they are less likely to survive in the wild and are more prone to disease.
Many biologists believe hatchery and wild salmon are distinct, and the hatchery fish pose a threat to wild salmon, said Kristen Boyles of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that represents Pacific Coast fishermen, the Sierra Club and other groups.
Ruth Ann Lowery, a Justice Department lawyer representing the fisheries service, urged Judge Paul Friedman to delay judicial action until 2004, when the agency is to release its decision on the proper role of hatchery fish in listings of threatened or endangered species.
A fisheries services spokesman said Monday the agency is re-examining its policies to consider a ruling by a federal judge last year in a case involving coho salmon, a close relative of the chinook. Judge Michael Hogan ruled that the fisheries service erred when it lumped hatchery and wild fish together in the same group then gave threatened species protection only to the wild fish.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals set aside the ruling last December, pending an appeal by conservation groups.
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Well, how convenient an opinion. Too bad that it is completley and totally wrong. Kristn knows this, as do all of the "many biologists" cited. Hatchery and wild salmon are absolutely identical in every way except in their early life.
Are these bozos really saying that hatchery-bred salmon never breed with wild? Are they really telling me that "wild" salmon are never bred with the hatchery fish?
If so, they are cads, bounders, scoundrels and known liars. The methodology of breeding salmon in hatcheries requires that some wild salmon contribute to the gene pool, for the very purpose of preventing genetic drift within the hatcheries.
This methodology was set in stone in Oregon, at least, fifty years ago or more. Then, the pupose of hatcheries was to provide an artificial breeding ground for fish populations blocked from their natural grounds by dams.
WILD FISH, HATCHERY FISH, YOU CAN`T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BECAUSE THEY ARE THE SAME CRITTER
When you get there, go to the left side of his page and click the button that reads "Great Salmon Hoax"!
The ESAing of Salmon in California, Oregon and Washington is part of the Watermelon Jihadists tactics of controlling the water that is needed for generating electricity, raising food we eat on farms, and the cattle and other meat animals we eat. Once the enviralists control the water, they can go full bore re Rural cleansing to get rid of evil farmers, ranchers, loggers and professional fishers.
Who, the biologists, or the tame salmon who spurn the advances of the wild salmon?
I thought this was an article about Arizona politics!
Wow! That's cool. ;-)
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