I'm so surprised.
Then when ocean conditions swing back the other way, we'll be worse off than ever.
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Not good Ladies and Gentlemen.
I for one dont mind letting some "native" coho go-I just want something for my kid to catch when he gets my age. I agree with the righties on this one--not enough time has passed.
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"The key question is "What happens when the next trough comes?' " said Charlie Dewberry, an independent fishery biologist who has spent years monitoring coho on the Oregon coast. "Is it going to be where a lot of these runs go to zero? If it is, then we're hard-pressed to say these fish are on the road to recovery."
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">First of all I don’t understand the logic here. Why don’t we just list our Oregon coastal Chinook stocks also? I know that they are healthy but that way when ocean conditions take a dive…
Lost Sailor, why would we be worse off than ever? We don’t have the commercial fishermen over harvesting the wild coho anymore. We aren’t raising havoc with the OCN’s by dumping in millions of hatchery coho in their respective streams anymore. We have a new management tool for harvesting coho now with the fin clipping of hatchery coho. We have and are continuing to restore spawning habitat. The OCN’s are rebounding beyond anybody’s expectations.
The quote and question raised by Charles Dewberry is ridiculous and unfounded. "Is it going to be where a lot of these runs go to zero?” The answer is simply no!
You notice there was no statement by Mr. Dewberry regarding the unprecedented rebounding of the OCN’s. No statement by him regarding the work that has been done regarding habitat restoration. No statement regarding the reduction of the detrimental hatchery coho.
You will also notice that Charlie Dewberry was noted as “an independent fishery biologist”. He is hired by environmentalist groups to make it look like the sky is falling.
Take into account that the 90’s experienced possibly the worst El ‘Nino conditions on record and the very devastating flood of February ’96. This was coming off the massive slaughter of wild coho from the ocean commercial fleet compounded by the massive increase of detrimental stocking of hatchery coho.
So why doesn’t Mr. Dewberry address these past problems and give credit where due to our impressive rebounding wild coho?
As Bob Lohn pointed out in the letter to me, you can’t have that kind of numbers and rebounding going on if you don’t have the habitat in the first place to produce the necessary smolts to reap the benefits of good ocean conditions. Of course I already knew this but wanted a certain individual to see that I was correct afterall. :grin:
The State of Oregon is doing a great job of managing and restoring these OCN’s and will continue to do so even if they are de-listed. This is something to be excited about and proud of, not to be a skeptical doom and gloomer.
There are thousands of wild coho out there this year. The Tacklebuster released 125 non fin clipped coho yesterday just to get his limit of hatchery coho. There have been an estimated 93,000 coho released already this year in the Falcon to Humbug ocean coho fishery and I believe that number to be low based on my experiences fishing out there and what the charters are claiming.
I will stand by my claims made earlier on ifish that we will probably see 500,000 return this year and that might go even higher! Not the 50% decrease that an ifish.net extremist- preservationist wants you to swallow.
Coho now are finding their way in some watersheds to miles of clear, boulder-strewn streams newly opened by the removal of impassable culverts and dikes. Big, dead trees lowered by helicopter into swift-running waters have restored pockets of deep refuge. Saplings of cedar and spruce, bigleaf maple and willow -- planted by thousands by volunteers and private landowners -- sink roots to halt erosion and extend branches to shade and cool water below.
During the past two years, the removal of roads and other obstructions has given fish easier access to more than 600 miles of streams statewide. Plantings and other restoration measures have improved more than 700 stream miles. The watershed board awarded $31.1 million for projects that received another $74.6 million in matching grants from federal and state agencies and the forest industry.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Something the environmentalist advocates don’t want to talk about or applaud. :shrug:
"What Oregon has pulled together is an infrastructure of real people doing real things -- it's not just a plan," Connaughton said. "We are not in the same place we were five years ago. The science is telling us we are now in a good place, and we want to call everybody's attention to it."
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">I don’t think the environmentalist advocates want to talk about this either. I have for several years now.
You might also note that the article said:
"In the late 1800s and early 1900s, close to 1 million coho salmon crowded into Oregon's coastal streams to spawn each year, based on historical records from canneries that have long since closed. Even the largest recent returns amount to about one-fourth the former abundance".
Hmm, funny I came up with the same kind of numbers (close to 1 million historically – and that is on the good years) and 26% of the historical highs or 40% of the historical averages. Now if we have a return of 500,000-600,000 OCN’s this year that would be closer to 50% of historical highs. We will know the current status in December or January.
I could have sworn I read 3-5 million OCN’s historically and only at 3% of historical returns? Good thing I don’t believe everything I read on ifish! :grin:
Coho salmon need cold-running streams and rivers and deep-water hideaways to escape summer heat. Decades of logging and farming and the construction of towns and roads have deprived coastal coho of much of their historical freshwater habitat.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Why is it the environmentalist advocates just want to talk about logging and not the rest of the story? :shrug: The article and I did.
In Oregon and Washington, about a third of the coastal wetlands vital to coho have disappeared.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Here’s a factor I kept bring up that didn’t seem important to the anti-loggers on this site. :shrug:
"It's hard to believe we have a strong recovery plan at a time when we are about to log some of our last good areas for coastal coho," said Guido Rahr, president of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Wake up Guido. We don’t log the way we used to and the coho are coming back. Big time!
Overfishing also has hurt the coho, whose intense decline came after enormous -- and legal -- commercial and sport harvests in the ocean during the 1970s and 1980s. Hatcheries attempted to compensate, but most biologists now acknowledge that hatcheries worsened the decline by adding poorly adapted fish that competed with wild coho and diluted the wild gene pool.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Hmm, here’s something the other guy (the great debater) also always eluded in the great debates. What’s up with that? <Grin>
Leading fish biologists say Oregon's on-the-ground effort might not be sufficient to pull coastal coho out of a decline that spans so many decades.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">If you will take notice, the OCN’s have been on an incline for several years now not a decline even prior to and preceding the '96 flood.
Bob Lohn, regional administrator for the fisheries service, said the delisting decision will hinge on a scientific assessment of the factors threatening coho and whether the Oregon Plan effectively deals with each factor. He said it will take nine months to a year for the agency to reach an answer.
"We're not prepared to move to delist until we have addressed the fundamental questions," Lohn said. "There are no foregone conclusions."
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Here’s the key to the whole scenario. The decision will be based on science, not the timber industry or President Bush's top environmental advisers or preservationist or Earthjustice or developers and industry groups. NOAA using current science will make the decision.
But the coho's return might have surprisingly little to do with habitat improvements highlighted by the Bush administration. Top scientists say improved ocean conditions are leading the rebound. Some say Oregon's on-the-ground work is too recent to have made much difference.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">I wish Joe would have quoted these “top scientist”! Or was it “top environmentalist-hired scientist”?
But Bush administration officials make the case that legal battles among environmentalists, industry groups and landowners have bogged down federal agencies, bleeding them of opportunity and money.
<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Everybody complains about too much government and yet the environmentalist advocates want more government involved and to bleed them of opportunity and money to further there agenda. :hoboy:
Dan
Day 31 or 32 or 33 (lost track).
