The Last Days of the Salmon

As someone who enjoys fishing greatly (and in particular, the challenge of catching salmon outside the Golden Gate), I share Bill Wattenburg’s disgust at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife killing salmon returning upriver just because they were born in a hatchery. It is utterly amazing that the government can get away with killing, by the tens of thousands, a fish they claim belongs on the endangered species list.

The issue came to our attention when the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article on what Oregon banker Ronald Yechout stumbled upon—thousands of salmon returning upstream to spawn were being beaten to death with baseball bats. He videotaped the otherworldly scene and gave the videotape to all the local TV stations and newspapers, but only the WSJ and one local paper have run significant stories on the slaughter. The killing of 6,000 (and more) salmon is part of an effort to shut the Fall Creek Hatchery over the past several years.

The best introduction to the issues at the moment consists of the following two clips from Bill Wattenburg’s radio show the night he first discussed the topic:

Additional information can be found at the following links:

• Court Strikes down Federal Agency’s Use of “Politicized” Science, and rules that hatchery-spawned salmon are biologically indistinguishable from naturally spawned, so-called “wild” salmon. [additional background]
• Oregon Lawmakers Decry Salmon Killings
• A Sampling of Salmon Recovery Viewpoints
• The Oregonian’s latest story on Ronald Yechout
• Letter from the National Marine Fisheries Service discussing how terns and cormorants are killing 10 million or more young salmon on their way to the ocean.
• Terns pose yet another threat to young salmon (an article in the Oregonian discussing the overpopulation of terns eating tons of migrating salmon.
• February 7, 2000 Wall Street Journal article (paid membership required)
• New Danger To Endangered Species Act Implementation for Oregon Coho (an article by Joel Gallob, who writes for the Newport News-Times)
• Alsea Valley Alliance and Mark Sehl vs. Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission, et al.
  (full text of a lawsuit filed to stop further killing of the Coho salmon in Oregon)
• Legislative Committee Looks Into State Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Hatchery Coho Salmon Program [PacificLegal removed the page]

Media Clips

The RealMedia clips below will start to play after the entire clip has been downloaded. I am working on converting these to YouTube videos.

• Video of salmon being killed
• Bill Wattenburg describes how and why Oregon is killing salmon.
• A caller on Wattenburg’s radio show (Scott from San Jose) describes his views on the killing of salmon by the state of Oregon.

Crocker Mountain Broadside—information about the poisoning of Davis Lake and other related issues.