Salmon fishery may get federal bailout

With a historic salmon fishing ban keeping the West Coast fleet tied up at the docks, a top Bush administration official Thursday declared a fishery failure that could allow the industry to land a $60-million federal bailout.

Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez's announcement comes amid what he called "the unprecedented collapse" of the salmon population off California and Oregon.

By proclaiming a salmon fishery failure for waters off the two states, Gutierrez gives Congress a green light to consider a bailout of the West's fishing industry for the second time in the last three years.

Congress approved more than $60 million in aid after salmon runs crashed in 2006 on the Klamath River and commercial fishing was restricted.

This year, recreational and commercial salmon fishing are banned because of a historically low return of fall-run Chinook to the Sacramento River, normally the most productive spawning ground in the West. Officials estimate the lost season will once again cost the industry at least $60 million.

-- Eric Bailey

Photo: Rollin Banderob/AP

Comments

[Robert Therrien]

Salmon spwan upstream, the hatchlings go to the ocean to grow up and come back in several years to spawn and die. The salmon fisheries are just paying the price now for their stupidity of over fishing and not letting enough salmon to get upstream to replenish their numbers. Now we taxpayers are supposed to suppoet them in the bad times. where were the polictians and the DNR that were supposed to prevent this in the first place?

[Mark]

If the powers that be in government didn't stack the deck so that very large companies could fish out the ocean in particular areas then we wouldn't have this problem. How much of that 60 million will go to large corps? The pacific should have been shut down to salmon in the 70s so that they could regenerate. Of course, the small fisherman might say that this isn't right, but if they would have done that for a few years until the stocks got back to normal then we wouldn't have this thing where all of the years are bad, just some are badder than others. Fishermen should be subsidized until the stocks come back since it was the government rules that caused this.

[John Gebers]

The low return of salmon has very little to do with comercial and recreational fishing. Low water because of the diversions to southern California and poor hatchery management are the source of our problem. The state has about 1400 dams and 9 hatcheries.

[Allen Harthorn]

Lots of healthy wild, naturally spawned salmon continue to return to Butte Creek in N. Cal. Why, habitat restoration and no hatchery! Check out website, www.buttecreek.org