Avoid Temptation To Dig In Your Heels

The Pacific Northwest already knows, from the spotted owl fiasco, what happens when the Endangered Species Act breeds intransigence and litigation: Industries wither, small towns rot, families crumble, attorneys make a killing and politics become poisonously polarized.

Last week, the federal government announced it would invoke the species act to protect two Northwest steelhead runs, on the Snake River and the upper Columbia. The National Marine Fisheries Service also is keeping a close watch on more steelhead and salmon runs in Central and Western Washington.

Add all this to the salmon runs protected by the species act already and most of Washington state is under a shadow. So are big chunks of Idaho and Oregon.

Already, Northwest residents are contributing more than $400 million a year to research, fish barging, hatcheries and modifications to hydroelectric dam operations. Ongoing efforts will refine these remedies and add new ones.

Some of the remedies for salmon will help the steelhead. And, the difficulties that hinder salmon planning will afflict steelhead plans.

The biggest difficulty is the temptation to insist that others do all the compromising, then to walk away from the table and sue.

If federal courts take over, the battle will shift to legalistic, I-win-you-lose extremes. This might include nutty remedies like the breaching of dams (never mind where we’d get our electricity then). Inflexible habitat regulations would have big implications for farming and timber industries, which struggle to manage vast acreages responsibly and play big roles in our economy. Barges that haul fuel, wheat and fertilizer up and down the Columbia River also are in the bulls-eye; when they are grounded, shipping costs soar and trucks pound the region’s roads.

To its credit, the National Marine Fisheries Service promises flexibility, invites each Northwest state to develop a fish-saving plan and urges all affected parties “to remain at the table and seek solutions.”

But strident rhetoric also is appearing - some of it, for example, from understandably frustrated Indian tribes. They are reluctant to reduce steelhead fishing and reluctant to modify hatchery operations. Treaties promised them fish to catch, they say. And yet, there may not be fish to catch unless they, too, do their part to restore the runs. Heavy fishing poses an obvious threat, killing wild fish as well as hatchery fish. Overproduction by hatcheries has been a chronic problem, straining the ecosystem’s ability to sustain healthy runs of wild fish.

The stresses on migratory fish are so numerous that remedies must widen every bottleneck along the way. Every change is costly to someone. So all must make a fair concession. No single group with an impact on the fish should escape the need to change, or bear most of the sacrifices.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board