In February of this year, U.S. District Court Judge James Redden of Portland, Oregon requested yet another revision to the Obamas administration’s Bush-era plan to protect salmon in the Northwest. The revised plan was submitted May 20 and contains only a few relatively minor changes that are unlikely to be approved by Judge Redden.
Currently the State of Oregon, salmon advocates and the Nez Perce tribe are suing the federal government because they claim that this salmon protection plan is not doing enough to protect the fish from the harmful effects of the dams throughout the Northwest.
Moderate opponents to the plan insist that these fish need higher flows on the Columbia to survive, and salmon advocates argue the four federal dams on the lower Snake River must be removed altogether if salmon are to survive.
Here is a great quote from John Kitzhaber, former Governor of Oregon, who is currently running for a third term about the situation: (Special thanks to Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line for publishing this first:
“What is at stake here goes far beyond the issue of salmon recovery. To me, it raises the question of whether we have the courage and the will to reconcile the growing contradiction between the world we say we want to leave our children and the one we are actually creating through the decisions we make today. And it calls into question our capacity to take explicit and intentional action to shape our own future rather than to simply react to circumstances, allowing by default our future to become a matter of chance. It’s time to fight for salmon. It’s time to fight for us. It’s time to fight for our future.”
