Earth Share of Washington - News

Is salmon money flowing the right way?

Chinook No. 33 thrashed and skittered across the metal tray, spraying the chilly water of the Cedar River on two Seattle city workers.

The 30-inch fish had already been funneled up concrete steps, corralled in a pen, lifted in the tray and had a chunk of its dorsal fin clipped off. Now it was being steered headfirst into a black rubber pouch. After several minutes of struggle, Chinook 33, as its handlers counted it, finally relented. It slid into the container, then was hefted up and poured into a channel leading back to the river.

All this so the fish could simply make it over Landsburg Dam and spawn.

For thousands of years, Puget Sound salmon have repeated a ritual of sex and death that stirred the human imagination and naturally produced teeming populations of the iconic species. Today on the Cedar River it’s a human-engineered process of concrete, stainless steel and manipulation that costs the public $11 million a year.

Now some experts are suggesting that some of that money could be better spent elsewhere to save the region’s chinook. They describe an approach much like that of a battlefield medic: Focus on the ones with the best chance of survival.

So instead of pouring most salmon-recovery money into trying to save chinook on the Cedar and other rivers severely scarred by development, they argue, the emphasis should be on bigger, healthier rivers, such as the Skagit, that are more vital to the fish’s survival.

Currently, spending on the Cedar represents as much as a sixth of the roughly $60 million spent every year on all Puget Sound chinook, while the Skagit receives roughly $3.5 million a year.

But a major government plan to revive the chinook, expected later this year, will advance the idea that some rivers deserve more attention, and it could set the stage for changes in the region’s salmon-recovery efforts, including who gets the most money and where it’s spent.

“We are saying we don’t want to lose any [fish] population,” said Ken Currens, a biologist who was part of a scientific panel that wrote parts of the recovery plan. “But we recognize that some of these are going to be on life support, or above life support, but not quite viable.”

Yet such a shift in priorities will be tough in a region where people want to believe wild salmon will crowd urban rivers again, and others resent that rural residents would bear the burden — and restrictions — of recovery.

It also would require a change in spending habits, which have spread state and federal money around the region fairly evenly, while wealthy cities and counties spend far more on their local salmon than their poorer rural neighbors.

So changes may not come soon. While the federal plan will likely say not all rivers have to fully recover to save the species, an early version doesn’t single out which rivers get most of the $1.5 billion the plan will suggest be spent over the next 10 years.

“I think it’s a political call and a social call that we need the support of the whole region to get the money,” said Joe Ryan, president of the Washington Environmental Council and member of a committee studying how to pay for recovery. “There’s a feeling that we want to improve all of the runs and so it’s going to take funds to improve all of them. There’s a political call that we don’t want to have sniping in the group.”

Continue reading this story from the Seattle Times:
Is salmon money flowing the right way?

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