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Wildlife Service. Among other findings, the Mundy review confirms that, in 

 fact, improvement of in-river migration conditions would provide far more 

 benefit than transportation as a measure in a scientifically sound recovery 

 plan. Admittedly the Mundy review was not available to the Team. However, 

 if the Team had not given the CBFWA review such short shrift, the final 

 recommendations would not now stand in such stark contract to the Mundy 

 peer review. 



Some of the Recovery Team's recommendations have nothing to do 

 with science at all. For example, the Team calls for putting NMFS 

 completely in charge of Northwest salmon recovery, but this 

 recommendation comes with no explanation -- scientific or otherwise -- for 

 why NMFS is the best choice. In fact, putting NMFS exclusively in charge of 

 Northwest salmon would only serve to further "federalize" the recovery 

 effort, and write the states and Tribes out of decision -making. In his March 

 ruling in Idaho et. ai. v. NMFS et. oL, US. District Judge Malcoln Marsh 

 states accurately that the states and Tribes filed their lawsuit because they 

 had been ignored by the federal agencies. Given the mandates in the 

 Northwest Power Planning Act, the Northwest Power Planning Council 

 would seem a good candidate to lead the recovery effort. Given the states' 

 legal responsibilities as well as the Tribes' treaty rights, the Columbia Basin 

 Fish and Wildlife Authority (which includes NMFS and the US. Fish and 

 Wildlife Service) would offer excellent leadership, especially for providing 

 strong and effective coordination across all the federal, state, and Tribal 

 jurisdictions for salmon. In any event, the Team's recommendation is public 

 policy making -- not science. 



Similarly the rationales for other recommendations have nothing to do 

 with science. For example, the Team avers. "Even total elimination of US. 

 ocean and in-river harvests would offer little prospect of recovery." but then 

 states, 'The real importance of harvest reduction is that it can be done fairly 

 quickly" (final, p. IX-23). In other words, cuts in salmon fishing will not do 

 any good, but will give the illusory sense of taking prompt action. The Team 

 recommends its draconian and economically crippling harvest reductions 

 not on the basis of hard science, but rather due to timeliness. 



• The Recovery Team is not independent- 

 Given the highly charged politics which have surrounded these fish for 

 decades, it is hard to imagine any expertise on Northwest salmon -- 

 scientific or otherwise - that is truly independent, that is free from bias or 

 influence, that can render an objective judgment on salmon biology. For 

 example, to accomplish a simple review of the scientific literature on the 

 relationship between water velocity and juvenile fish survival, the Northwest 

 Power Planning Council last year - attempting to elude researcher bias and 

 Northwest political influence - went to the lengths of contracting with a 

 scientist from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. (By the way. 



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