Klamath Basin salmon echoes

A sharply reduced salmon-fishing season may be the unhappy outcome of a meeting of policymakers in Seattle this week. They are dealing with poor decisions made by others five years ago in Oregon's Klamath Basin.

Dramatically reducing the season from Northern Oregon into California, a 700-mile stretch, is necessary to save chinook at sea as they commingle with other salmon. Protecting one means cutting back on the catch of all. The options for the Pacific Fishery Management Council range from bad to devastating, but the choices between levels of curtailment and outright ban are about saving a fishery. It's that fundamental.

Chinook runs on the Klamath River never rebounded from a historic fish kill in the basin in fall 2002, and from devastating and successive bouts of a parasite that claimed juvenile salmon.

In a region with complex water issues, a brutal political shorthand reduced the competition for water to one of fish vs. farmers. Agriculture had suffered through a terrible drought in 2001. Over the protests of federal agencies, the headgates were opened with a flourish in spring 2002 by two Bush administration Cabinet members to increase water for irrigation.

By fall, salmon died in numbers subsequently estimated at 70,000 because of low flows of warm water. An investigation by the California Department of Fish and Game laid the blame on the federal government for conditions that allowed disease to flourish and spread.

This fishery is dwarfed by the salmon harvest from Alaska and competition grows from farm-raised salmon, but the economic impact is still significant. The alternative, really not a choice at all, is to risk harm that jeopardizes incomes beyond recovery.

The council's final recommendation will come next month at a meeting in Sacramento. The hard choices driven by the Klamath experience come after a success story on the Sacramento River, which enjoyed a healthy rebound of salmon,

Poor choices five years ago in one basin haunt an entire industry.