President Message
State Board Presidents Message for January by Ron Garner,
Happy New Year to all of you. Hope you had a Merry Christmas with your family and Santa was good to you.
The year ended with major flooding and hope you didnt have property damage or loss. Many of our rivers flooded and most likely we lost a lot of redds or salmon egg beds. This will not bode well for future natural spawner returns. But since hatchery fish are protected in the hatcheries, they will be the stock that returns. Why is this their fault and they get blamed for returning when the naturally returning fish didnt make it.
Have you thought about how our state gets sued by NGOs to stop hatchery production or shut down our hatcheries? Enough is enough. When they sue and lose, they should not get their costs reimbursed. Wild Fish Conservancy and Conservation Angler sued on the Columbia River and lost but were still awarded 1.6 million dollars! If they had to eat that cost then they wouldn't be sueing all of the time. To me that's a win with no down side. Our Lower Columbia River Fall Chinook hatchery output used to be at 48 million fish, later lowered to 24 million, then to 11, and now sued to lower it again because of pHOS or portion/ratio of hatchery fish on the spawning grounds. This fish provides fish for Oregon, Washington, BC, and SE Alaska. Not to mention feed our Southern resident Orcas. As these fish dwindle away it shifts fishing pressure to upriver and Puget Sound stocks. Its time to stop them from being rewarded when they lose. Our tribes and us have been working on cutting their funding but these outragous payoff or losses does not discourage suits. This will be a main focus for us moving forward.
Its time to bring out the truth and turn up the heat on these lawsuits that shut down our fish that WDFW gets blamed for.
Join your local PSA chapter.
ยท Ron Garner President PSA