By Irene Vlach, Oregon Chapter Campaign Representative and Bill Arthur, Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign Chair.
The Snake/Columbia River Salmon Campaign has made significant progress in 2022. The decisions, reports, and commitments made during the last year provide a strong foundation for restoring abundant harvestable populations of salmon and steelhead to the Snake and Columbia Rivers. In 2023, we need to work with the Biden Administration, the Northwest delegation leaders, and the Governors to align these processes, so they reinforce each other and move forward in a timeframe that will ensure the survival of salmon and orca.
Key Updates from 2022
Murray/Inslee Report: In August 2022 Washington Senator Murray and Governor Inslee released their long-awaited report which concluded that the status quo was not working and that the LSRD's were a primary cause for Snake River salmon being at risk of extinction. They also concluded that, "the impacts and benefits of breaching the dams are significant, but they can and must be mitigated or replaced." They further noted that, "Breach of the dams would provide the greatest benefit to the salmon...It should be an option we strive to make viable". Murray and Inslee released a set of recommendations for moving forward with near term actions to help salmon and start to replace the services provided by the dams.
NOAA Report: The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA/Fisheries) published a report updating and summarizing the fish science concluding that, "the centerpiece action is restoring the lower Snake River via dam breaching" as part of a comprehensive Columbia Basin-wide salmon recovery plan. Providing this comprehensive salmon science was one of the commitments made by the Biden Administration as part of the litigation pause (see below).
Biden Administration/Litigation Pause: The Sierra Club, together with nine other NGOs, are plaintiffs represented by Earthjustice and have challenged the inadequate, illegal, and failed salmon "recovery" plans developed by the federal agencies (Bonneville Power Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation). Other plaintiffs are the Nez Perce Tribe and the State of Oregon. The courts have ruled five times against the federal agencies, rejecting their status quo salmon plans. We again challenged the Trump administration salmon plan (Biological Opinion) that was issued in September 2020. Plaintiffs, including the Nez Perce Tribe and Oregon, reached agreement with the Biden Administration to pause the litigation and work to develop a comprehensive plan for the Columbia Basin, meet treaty rights for the Tribes and recover Snake River salmon.
As part of the litigation pause, the administration made a set of commitments with the overarching one being: "The Biden Administration is committed to supporting development of a durable long-term strategy to restore salmon and other native fish populations to healthy and abundant levels, honoring Federal commitments to Tribal Nations, delivering affordable and reliable clean power and meeting the many resilience needs of stakeholders across the region. The Administration recognizes that business as usual will not achieve the goals of restoring salmon populations and ecosystem functions...". We expect to see a set of actions and milestones from the Administration that make the path forward more tangible in 2023.
Looking Forward
In 2023, the campaign will focus on three areas to move Snake River restoration forward:
- Work with the Biden Administration to lock down commitments and the path forward under the litigation pause discussions.
- Work with our congressional leaders to secure necessary funds for salmon as well as infrastructure investments to replace the services of the dams. The NW delegation (along with Governors of WA and OR) are important for moving these investments and actions forward rapidly.
- Our colleagues in Washington will work with Governor Inslee and the Washington legislature to secure funding for transportation and energy plans to move replacement of dam services forward along with near-term actions that will help salmon.
Working with, taking leadership from, and coordinating with Northwest Tribes is critical to all these efforts. The leadership of the tribes has been instrumental in securing the steps that have been achieved. We will continue to coordinate our work with the tribes.
We hope you’ll join us in advancing this important campaign!
For more information and to support our work for the salmon, please contact Chapter Representative Irene Vlach.