Tag Archives: Fish

Don’t Mess With Mother Nature

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about the most recent efforts by the State of California to save the salmon.

The article reports:

“In my opinion, any salmon we’re producing this year are likely dead, and if they get to the main stem, they won’t be able to migrate out. I’m more concerned at this point with how do we rebuild the populations in those rivers,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt said.

Environmental groups are celebrating extensive efforts to remove dams across the United States, some of which produce carbon-free electricity. According to American Rivers, an anti-dam advocacy group, 65 dams were removed in 2022, and another 80 were removed in 2023.

Groups like American Rivers argue the dams are killing salmon and steelhead trout populations, encroaching on indigenous cultures, and harming water quality for people and wildlife.

The largest dam removal project in the history of the U.S. began on Northern California’s Klamath River last summer, with the removal of Copco No. 2, the first of four hydroelectric dams to be removed, also called “breaching” or “drawdowns.”

In January, the state began draining reservoirs behind the three remaining dams. The draining is not going well, especially for the fish the projects are supposed to be protecting.

Large amounts of salmon have been stranded on mud that is also trapping deer, Oregon Public Broadcasting reports. Officials are warning people not to try to walk through it, as it can be very dangerous. According to California Globe, a two mile sediment plume extends into the Pacific Ocean.

“We’ve been told we’re the experiment,” Siskiyou County Supervisor Ray Haupt told Just The News. “Eyes wide open. It’s coming to a neighborhood near you.”

The article also notes:

Another major dam-removal effort on the Snake River in Idaho took a major step forward recently with the signing of an agreement between the four Columbia River Basin tribes, the governors of Oregon and Washington, and the Biden administration.

While Congress would have to authorize the dams’ removal, Biden administration officials say that removing the dams would help boost “clean energy” and restore wild salmon populations, and the energy produced by those dams will be made up by “the build-out of at least one to three gigawatts of Tribally-sponsored renewable energy production.”

Why are some states removing dams that create clean energy, particularly when they are killing the wildlife they claim to be preserving in the process? I am willing to bet that at some point in the future these states will decide that they need these dams for energy and rebuild them at an exorbitant cost. Hopefully they will at least build them with fish ladders.

Massachusetts Fishermen Are Still Fighting For Their Livelihood

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SouthCoastToday posted an article on May 30th about a recent meeting in New Bedford by the New England Fishery Management Council. During the meeting seafood auction king Richie Canastra read a letter written by Captain Mark Phillips of the F/V Illusion who could not be there because he was out fishing.

The letter showed that the fishermen who are out working their trade every day understand more about the ecology and techniques of fishing than the bureaucrats at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

The article points out:

The shiny new federal research vessel Bigelow lies at the center of this argument. For example, fishermen who really know how to fish are consistently pointing out that the too-big Bigelow is using the wrong net, a one-size-fits-all compromise arrangement that isn’t designed to target yellowtail.

Government scientists, say the fishermen, deploy the wrong net the wrong way and then trawl too fast, with the yellowtail making their escape. The conclusion is drawn that the yellowtail aren’t down there to start with. So we cut quota.

The letter from Captain Phillips explains how the information the Bigelow collects on the yellowtail is not accurate due to the lack of actual fishing knowledge on the part of the people on the boat. The thing to remember here is that the fishermen are not attempting to over-fish–if they over-fish, they put themselves out of business. In my experience, hunters and fishermen, both professional and amateur, understand more about the ecology of wildlife than the people who want to regulate it. Education has value, but hands-on experience is needed when making decisions that impact people’s ability to make money.

The article concludes:

At the meeting last week, one person after another targeted the design of the net as a real culprit in stock assessments for yellowtail. Tellingly, no one in a position of authority, including the government scientist, uttered a word of rebuttal. They were silently confirming that what the fishermen were saying is true.

At this point there is no excuse for not having fishermen on the Bigelow as observers, the way government observers ride the fishing boats. We could also send out fishing boats to shadow Bigelow to compare results. We could even hire some of these fishing pros to do the survey work.

It makes perfect sense. It also could hurt somebody’s feelings, I’m afraid.

It’s time to bring sanity to fishing quotas.

 

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Fish vs Bugs

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Sometimes we the people go a little overboard when we find a cause. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a wonderful example of this. The federal and California game officials want to restore the Paiute cutthroat trout to its previous home in Silver King Creek in the Sierra Nevada wilderness. Sounds pretty basic. Well, not so fast.

California is an interesting state in terms of environmentalists. The Central Valley, which used to be the breadbasket of America, is now a dust bowl because environmentalists are protecting the delta smelt. Some pictures of the valley taken in the summer of 2010 are posted at rightwinggranny. Americans are paying more for groceries and people are unemployed because the delta smelt (which may or may not be a separate species) is considered more important than people.

Anyway, the environmentalists in California are now in something of a quandary. Silver King Creek contains bugs that insect advocates say will be threatened by the fish fans’ proposal.

The article reports:

The result has been a war of words and court challenges between fish allies and bug allies.

“They’re nutty people,” says ichthyologist Robert Behnke, a retired Colorado State University professor and expert on North American trout who calls the bug advocates “obstructionists.”

Opponents allege the trout plan is a plot by anglers who just want to fish for rare species. “Part of the project is to expand the population of fish so they can fish for them,” says Nancy Erman, a retired University of California at Davis insect researcher who raised early objections to the proposal. Ms. Erman studied caddis flies, whose larvae live in cocoons of stream-bed debris.

“It’s a fishing agenda cloaked in environmental language,” says Ann McCampbell, a Santa Fe physician who sued the federal government over the plan.

The article concludes:

Bug advocates hailed the pro-bug ruling as a victory for under-appreciated animals. Insects need special protection because they don’t generate much sympathy, lacking the appeal of more alluring animals like trout, says Mr. Frost, the anti-toxin lawyer.

“Invertebrates aren’t sexy megafauna,” he says.

In a time when the federal budget is totally out of control, how much money is being spent on the plan to relocate the Paiute cutthroat trout and how much money is being spent to defend the relocation of the Paiute cutthroat trout? I just wonder why we can’t leave the fish where they are.

 

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