401 



Sierra 

 Club 



I'ACIIICNORTHWESI 



Wll DSAl MONCAMPAICiN 



Northwest Office 



1516 Melrose Ave. 

 Seattle WA 98122 

 (206» 621-1696 



Columbia Basin Branch Office 



Route 2, Box 303-A 

 Pullman WA 99163 

 (509) 332-5173 



Barging Doesn't Worit 



Millions of Smolts Barged 

 Thousands ol Returning Adults 

 (from tfiat 'smolt yeai') 



Young Salmon Need To Migrate In 

 Rivers — ^Not In Trucks and Barges! 



^\,, 





1975 1990 



I ho Idaho Dopartmont ol Fish and Game has compiled mlor- 

 in.'ilion that demonstrates an inverse relationship between the 

 number of small salmon smolts that are t)arged and the number 

 ol adults that return from each smolt year ' 



For the last 15 years the U.S. 

 Array Corps of Engineers has 

 collected tiny, migrating juvenile 

 salmon and physically hauled 

 them downstream in tank trucks 

 or barges around the eight huge 

 federal dams that span the lower 

 Columbia and Snake Rivers. Yes, 

 they have "taken fish out of wa- 

 ter" and put them on trucks and 

 barges rather than undertake 

 changes to the dams and their op- 

 eration to make the hydropower 

 system less deadly for fish. 



Not only is it a ridiculous "so- 

 lution" to transport fish in barges, 

 but it simply has not worked — it 

 has not reversed the march to ex- 

 tinction of wild salmon in the Co- 

 lumbia and Snake Rivers. 



A new analysis indicates that 

 the barging and 

 trucking program 

 may actually be more 

 detrimental to wild 

 salmon than negoti- 

 ating the lethal corri- 

 dor of dams and res- 

 ervoirs. And, the data 

 that the Army Corps 

 of Engineers has al- 

 ways used to justify 

 the barging program 

 has been shown by a 

 team of fish biologists 

 to be seriously 

 flawed. 



This new informa- 

 tion, plus fifteen 

 years of barging ex- 

 perience while 

 salmon populations 

 have continued to col- 

 lapse toward extinction, has now 

 led fisheries agencies to question 



the effectiveness of the barging 

 program they once supported. 



SALMON ADVOCATES and conser- 

 vationists have long believed that 

 to save threatened and endan- 

 gered wild salmon in the Colum- 

 bia and Snake River basin, fish 

 barging must end. Instead of us- 

 ing the fish barging program to 

 create the illusion offish "protec- 

 tion," the Army Corps of Engi- 

 neers must begin modifications to 

 the mainstem dams and their op- 

 eration in order to provide safe, 

 in-the-river migration for finger- 

 ling salmon. 



Why hauling salmon 

 downstream doesn't work — 

 and will never work 



Under the Corps' fish barging 

 program, migrating juveniles are 

 captured at upstream dams — 

 Lower Granite and Little Goose 

 in the Snake River — and loaded 

 into trucks and barges for the 

 one- or two-day trip to below 

 Bonneville Dam. This creates se- 

 rious problems, especially from a 

 fish's point of view: 



Physical Stress — At each dam, 

 the fish are sucked into the pow- 

 erhouse intakes where about half 

 of them are diverted into a by- 

 pass channel inside the dam. 

 Then the fish are shunted at high 

 pressure through a l/4-mile long 

 pipeline to a facility where they 

 are "de-watered" so that they can 

 be sorted by size. They are then 

 placed in holding tanks and fi- 

 nally are crowded into trucks or 



The Srctra Club Wild Salmiin Campaign seeks to pnnccl and rcsiore wild salmon nins (hroughoul Ihe Pacific Niirlhwcsl. Young Salmon 

 Need To Migrate In Rivers— Not In Trucks and Itarges is one ol a scries of Sierra Club discussion papers on rcsloralion of wild 

 salmon. Wnllen by liin Baker. Sierra Club Columbia Basin Branch Oflicc and Julia Reilan, Sierra Club Northwest Office; with editorial 

 assi.stance by Lorri Bodi and Kalhcrinc Ransel. American Rivers Northwest Office; Tim Slearas and Pal Ford, SOS. Save Our Wild 

 Salmon. ® Copyright Sierra Club, May 199.1. Printed on recycled paper. 



