Who cares about extinction?

Who cries for wild steelhead and salmon?

Not the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. That body cares only about filling hatchery egg baskets, selling licenses and tags, and pacifying guides and river communities. Commissioners’ regulatory measures ignore the Idaho Code instruction to “Preserve, Protect, and Perpetuate.”

Not irrigators. Not barge transporters. Not electric utilities. Not Northwest River Partners.

Not administrators of the National Marine Fisheries Service. If they cared, they would push for Endangered Species Act declaration of the remnant groups of Idaho’s wild fish as “endangered,” not “threatened.”

Not the governor of Idaho, who sent his own salmon workshop group a clear message to keep dam breaching off the table.

Not even the Indian tribes, more interested in treaty rights and harvest of fall chinook than in the continued extinction trend of wild B-run steelhead.

Wild salmon and steelhead face continued regional warming, less usable habitat, and continued mix-stock gill netting. They cannot cry out.

Who will cry? Who will rage against that dark night of extinction?

Don Chapman

McCall, Idaho