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upon them for their lifeblood are in peril. Long overdue Endangered Species 

 Act (ESA) listings in the Sacramento and Colimibia River basins have resulted 

 in further restrictions on already minimal harvest allocations and further ESA 

 petitions are expected to be filed shortly affecting all coastal salmon stocks. 

 While over-fishing occurred in the early years of the industry, it has been the 

 unrelenting destruction of salmon spawning habitat that has been the primary 

 culprit in the decline of these runs. 



The cause of habitat destruction varies from river basin to river basin. 

 In the Sacramento River, the enormous water diversions associated with the 

 irrigation agriculture industry of the Central Valley Project are to blame for 

 the Endangered Species Act listing of the Sacramento winter run salmon and, 

 just recently, the Delta smelt. Further north, in the Klamath River Basin, and 

 along the Oregon and Washington coast, diminished numbers of returning 

 salmon can be traced almost exclusively to mismanagement of public lands. 

 On the west side of the Cascades, roadbuilding in national forests and the 

 failure to provide riparian buffers during commercial harvest of timber has 

 destroyed countless miles of prime spawning habitat. On the east side, cattle 

 grazing in stream beds and unscreened irrigation diversions have wreaked 

 similar havoc. In the Columbia River Basin, where all Snake River salmon 

 stocks have now been listed under the Endangered Species Act, improved 

 public land management also is essential to salmon recovery efforts together 

 with modification of federally operated and licensed hydroelectric dams. 



Regrettably, our existing political institutions are terribly ill-equipped to 

 resolve politically charged and complex issues of natural resource manage- 

 ment. The life cycle of the sahnon, to its detriment, cuts across nimierous 

 jurisdictional boundaries - local, state, federal and even international agencies 

 and commissions all command some authority over the salmon's biological 

 journey or the critical habitat upon which its survival depends. Still, it is 

 federal agencies and their land management policies that hold the key to 

 salmon recovery efforts. 



The abuses associated with public land management in the Northwest 

 are legion. While some reforms have been instituted and agencies now claim 

 to recognize and understand the importance of fish and wildlife protection 

 mandates, actual measures taken to curb abuses are minimal. This is 

 particularly true of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) 



