Overfishing Takes Its Toll On Salmon

Here’s a fact you rarely hear from the Northwest’s environmental groups: When the first Columbia River dam was being constructed, salmon runs already had fallen to less than 20 percent of their original levels.

Intense commercial overfishing, with wasteful methods still in use today, played a big role in that early devastation of the runs.

A fair, effective program to save salmon must include an end to overfishing - as well as the dam modifications and habitat restorations that unfortunately are the focus of Sierra Club propaganda.

However, the commercial fishing industry has stymied efforts to require more sustainable, responsible fishing practices.

Since this state will suffer from salmon-related cuts in hydropower, it also ought to insist that the commercial fishing industry participate in the struggle to save salmon runs.

We can force this needed participation, by voting for Initiative 640 on the Nov. 7 ballot.

With aim made accurate by its backers’ expertise, the initiative would correct state fishery policy in the three areas most harmful to salmon:

Ban non-tribal gillnetting in Washington state waters.

Require that hatcheries be run in ways beneficial to wild runs. Hatcheries, now run for the needs of commercial fishing, spread disease to the wild runs and produce far too many fish, overwhelming food supplies wild fish need.

Require the state to end the mutually self-destructive fishing war with Canada. If Washington would limit its excessive harvest of Canadian fish it could win reductions in Canadian overharvest of Washington’s dwindling runs.

Backed by recreational fishermen’s conservation groups, the initiative came from the expert pen of fisheries biologist Frank Haw, who for 26 years was a scientist and eventually a top administrator in the state fisheries department. Now a private consultant, Haw speaks with credibility when he tells voters that an initiative is the only route to reform. The commercial fishing industry, he says, for years has used its political clout to stop state fishery managers from doing what they should.

The industry opposes the initiative. But its predictions of dire economic damage don’t wash. Haw says 92 percent of the fish caught by Washington’s fishing industry are taken in Alaskan waters where this initiative would have no effect, and do no economic harm. The initiative only applies in Washington waters where this state’s salmon, dangerously few in number, approach their spawning grounds. Gillnets kill everything they snare - birds, seals, hatchery fish and endangered wild fish. Less wasteful netting methods are available, Haw contends, but the industry has resisted change; as it has elsewhere around the world where overfishing threatens once-great fisheries.

Reform in state fishery management must be a part of efforts to save the salmon, and this initiative is the only way to make sure such reform occurs before it’s too late.

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