A fighting chance for salmon.

In 1991, only four sockeye salmon returned to their native waters in Idaho to spawn. In 1992, only one made it back. That solitary and no doubt exhausted salmon might be happy to learn about a major court victory that he and his brethren have just won. A judge in Portland, Oregon, has ruled that the federal government's operation of hydroelectric dams on Idaho's Snake River violates the Endangered Species Act. Idaho Governor Cecil D. Andrus and his state government allies hailed the decision as similar to the early spotted owl cases that overturned the federal government's timber practices, and plan to use Judge Malcolm Marsh's decision to win future courtroom victories for the region's salmon.

The wild salmon's troubles began in 1931 when the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers erected the first of eight massive hydroelectric dams that now traverse the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The silver and red salmon, which migrate from central Idaho and Canada to the Pacific Ocean, were often minced alive by the dam's turbine engines. The juvenile salmon, formerly flushed out to sea by the once-mighty rivers in a week or less, were confronted by a voyage that lasted 40 days. Too often, those salmon that evaded the dam's turbines fell victim to injury and disease, predators such as the squaw fish, or perished in the slack reservoirs of warm water created by the dams. For 15 years, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies have captured salmon at upstream dams, loaded them in barges and trucks, and transported them to sea.

Some 16 million salmon once journeyed up and down the Columbia and Snake Rivers; only two million survive the journey upstream today and, according to the Sierra Club, only 300,000 of them are wild. (The rest are from hatcheries.) Snake River coho salmon were declared extinct nearly a decade ago. The Snake River sockeye salmon was recently listed as endangered, and the Snake River chinook salmon as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Last year when the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) decided that its Snake River dam operation plan posed "no jeopardy" to the wild salmon, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game sued it, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies, for failing to insure that its operations were not likely to harm listed species. Last March, Judge Marsh ruled against NMFS, saying "it is too heavily geared toward a status quo... when the situation literally cries out for a major overhaul."

The NMFS and the federal agencies must now present Judge Marsh with an action plan to protect the salmon. Governor Andrus, the Sierra Club and others favor the construction of fish ladders and bypass facilities and flushing more water down the Columbia and Snake Rivers during peak migration season.

Contact: Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, 1516 Melrose Avenue, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98122/ [phone].