Support for salmon recovery is growing - please contact your Senators today!

There's good news and there's bad news. First, the bad - the numbers of salmon returning to the Columbia and Snake Rivers this spring will be less than half of the biologists' official estimates. Less than half! Our salmon remain in very serious trouble in 2009. Now, the good news - right now, the Obama Administration is taking a close (and, we hope, skeptical) look at the 2008 Bush-era salmon plan that it inherited this year. And there are new signs of leadership emerging from Idaho. Both Senators there, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, now publicly recognize the need for a science-driven stakeholder collaboration as a way forward toward a comprehensive, lasting solution that serves the salmon and the people of the Northwest.

The other U.S. Senators - from Washington and Oregon - need to hear from you today! Ask them to encourage the Obama Administration to bring people together to craft a fair and effective salmon recovery plan that protects and restores salmon, creates good family-wage jobs, and expands our region's clean energy economy.

Sample Letter for Campaign

Subject: Bring people together to solve the Columbia-Snake River salmon crisis

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I am writing to you today to ask for your leadership to solve what is perhaps the Northwest's most important natural resource challenge: the protection and restoration of wild salmon and steelhead in the Columbia Basin. I urge you to lead our region toward a durable plan for the future by encouraging the Obama Administration to convene a 'solutions' table. We need a forum guided by sound science and common-sense economics to bring stakeholders together to create an effective blueprint to restore the Columbia Basin's endangered wild salmon and steelhead runs to abundant, self-sustaining, fishable levels.

The restoration of wild salmon and steelhead represents a tremendous investment opportunity in our region's future: creating thousands of new family-wage jobs, investing in rural communities, enhancing the region's clean energy infrastructure, and saving ratepayer and taxpayer dollars. But only by putting science first can we meet the challenge of salmon recovery head on, and thus begin to restore the benefits that these fish provide to our economy and ecology. With the Obama administration's commitment to science, collaboration, and problem-solving, and your leadership in Congress, we now have our best opportunity to end the years of political gridlock and bring our salmon back from the brink of extinction.

The majority of scientific opinion holds that removing the lower Snake River dams is the surest, and perhaps the only way to restore wild Snake River salmon and steelhead. For the past eight years, however, federal agencies have attempted to circumvent this scientific consensus by refusing to even consider removal of these dams and the replacement of their limited services with clean, affordable, and salmon-friendly alternatives. The critical next step for our region must include bringing stakeholders together to examine all relevant scientific and economic information.

Based on evidence today, a comprehensive, common-sense salmon recovery effort that replaces the lower Snake River dams' power with affordable energy efficiency and new renewable energy and the dams' other functions with cost-effective, modern alternatives could create family-wage jobs, restore salmon and recreation and protect our region's unique outdoor way of life. With science leading the way, the hope for real salmon restoration in the Pacific Northwest can be realized. I encourage you to ask for - and then work with - the Administration to bring people together to craft an effective strategy that restores our salmon and invests in our communities.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon on this important topic.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
June 02, 2009


Background Information

Wild Snake and Columbia River salmon and steelhead are at a crossroads today. Our nation faces a critical decision. We can "stay the course" - an approach that has failed both salmon and people - or chart a new path that helps both flourish.

Over the last several decades, the federal government has failed repeatedly to develop a lawful, science-based, and economical plan to restore endangered salmon and steelhead to abundance. A lack of leadership from many elected officials has left our wild salmon and West Coast communities that rely on them high and dry.

Through its inaction, the government has allowed wild salmon to swim quietly toward extinction - devastating fishing communities across the West Coast in order to preserve four costly dams on the lower Snake River. Completed in the 1970s, these dams are primarily used for barge transportation. Immediately after completion, wild Snake River salmon and steelhead populations plummeted. The best available science today demonstrates that dam removal should be at the heart of any effective recovery plan.

The impacts of the Northwest salmon crisis reach across the Pacific Coast economy, ecology and culture. Healthy salmon runs support the Northwest's unique way of life. A world-class fishery once fed the nation, generating billions of dollars in jobs and income for commercial, recreational and tribal fishing communities. But in a sharp reversal, endangered Snake River stocks now limit fishing opportunities, reducing the availability of healthy food, and crushing communities from California to Alaska and inland to Idaho and Nevada.

A changed political landscape - a new Administration and Congress - offers us a fresh opportunity to bring people together to craft an effective plan that recovers endangered wild salmon, creates family-wage jobs, invests in fishing and farming communities, and encourages the development of a clean energy economy. Using the best scientific and economic information, President Obama and Congress have an opportunity to bring together fishing, farming, and energy interests to tackle the crisis in the Columbia Basin and restore wild Snake River salmon and steelhead to healthy, abundant levels.