Actions to save salmon are being directed at severely restricting how property can be developed or restored or maintained. If the government, environmental groups and the tribes are truly concerned with protecting the salmon, why do they insist in only concentrating on only 5 percent of all factors threatening salmon species?

It doesn’t require much research to discover that the survival of ANY species depends on three factors: food, predators and habitat. Without adequate food supply no species can survive. If predator pressure is so great that a species cannot procreate faster than it is being killed, it cannot survive. Many scientists point out that these two factors make up about 70 percent of the decline in salmon population.

Did you know that a partial list of salmon predators includes more than 160 different species; a number of these proliferated under the protection of the Endangered Species Act (law) of 1973. The remaining 30 percent factor is the total habitat and of that, salmon spend 2/3 thirds of their life in oceans and 1/3 third in rivers and streams.

The federal government, through its agency, National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) placed some salmon species on the endangered list in 1991 and listed several more “species” since then. Has anyone been allowed to “harvest” the spotted owl or the eagle? No, of course not, these species have been protected under the law and protected in the courts.

Why is NMFS allowing salmon harvest? Why aren’t the tribes more seriously concerned with the depletion of salmon stocks as gill nets stretch across streams blocking the return of salmon to spawning streams? Is this another situation that the answer to these legal as well as logical questions is “follow the money”?

Other species have revived after they were protected from kill by the Endangered Species law. What is the agenda when NMFS refuses to protect species they have listed with the ESA and contradictorily permits so called “controlled take”?

Recently these issues were protested in the courts. The courts did not hold NMFS accountable to the Endangered Species law and protect the poor fish from kill as one might suppose, but has permitted NMFS to even more years of kill. Hmmm! Fox guards the hen house again?

It appears the Save the Salmon agenda is not seriously about restoring the salmon as many of us hoped it would be. Instead it has become a means to enact social legislation without the representation of our vote. These cohorted efforts empower appointed agency staff with awesome powers that are not accountable to anyone.

We now find ourselves entwined in a very expensive engagement between NMFS, the state Department of Ecology (DOE) and county officials as they concentrate on enacting ever increasing restrictions on the use of our private property while still taxing us at the “full use” rates. Private property means any property a citizen owns; clothes, cameras, cars for which we are also taxed and use restricted.

As private property rights advocates we support good stewardship in property care. We are very concerned about our quality of life here in the Northwest and so we call upon NMFS, DOE, County Officials, and the tribal nations to seriously include all factors that affect the problems of diminishing salmon species.

(Source: North Pacific Research Interim Report, Rev 7.00 and personal attendance at county meetings with NMFS).