Puget Sound salmon rescue plan takes giant step forward
The best hope for saving Puget Sound chinook salmon got its official blessing Friday from federal officials responsible for protecting endangered species.
The challenge is huge: to reel salmon back from their precipitous decline, boosting population sizes tenfold or more while the equivalent of two Seattle's worth of people move into an already populous region, building homes and paving green spaces all around the Sound.
The price tag is steep. The effort could cost $1.1 billion by 2015.
But the level of enthusiasm is high -- and it's widespread.
This is "a shining example" of what can happen when diverse, local groups come together and craft a recovery plan, said Bob Lohn, head of the Northwest regional office of the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that approved the plan.
"It's been a long, arduous process," said Joan McBride, deputy mayor of Kirkland. "It started many years ago, and I think this is a day to celebrate."
"The plan adopted today puts us on the right track," said Allison Butcher, chairwoman of the Puget Sound Endangered Species Act Business Coalition, a consortium of transportation, development, energy, real estate and construction industries.
For five years, groups including business owners, tribal members, environmentalists, scientists, farmers, government workers and elected officials met around the region devising recovery plans for salmon.
The strategies were tailored to match the needs of the residents and the landscape of 14 river basins around the Sound.
They were driven by the desire to solve at the local level the problem of vanishing salmon. No one wanted the federal government to come in and dictate a recovery plan.
Then all of the watershed plans were compiled into an overarching blueprint for recovery. The plan fulfills a requirement of the Endangered Species Act and was deemed "the largest and most comprehensive" recovery plan ever approved by the federal government, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
And still the hardest work lies ahead.
"The big challenge is implementation," said Doug Osterman, a King County employee coordinating salmon recovery in the Green and Duwamish rivers and along 90 miles of marine shorelines. "We're really going to rely on state and federal governments to come through with the funding."
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
Salmon rescue plan takes giant step forward
