BY ANDY WALGAMOTT, NORTHWEST SPORTSMAN MAGAZINE
Steve Rinella took on one of the West’s weightiest and thorniest issues, restoring Columbia River salmon and steelhead abundance, on his MeatEater podcast this week.
Over 163 minutes, Rinella and crew interview Donella Miller and Doug Hatch of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission about historical runs, creation of the hydropower system, where things are at with recovering Chinook, coho, steelhead and other stocks in the big basin, the challenges they face, and more.
It’s well worth the listen, and even as someone who has paid pretty close attention to the issue, I learned from it.
Perhaps most interesting to me was how the effort is navigating changes in the White House.
Salmon recovery advocates had it very good under the Biden Administration, and out of that came the deal to pause longterm litigation around the federal hydropower system’s impact on salmon and steelhead and the signing of the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement between the US Government, states of Washington and Oregon, and four Inland Northwest tribes – Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla and Nez Perce.
Come June 2025, and the Trump Administration unilaterally withdrew from the RCBA, which led to the lifting of that pause and a return to federal court, including later this week as plaintiffs ask for increased spill to aid outmigrating smolts, among other measures.
Safe for now, the four lower Snake River dams – even if breaching them is considered the A1 best solution for boosting runs.
Does that mean it’s all over, the conversation has ended and everybody should take their ball and go home?
No. There are other things to work on in the meanwhile.
“There’s a lot of interest in just protecting the dams, so they’re quick to point at sea lions – they are a huge impact, but that’s not the only impact. But if that’s the only thing we could get right now, then we need to maximize our effort and jump on that and get these things done now while we have the chance, while the focus is on on that,” said Miller, a Yakama Nation member who has worked on fisheries issues for nearly three decades.
Per CRITFC’s Hatch, sea lions ate 50 percent of the 2015’s spring Chinook run in the Lower Columbia, and predation by Californias and Stellers currently has the attention of local lawmakers.
At the federal level, there are efforts to speed up the glacial pace of authorized lethal removals, while in Olympia, senators and representatives have filed bills to help fund that onerous process via voluntary donations during boat licensing and renewals.
And tonight there’s a CCA presentation with ODFW at the Tualatin Bass Pro Shops about “what’s happening, what works, and what’s next.”
Rinella points out that there’s a “conservation gamble” about looking at things through too black-and-white of a lens.
“… An organization, yourselves or any number of conservation organizations, with a new administration (that) comes in and you’re like, ‘Here’s all the things we’re not going to get.’ But there’s this, you know, and we can be friendly and try to get this one thing, or we can dig in our heels and and spend four years with nothing. You know what I mean? And a lot of people want you just to dig in your heels and get nothing rather than look like you’re cooperating,” Rinella says.
The podcast also covers avian and piscine predation, the shortsightedness of the Marine Mammal Protection Act not to have originally included post-recovery management, tribal perspectives, and more.
All in all, a good episode and worth my time today.
