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URGENT: Show up to
protect wild steelhead, wild spring Chinook, and sport
fishing opportunity!
Click below to see NSIA's Washington commission packet:
Commission Letter
The Public's Fish
Actual Harvest Estimates
The Oregon Commission
voted for a 55 sport 45 commercial split of the ESA Impacts
on Wild Upriver Spring Chinook, with a 5% leeway. For two
years now, there has been a 60% to 40% impacts, and combined
with the front loading in the early gillnet fishing, this
has caused spring salmon fishing closures.
This can be fixed by
attending the
Washington Commission
Meeting
WHERE: 600 Capitol
Way N. Olympia -
map
WHEN: Saturday,
January 14th 8:30 am.
Several things need to
happen:
You must show up, and
sign up to testify! Wear something red (shirt, hat, coat)
to signify that you are for conservation and for restoring
our sport fisheries.
Tell the Commission
that it is very important that they send a signal to Oregon,
and reverse the 55/45 decision.
We need to ask for
70/30, and here is why:
Salmon runs are on the
decline. When runs are on the decline, models tend to over
predict. (Models under predict during increasing runs) To
give any kind of substantial opportunity to the highly
effective net fishery during a declining run is just plain
risky. It is risky to the resource, it is risky to the
businesses that depend on sportfishing throughout the state,
and it is risky to their bottom line to turn away from their
customers.
Sport fisheries fit
with conservation and ESA, because unlike the gillnetters,
we are very ineffective at harvesting fish. Nine out of
the ten wild fish that go under our boats don’t bite! The
other conservation benefit of sport fisheries is that our
mortality and release rates are one quarter to one half of
the gillnetters.
The release rates are
10% for sport fishing, 18.5% for tanglenets and 40% for
gillnets, and we can’t even legally net a wild fish to land
and release! The other benefits from sport fisheries are to
society as a whole: Since sport fishers are so soft on the
resource, we can keep nearly two hatchery fish for the same
wild fish mortalities as the tanglenets. We can access four
times as many hatchery fish as a gillnet for the same wild
fish impacts. We are wasting hatchery fish when we close
sportfisheries to conduct these in river commercial
fisheries.
Sport fisheries create
nearly $1 billion every year in direct expenditures. Sport
fishing is one of the greatest transfers of wealth from
urban to rural communities available to Washington State.
The nearly 800,000 licenses sold fund the conservation
mission of WDF&W!
We must tell the
Commission that our 16,000 full time family wage jobs are
not less important than 175 part time jobs in Oregon and
Washington, held by the gillnetters. If you work in the
Industry, and you cannot deliver the message of how
important Columbia River Spring Chinook Fishing is to your
business, I can guarantee that a gillnetter will testify
that his job is more important to protect than yours. When
you stay home, you confirm this.
Surely the Commission
will not turn their backs on their customers, and the
businesses in the Sportfishing Community. They cannot if
you show up!
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