Saving Salmon from Predatory Politics

PEAC achieved a major victory in sustaining the Fish Passage Center, assuring the region access to unbiased science to support salmon restoration efforts. The September 2007 Portland Monthly included a 9-page spread profiling the salmon’s upstream swim for survival both in the waters of the Columbia Basin and the backrooms of Congress, and explains PEAC's part in preventing politics from overriding science.

PEAC represented environmental and sport-fishing industry groups to keep intact the Fish Passage Center. The Center’s experts provide analysis of fish runs and river operations to protect and enhance salmon, steelhead, bull trout and other fish moving through the Columbia and lower Snake rivers. The Fish Passage Center plays a critical role in monitoring whether native fish stocks are able to traverse a series of dams to reach their spawning grounds. The data is used by Federal, State and Tribal fisheries managers to request changes to operations of the dams to benefit fish.

Late in 2005, Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) added language to a Congressional Committee report that the Fish Passage Center should no longer receive funding from the Bonneville Power Administration and the functions should be transferred. The Center’s figures were relied upon by a federal district court judge in ordering greater water releases from dams this past summer to aid salmon migration. While Craig has complained the Center engages in "advocacy science," the Center’s reports are simply mathematical compilations of fish passage data. BPA planned to implement the report language that Craig slipped in as if it were legislation passed by Congress.

PEAC prevailed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that BPA’s decision to defund the Center was unlawful. The victory benefits fish and those who rely upon the Center’s data. And, the win prevented political maneuvering from trumping science and the law.

From PEAC's own Stephanie Parent, who led the case:

"I was honored to be able to help continue the work of the Fish Passage Center and its dedicated employees. They are truly amazing people. I also felt strongly about not letting BPA and Senator Craig get away with such a power maneuver. These sentiments pushed me to bring an expedited case at a time when my docket was rather full. It had to be done. The case itself ran quite smoothly. I had a PEAC student on the case who was an older than average student, so she had life experience. She had an excellent and organized mind, a good researcher and writer, and was able to implement some of my last minute thoughts about arguments we should make. In addition, the counsel for BPA and intervenor Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Council were highly professional, which allowed us to focus on the facts and law."