Only an estimated 1,500 wild Snake River spring and
summer chinook salmon returned to Idaho to spawn this summer, the
lowest count on record. That compares to a 10-year average of
10,000 returning adults. “We’re going rapidly down the track to
zip,” says Dexter Pittman of the Idaho Fish and Game Department.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that some
90,000 chinook, including threatened Snake River stocks, died in an
accident July 16. While fish were being collected for barging
around McNary Dam, on the Columbia River near Umatilla, Ore., a
new, $15 million screening system malfunctioned and the fish got
packed together and overheated. That led federal officials to
temporarily suspend barging and begin spilling water and baby
salmon over the dam’s spillways. Meanwhile, hoping to pry federal
agencies away from reliance on barging to save endangered Snake
River salmon, eight groups sued the federal government Aug. 4.
Filed by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund on behalf of
environmental and fishing groups, the lawsuit says the government’s
plan for operating eight federal dams on the Columbia and Snake
rivers violates the Endangered Species Act. The 1994-1998 plan
relies heavily on barging young salmon around fish-killing
hydroelectric dams, a practice critics say has done little to slow
the decline of salmon populations. In March, federal Judge Malcolm
Marsh ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to
look at alternatives to barging (HCN, 4/18/94). But when Judge
Marsh ordered the agency to revise its plan, he didn’t specify that
barging violated the law, says Adam Berger, an attorney with the
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. Now the group wants Marsh to
address that question. “The 1995 juvenile migration is likely to be
the last halfway decent run,” says Berger. “It’s critical that we
change conditions in the river now.” Environmentalists hope Marsh
will force federal agencies to spill more water over dams to help
the salmon
migrate.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Salmon spiral down as allies challenge barging.
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