Legacy – February 2014 Wild Game Fish Conservation International 2014 – Year of Healthy Marine Ecosystems But the agencies’ draft plan ignores the scientists, their findings and their call for an enhanced spill test. Unless their final plan, due in January, incorporates the spill test and other significant improvements, the federal agencies will surely plunge our region into yet another expensive, timeconsuming round of litigation. To pass legal muster, the final plan must address the concerns the court raised in its 2011 ruling. It must include, for example, an analysis of lower Snake River dam removal. It must consider other, more aggressive measures for moving salmon through the hydrosystem. And it must address the effects of climate change. On all these crucial matters, the draft is silent. The agencies can get this right. They can produce a scientifically sound plan that complies with the law and protects and restores endangered salmon and steelhead. We need our elected leaders, including Gov. Jay Inslee and U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, to push them to end their wasteful and destructive litigation loop. Lasting peace in the Columbia Basin depends on leadership from our elected officials. They can call all interests to the table to consider all credible recovery options, including but not limited to restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake River. Energy interests, farmers, shippers, tribes and communities in other areas have forged joint solutions – some involving removal of aging, costly dams – to restore fisheries and local economies. The people of the Columbia-Snake are ready to move forward together; our political leaders must lead the way. Sam Mace is the Inland Northwest Director for Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of fishing businesses, conservation groups and clean-energy advocates working to restore wild salmon and steelhead to the Columbia and Snake rivers.
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