Gorton’s Salmon Plan Called Fishy Idaho Senators Urged To Not Support Gorton’s Proposal
Fish advocates on Wednesday called on Idaho’s U.S. senators to publicly oppose a proposal from Washington Sen. Slade Gorton that they claim would doom Idaho’s wild salmon and steelhead runs.
But Republican Sen. Larry Craig called criticism of Gorton’s plan “way off the mark and misguided.”
And while fellow GOP Sen. Dirk Kempthorne said he remained “fully committed to the restoration of salmon in Idaho and in the Columbia River Basin,” a Kempthorne spokesman told an eastern Idaho group on Tuesday that he opposed any significant action to save fish.
“Very probably the salmon are gone and it’s a waste of money,” Stan Clark told the Henry’s Fork Watershed Council.
Idaho Rivers United, Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited and the Idaho Wildlife Federation said at a news conference Wednesday that Gorton’s proposal would eliminate all legal mandates to restore salmon or steelhead populations anywhere in the Northwest.
It would cap mitigation expenditures for the Bonneville Power Administration and all Northwest utilities and create a new state and tribal body to develop a “salmon triage plan” to decide which rivers will have anadromous fish and which will not, they said.
Kent Laverty, executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, said a cap on mitigation expenditures would “establish a bidding war for limited money between the Indian tribes and the states of Oregon, Idaho and Washington. Most assuredly, Idaho steelhead would lose, Idaho businesses that depend on steelhead fishing would lose, and Idahoans would lose.”
The groups said Gorton wants Craig and Kempthorne to sign an “agreement in concept” to his proposal before Congress recesses in July. But in a letter to Craig dated Tuesday, Idaho Rivers United and Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited said supporting the plan would amount to a breach of faith.
“We write to ask that you repudiate this proposal. It will assuredly doom Idaho’s steelhead and salmon, whose restoration you have committed to support,” they wrote. “As Idaho’s senator, you must not let the federal government break its salmon promises to the people of Idaho.”
However, Craig said late Wednesday that the idea he was discussing with Gorton and Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., “would be an unprecedented commitment to long-term salmon recovery. It would identify and earmark more than $300 million a year for salmon recovery efforts in the Northwest and allow state and regional policy makers to make the decisions on how that money could be spent, rather than federal judges and Washington bureaucrats.”
Craig said an Idaho Rivers United news release on the proposal “totally misrepresents the issue.”
“It is inconceivable to me that environmental groups, supposedly committed to salmon recovery, would criticize a concept designed to bring order and stability to those very efforts,” the senator said.