© 2024 Boise State Public Radio
NPR in Idaho
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Apple's latest iOS (17.4) is preventing our livestreams from playing. We suggest you download the free Boise State Public Radio app & stream us there while we work to troubleshoot the issue.

NOAA Hopes to Foster Ideas and Future Collaboration

Aaron Kunz
/
EarthFix

Environmentalists, farmers and irrigators could play a bigger role in creating long term management policies for Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead. The government has asked two university programs in Oregon and Washington to act as mediators over the next six months, talking with more than 200 organizations, states and tribes in order to find a better way of managing fish.

Dams, overfishing, and development are among the reasons for a decline in Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead. Seventeen of these fish species are now federally protected as endangered or threatened.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is the federal agency charged with coming up with a long-term plan to increase those fish populations and see that they can be sustained.

NOAA is about to write that plan. That led to its one page letter, addressed to more than 200 people and groups in the Northwest.

Barry Thom is the author of that letter. 

"Hopefully, I think, people are optimistic that we can go through this assessment, we’ll get some new ideas, we’ll get some expertise focused on the issue and maybe be able to chart a new course," Thom says.

Thom is the deputy regional administrator at NOAA. He says one reason NOAA is reaching out to the community is because there is so much going on in the Northwest to advance the scientific understanding of what these fish need to survive.

"We are learning from the fish, we are learning from the science, we’re learning from what the interests and values are in the system and that’s the piece that we want to pull together," says Thom.

It’s important to note, this long-term salmon recovery planning is separate from a parallel effort that’s been in the works for 20 years. That is a plan to operate dams without jeopardizing fish in the Columbia Basin. It has been challenged in court and subsequently reworked over the past twenty years.

Trout Unlimited was involved in that case. It’s one of the original 13 salmon advocates that challenged this plan in 1992. Robert Masonis from Trout Unlimited says his organization walked away last year from the legal conflict because it wants to seek a collaborative solution.

“It’s timely that NOAA has taken this step because it’s something that we signaled last year when we stepped out of the litigation that we were interested in pursuing," Masonis says.

Masonis says even if the salmon and steelhead discussion does become a collaborative effort. It could still take years of open negotiations before everyone agrees to a long term recovery plan.

You make stories like this possible.

The biggest portion of Boise State Public Radio's funding comes from readers like you who value fact-based journalism and trustworthy information.

Your donation today helps make our local reporting free for our entire community.