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page 2 - BPA Testimony 

 Salmon for All 



Chinook. The fish not, harvested would have gone to a "fish bank", been 

 provided harvest protection on their continuing migration, and ultimately 

 gone to the spawning grounds. In addition, BPA allocated siginifacant 

 staff hours to the resolution o fthis leaseback program. 



The "lease" was an element of the salmon recovery plan initiated by the 

 utilities with the understanding they would fund it. Soon after the 

 recovery plan was adopted, several meetings were held with the Pacific 

 Northwest Utilities Conference Committee to determine the ground rules 

 under which the "lease" would be Implemented by the fishermen and the 

 harvest management agencies, and how PNUCC and its members would fund 

 the program. Following about three such meetings, PNUCC excused itself 

 as a player, and the task along with the funding fell to BPA. 



We have been told by sources close to the politics of salmon recovery that 

 this was a planned strategy by the utilities designed to put additional 

 pressure on harvest, to make it appear that harvest was a bigger problem 

 than it was, and to make it seem fishermen were willing and eager to put 

 a price on their fishing opportunities. We were also told that the utilities 

 would use the "lease" as a public relations tool to tell the public that "in 

 order to save fish you, the tax-paying and rate-paying public, are having to 

 pay fishermen not to catch fish". 



In all candor, we have never felt that attitude coming from BPA. They, and 

 we, approached discussions about "lease" with the attitude that, as an 

 element of the regionally adopted recovery plan, we had a responsibility 

 to try to make it work. Also, in all candor, certain Northwest groups have 

 clearly tried to make harvesters out as the guys wearing the black hats. 



Approaching "lease" created much stress within our commercial fishing 

 community. Some argued that negotiating for "lease" would send the 

 wrong message about who the harvesters were and what had been their 

 role. Remember, information developed at the Salmon Summit indicated 

 that if aJI harvest of the Columbia River fish stocks listed under ESA were 

 discontinued, the stocks would still not recover. Harvest was not 

 responsible for the demise of salmon, and would play no major role in the 

 recovery. Faced with that reality, harvesters considered for a brief time 



