Group objects to Nez Perce gillnetting

LEWISTON – Sport anglers have started a protest campaign against the Nez Perce Tribe’s gillnetting season on the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

Members of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife Idaho have started collecting signatures on a petition they plan to send to Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter as they launch an e-mail campaign to state and federal officials.

“I don’t know if it is going to do any good, but at least we are trying,” said Steve Alder, a group member in Waha, told the Lewiston Tribune.

The tribe announced in December it was opening a commercial steelhead season on the Snake River from Lower Granite Dam in Washington state upstream to Hells Canyon Dam on the Idaho-Oregon border. On the Clearwater, tribal fishing would be from the mouth upstream to about Orofino Bridge.

Joseph Oatman, chairman of the tribe’s fish and wildlife commission, said Wednesday that tribal fishermen put several gillnets in the Snake River last week and those nets have captured one wild fish and no hatchery fish.

This week, as many as 10 gillnets have been put into the Snake.

An 1855 treaty gives the tribe rights to 50 percent of the harvestable fish from traditional fishing areas. The tribe typically has not taken its share of steelhead.

The sportsmen’s petition acknowledges the tribe’s efforts to restore fish habitat and its right to harvest steelhead. But it calls on officials to “make it a priority to protect endangered wild steelhead” from commercial harvest outside of federally designated areas.