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Testimony of Glen Spain (PCFFA) 



This region is well into a biological crisis of major proportions 

 far exceeding that caused by overcutting of old growth timber and the 

 spotted owl. The main factor indicated by the AFS study was the loss 

 of freshwater habitat for spawning and rearing. In other words, too 

 few fish are surviving to get to the ocean. The culprits include 

 timber practices that silt up streams and devastate riparian areas, 

 cattle which overgraze in riparian areas, out-and-out water diversions 

 for urban and agricultural uses which use up too much water and leave 

 none for fish, hydropower dams which block migration — and a host of 

 other factors which all cumulatively cause a habitat bottleneck 

 through which fewer and fewer young salmon can now pass. The ones 

 that do make it through all these impacts are then so subject to 

 stress that they become more vulnerable to predators and adverse ocean 

 conditions as well. Only a very small fraction of those few fish that 

 still survive to adulthood can be harvested by fishermen. Fishermen 

 are always last in line after all the habitat impacts, and are 

 federally regulated to a small percentage so that enough can return to 

 spawn. However, as a result of each stage of increased 

 habitat-related mortality there are fewer and fewer fish each year 

 upon which to base a fishery. Habitat-related losses are slowly 

 strangling us to death. 



To put the crisis into economic perspective, it must be 

 remembered that salmon have always been a major commercial food crop 

 of this region as well as the source of jobs. The continued loss of 

 our salmon stocks will mean the certain death of the entire salmon 

 fishing industry on this coast, from Northern California to Puget 

 Sound. This amounts to billions of dollars in lost income to the 

 region and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. This decline is 

 continuing. For instance, as recently as 1988, according to economic 

 studies by the Pacific Rivers Council, the salmon industry (including 

 both commercial and recreational components) brought in an estimated 



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