Outfitters Rally Against Salmon Closure Group Claims Protections By Government Overdone

Local outfitters led about 50 people in rallying against a Sawtooth National Recreation Area decision to close a stretch of the Salmon River to float-boaters, an attempt to protect spawning salmon.

“This is a dictatorship of the kind that they had under Stalin,” Olivia James, owner of The River Co., said Tuesday. “I can’t believe this kind of over-regulation and mismanagement is happening in America.”

James had her outfitting license suspended last week after launching a protest float on the river, where she contends chinook salmon have finished spawning. Recreation area ranger Paul Ries said James also is charged with entering an area closed for protection of an endangered species, violating a condition of her special-use permit and interfering with a forest officer.

Sawtooth National Forest Supervisor Bill LeVere has threatened to revoke her permit until 2000.

State Rep. Lenore Barrett, R-Challis, called for a federal investigation of Sawtooth National Recreation Area management Tuesday, although she said the request likely would not be granted.

Barrett said Custer County’s economy has suffered from cutbacks at the Thompson Creek and Hecla mines. Tourism and recreation dollars are all the Stanley area has left, she said.

Ries said a May 1996 environmental impact statement left him no option.

“Under the rules of the river, we had to shut down all the floatable segments,” Ries said. “The River Company floated anyway; that’s a violation of their permit.”

But in a letter to Ries, U.S. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, asked for an explanation for the decision and questioned whether salmon were spawning in the river.

Ries said he would provide information to Kempthorne, but maintained active salmon spawning was taking place on the river and protection was needed.

This year 254 summer chinook returned to the upper Salmon River, and they built about 100 redds, or nests, along a 30-mile stretch of river. In past years there have been so few redds that rafters could easily portage around them. This year, however, they are scattered all over.

Stanley District ranger Dave Kimpton said the National Marine Fisheries Service allows zero “takes,” defined in the upper Salmon as driving a spawning salmon from a redd for more than 20 minutes.

“If you have no room for errors, then you err sharply in favor of the fish,” Kimpton said.

Charles Ray, program director for Idaho Rivers United, said the government is missing the big picture.

“I think it’s ridiculous when the federal government goes after these people like gangbusters, persecuting small businesses, and at the same time allows itself to kill millions of salmon at the dams,” Ray said. “Rafters on the Salmon River don’t kill salmon, dams kill salmon.”