Salmon Fishing on the Brink

I was stunned to read this. Salmon fishing is closed. No special regulations, no more studies or political foot-dragging. The West Coast chinook salmon have been so ravaged that the whole thing had to be shut down.

What happened? Well, there are plenty of theories. The Sacramento River in California has the largest king salmon run out west. Some scientists say “ocean changes” are to blame. Others aren’t so sure.

From the N.Y. Times in March:

Fishermen think the Sacramento River was mismanaged in 2005, when this year’s fish first migrated downriver. Perhaps, they say, federal and state water managers drained too much water or drained at the wrong time to serve the state’s powerful agricultural interests and cities in arid Southern California.

There’s plenty of blame, but I point my finger right at the top. Even if federal regulators aren’t completely to blame, they are certainly in charge and that’s good enough for me.

From a dispatch in the Washington Post last fall:

Because of [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

We have two “outdoorsmen” in the White House and they have (with plenty of help, it should be pointed out) sold off public land en masse and been on watch as a fishery choked to the brink.

It’s sad and disgusting. I’m on my way up to Lake Ontario to fish the tribs for steelhead andI can’t stop thinking about this.

(Photo: USA Today)

Dick’s Love of Fly Fishing

The Vice President’s love of fly-fishing has always baffled me considering his administration’s record on conservation. When the Washington Post did a multi-part series on Cheney’s life and influence in D.C., it called the series “Angler,” which also made me cringe.

With that said, I’ll leave it up to the astute voices of the Internets to sort out exactly what is going on in the reflection of Cheney’s aviators in this White House photograph, which is captioned: “Vice President Dick Cheney spends an afternoon fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.“:

The “official” word for the Veep, by the way, via McClatchy’s D.C. newsgatherers: “Clearly the picture shows a hand casting a rod,” grumbled spokeswoman Meagan Mitchell.