Pledge to honor treaties can save Columbia's salmon
By The Herald Editorial Board
Two recent announcements by the Biden administration — and a pending settlement of a lawsuit by Northwest Tribes, environmental groups and others against the federal government — are providing some hope for the eventual return of an abundance of salmon to the Northwest’s Columbia River Basin while recognizing the role the basin’s hydroelectric dams must play in assuring the region’s clean-energy future.
What must come from these recent and pending agreements and the work and investments that follow from them is the recognition that neither the future of salmon nor of hydropower can come at the cost of the elimination of the other.
Earlier this week, the Biden administration issued a presidential memorandum that calls for federal agencies to use their existing authority and resources to prioritize the restoration of healthy and abundant wild salmon, steelhead and other native fish populations to the Columbia River Basin, which encompasses much of Washington and Oregon, nearly all of Idaho and reaches into Wyoming, Montana and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta.
Recognizing the basin’s legacy of providing water, power, recreation, agriculture, transportation and opportunity to the region, the memorandum also notes that the federal government’s construction and operation of dams, other dam building, population growth and overfishing have changed the ecosystem and depleted wild fish stocks, substantially harming the ability of Northwest Tribes to exercise their treaty rights — held since 1855 — to fish in all usual and accustomed places, rights they gained in ceding their land.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-pledge-to-honor-treaties-can-save-columbias-salmon/
