In yet another version of the stranger-than-fiction drama where vaunted West Coast fishery scientists and managers fiddle while steelhead populations burn, note this article – Oregon Warns Willamette Steelhead Face Extinction If Sea Lions’ Feast Continues.
The intrepid steelheaders writing at that bastion of scientific truth and vigor Moldy Chum take issue with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (ODFW) spin on the matter, listing a set of talking points attributed to The Conservation Anger (quoted from MC, the quoted material is not readily found on the CA site this morning) –
1. ODFW has contributed to the decline of threatened winter steelhead by running a revenue fetching fishing program for non- native hatchery steelhead rather than recovery for endangered native steelhead. Irresponsible.
2. ODFW releases so many hatchery summer steelhead that cause competition and predation for threatened winter steelhead they have asked anglers to fish for hatchery steelhead smolts, a fishery that also kills wild winter steelhead smolts.
3. Seal and Sea Lions were not solely responsible for the low 2017 return. Predation on salmon and steelhead by marine mammals reaches a critical impact when the return is as low as counted and the number of marine mammals is high. The question is how did the Willamette Winter Steelhead population drop from over 5,778 in 2016 to less than 900 in 2017? Again the low return in 2017 was not caused solely nor principally by marine mammals. By lumping all the negatives on sea lion predation ODFW has found a cover up for their own incompetence.
4. Federal enforcement of the Endangered Species Act recovery of threatened winter steelhead has purposely failed, giving ODFW the green light to promote the extinction of winter steelhead rather than their recovery. Shameful and illegal.
By the numbers, West Coast steelhead, particularly those calling the PNW and the Columbia basin home have been decimated during the past couple of decades, despite the various and sundry enlightened interventions proposed and enacted by various government entities (state and Federal).
As an example, steelhead counts at Bonneville (Columbia) and Lower Granite (Lower Snake) dams continue to impress as per the graphic below (current as of this morning). Follow the daily count data here.
From the standpoint of an interested observer geographically distant from the West Coast but jealously interested in steelhead and salmon fisheries, it does seem damned ironic that many of those insisting we trust our benevolent leaders in state capitals and Washington with truly complex issues, like say healthcare management, find these same entities incapable of managing a much simpler (on a relative scale, mind you) issue like restoring steelhead runs.
We applaud and support the resistance badgering ODFW (and WDFW) to restore steelhead runs to their historical abundance and even proffer a damned simple suggestion – stop all harvest and fishing: commercial, recreational, and tribal – for five years and follow the numbers.
Git ‘er done.
