After a two-year study, a group of scientists says
half of the Snake River’s endangered salmon and steelhead should be
allowed to migrate to the ocean naturally instead of being
transported in barges and trucks.
The report,
issued by an independent science panel created by Congress,
questions whether shipping salmon around dams can save fish from
extinction. It rejects a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
and the Bonneville Power Administration to barge more of the young
fish through eight dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, and it
calls on the corps to stop all trucking of
fish.
But the best way to reverse the decline of
the species is to draw down the reservoirs behind the dams or
remove the dams altogether, according to panel member Jack
Stanford, a University of Montana professor of
ecology.
Stanford resigned from the Independent
Scientific Advisory Board in March, saying that studying barging
and other fancier strategies “amount(s) to fumbling while Rome
burns.”
Meanwhile, a coalition of northwestern
irrigation groups says that Idaho farmers will lose 425,000 acres
of irrigated cropland if salmon are given enough water to reach the
sea.
* Rocky
Barker
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Panel says fish gotta swim.
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