Idaho River Reflections

Calligrapher Michael Jones. Photo by Greg Stahl.

By Greg Stahl, Assistant Policy Director

Michael Jones is particularly proud of the 15 salmon-centered calligraphy works he’s created.

A Boise vegetable farmer and conservation-oriented activist, Jones was born and raised in Caldwell, Idaho, and reminisces fondly about the days before dams were erected on the lower Snake River, back when he watched salmon course the rivers and streams of the Sawtooth Valley.

“It’s philosophical,” Jones explained about his interest. “Salmon are intriguing to people. They’re beautiful. Not only are they good to eat, but we’re interested in their circular lifecycle. And they’re certainly threatened with extinction because of human activities.”

Calligraphy is an medium Jones first embraced taking a college course in 1967, and he’s worked with it ever since to help bridge art and ecology.

“I’m interested in calligraphy because I’m interested in words and ideas,” he said. “Presenting text telegraphically, the calligraphy and the design help attract people to the message. And, of course, the message has to stand on its own.”

The draw to salmon for Jones is ecological, biological and social, but the species’ metaphorical significance is unavoidably attractive to this natural deep thinker.

As one example, his work titled “Salmon Spirit” illustrates his attention to the ethereal interpretations of a species that spans ecosystems.

“It’s like the life of a person,” he explained about the metaphors at work in the piece. “As someone searching for some kind of higher truth, one is born, grows up and in maturity reaches — climbs a ladder — to some sort of connection with higher meaning.

“Salmon Spirit is meant to do that. There’s just a moving shape. A brush shape that’s an ascending brush stroke with a smooth curve at the top. The ascending idea, like a fountain, like a force might come up out of the earth. I actually thought of it like a force, like some sort of life force or spirit force coming up.”

Jones said the combination of living in Idaho and being away for extended periods help him appreciate his home with vigor. It’s a place with unique natural assets that must be protected by alert citizens, he said, and salmon are at the top the list.

“They’re like a miner’s canary,” he said. “We can be sure that if the salmon go extinct many other species, including ourselves, are going to be in trouble, too.”

Calligrapher and Boise resident Michael Jones aims his quill toward salmon. Photo by Greg Stahl.

This weekend Americans will celebrate the long-awaited removal of two outdated salmon-killing dams on the Elwha River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. Removal of these dams constitutes the largest dam removal project the world has seen and promises to restore one of America’s great salmon fisheries.

Here in Idaho there are things we can learn from the Elwha, and we must. It will teach us about the science, engineering, economic and community-related lessons that can be applied to other rivers. While every river’s restoration is unique, we have learned from prior efforts. And the current dam removals on the Elwha will no doubt shape restoration efforts yet to come.

Importantly, the Elwha dam removals are the result of a carefully thought out collaborative process, and that is exactly what’s needed in the Snake River Basin, where salmon have been on the brink of extinction for decades and government recovery plans have failed to do enough for the fish.

For Idaho’s salmon, the science is clear: four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington state are the most significant impediment to survival. Following a strong court ruling on Aug. 2 from federal District Judge James Redden that called for the federal government to look more closely at dam removal as an option for recovering upper Snake River basin salmon, it’s time to begin a similar collaborative process that will benefit our salmon, our culture and our economy.

It’s long been said that restoring wild salmon to the upper Snake River Basin—where there’s more intact spawning habitat than anywhere on Earth—is not a biological challenge; it’s a social one.

There is cause for celebration on the Elwha River this month, but the valuable lessons we learn can be carried forward to turning the Snake River into a similar and broadly-supported success story.

In 2009, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, offered a potential roadmap toward resolution. Perhaps the best way to move forward, the senator suggested, is to bring salmon stakeholders together — conservationists, fishermen, tribes, power producers, barging and transportation interests, farmers, irrigators and the states — to hammer out a solution.

The time for a stakeholder solutions table is here. The region can ill-afford the economic uncertainty caused by the continual courtroom merry-go-round. And our salmon can’t afford another decade of legal wrangling, either.

The 2011 Sawtooth Salmon Festival brought hundreds together in Stanley on Aug. 20 to celebrate wild salmon. Photo by Greg Stahl.

Master chefs Lem Sentz and Richard Porter grill wild Alsaks salmon. Photo by Greg Stahl.

The 2011 Sawtooth Salmon Festival featured the same old festivities, food, music and educational opportunities with a new location and partnership, and hundreds gathered to welcome the salmon back to the Sawtooth Valley on Aug. 20.

Idaho Rivers United partnered with the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association to throw this year’s Salmon Festival, an event held at the Stanley Hisotircal Museum grounds on Highway 75 near the confluence of Valley Creek with the Salmon River.

“This was a wonderful continuation of our tradition of salmon tours, great music and delicious food,” said IRU Assistant Policy Director Greg Stahl. “And it was an equally wonderful continuation of our tradition of celebrating the return of salmon to the Sawtooth Valley, the longest and highest migration for salmon on the planet.”

The 2011 Sawtooth Salmon Festival was also well timed. On Aug. 2, federal District Court Judge James Redden ruled the federal government’s salmon recovery blueprint illegal, and that creates an opportunity to restore salmon while invigorating Idaho’s economy and bolstering a historic and cultural staple.

Specifically, Redden declared that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service failed yet again to produce a legal and scientifically sound plan to protect endangered Columbia and Snake river salmon from the lethal impacts of federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. It was the fourth NOAA salmon plan overturned in 20 years and opens the door to setting up collaborative talks that will achieve lasting protections for Idaho’s endangered salmon and steelhead.

“This year’s Salmon Festival provided an excellent opportunity to view some of the wild salmon that do still return to central Idaho as they worked to spawn in their natal streams,” Stahl said. “It is incredibly rewarding to get folks out on the river, where they can see the miracle of wild salmon unfold. It is always a moving experience.”

The Sawtooth Salmon Festival doesn’t happen without support from key sponsors, and this year was no exception. Special thanks to our key sponsors, including Sawtooth Interpretive & Historical Association, Clackacraft Drift Boats, Sawtooth Mountain Mamas, Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Patagonia, author Steven Hawley and Bethany Walter graphic design.

Author Steven Hawley reads from his book, "Recovering a Lost River," at the 2011 Sawtooth Salmon Fesitival in Stanley, Idaho. Photo by Greg Stahl.

With national and international markets taking their biggest slides in nearly three years earlier this week, more than 1,000 Idaho and Pacific Northwest business owners called on the Obama administration on Tuesday, Aug. 9, to do more to energize the Northwest’s economy by restoring endangered salmon.

Recovering salmon, they said in their letter to the president, would “put thousands of people to work, and help to build a cleaner energy future.”

“Many businesspeople whose livelihoods depend upon salmon, fishing, healthy rivers, outdoor recreation, and clean energy welcomed your presidency with hope and confidence — expecting much-needed change,” they wrote. “Unfortunately, your administration continues to endorse an ineffective and illegal status quo Columbia Basin salmon policy.”

Last week a federal district judge in Portland overturned the Obama administration’s blueprint for managing salmon, declaring the document “arbitrary and capricious.” This was the fourth time in 20 years a federal judge has ruled the government’s approach illegal.

“The federal court ruling that the current Columbia Basin plan is illegal provides the opportunity to make a decisive change that protects existing jobs and creates many more new ones by restoring the Northwest’s priceless salmon and steelhead runs — once the largest in the world,” the business owners wrote.

More than 160 diverse Idaho business leaders joined in signing the letter to the president. Ranging from tackle shop owners to fishing outfitters and restaurant owners to realtors, they are intent on the message they’re sending to the president.

“Salmon mean business for our town,” said letter signer Kim Olson, who owns the River Rock Café in Riggins, where the Salmon River borders town. “This ruling from Judge Redden makes it possible for folks to figure out how to bring back wild, self-sustaining runs of salmon, and there’s no doubt that would be good for towns like Riggins.”

As an example, Olson said she hires more staff at her restaurant during salmon fishing season — and would hire more still if salmon runs were virile like they used to be.

Not far down the highway in Riggins is the Salmon River Motel, which Tom Anderson has owned for 17 years. Like Olson, Anderson said there’s no doubt that healthy salmon runs mean big business for rural Idaho towns like Riggins.

“For every business in Riggins — motels, restaurants, gas stations — the whole entire town depends on a healthy sustainable fish population in the river,” he said. “The biggest thing that kills the fish are the four ineffective low-water dams on the lower Snake River.

“When 99 percent of the scientists say dam removal brings back great populations of healthy, wild fish, why is it that politics derail their well-done research?” he asked. “Judge Redden’s rejection of this salmon plan is an opportunity for the president to make a decisive, positive change in a failed policy — and to help create jobs in towns like Riggins as he does.”

According to a February 2005 study by Ben Johnson Associates, Inc., a restored salmon and steelhead fishery in Idaho would generate up to $544 million in direct and indirect angler spending annually. Direct expenditures were estimated at $196 million, while indirect expenditures tallied $348 million. More than half the spending would be in Idaho’s rural riverside communities, but it would also extend well beyond those towns.

“This level of economic support is important not only to the river towns most directly affected, but also to the rest of the state,” stated the study, titled The Potential Economic Impact of Restored Salmon and Steelhead Fishing in Idaho. “For the state’s larger cities this impact may appear insignificant. However, the bottom line reflects an important contribution…”

This is something Kerry Brennan knows well. As owner of Rapid River Outfitters in Riggins, Brennan guides fishing trips on the Salmon River and is part of an economy that has built itself on salmon.

“We’re disappointed that the Obama administration has not varied from the Bush plan to effectively recover salmon, and the judge has seen that, too,” he said. “Being an outfitter in a town that is dependant on anadromous fish runs, we have a big economic interest in making sure that everything can be done to help recover them.”

Such sentiment is shared across Idaho, from Stanley to the city of Salmon, and from Riggins to the Clearwater River. Idaho business owners want wild, self-sustaining and fishable populations of salmon in their rivers. And with his ruling last week, Judge Redden has opened the window to that possibility again.

“Finally, a ray of hope,” said Jane McCoy, who owns McCoy’s Tackle and Gift Shop in Stanley. “Judge Redden’s decision will help not only the salmon but also the economy of the mountain community of Stanley, Idaho — the historic destination of these magnificent fish.”

Idaho's coho salmon, pictured here as fry, were declared extinct in 1986. With a strong ruling from a federal judge on Aug. 2, there is still a distinct opportunity work to prevent extinction and facilitate recovery of wild stocks of upper Snake River basin chinook and sockeye salmon and steelhead. Photo © Greg Stahl.

In a strongly worded opinion, U.S. District Court Judge James Redden ruled Tuesday, Aug. 2, that the federal government’s salmon recovery blueprint is illegal.

Specifically, Redden declared that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service has failed yet again to produce a legal and scientifically sound plan to protect endangered Columbia and Snake river salmon from the lethal impacts of federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. This is the fourth NOAA salmon plan overturned in 20 years.

This is a landmark decision for salmon and a win for the people of the Pacific Northwest and the United States. More than 50 fishing and conservation groups including Idaho Rivers United, the state of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe challenged the plan in court.

“There’s no downside for Idaho in this,” said Tom Stuart, an IRU board member and avid Idaho fisherman. “I hope it will bring meaningful talks, where people can sit down and find a legal, scientifically sound plan that will actually restore Idaho’s wild salmon. The judge has said the federal government must follow the law. That is something Idahoans ought to cheer.”

In his decision, Redden called on NOAA to produce a new or supplemental plan that corrects the current one’s reliance on unidentified mitigation measures for populations that have been on the fence for decades.

“It is one thing to identify a list of actions, or combination of potential actions, to produce an expected survival improvement and then modify those actions through adaptive management to reflect changed circumstances,” Redden wrote on page 16 of the decision. “It is another to simply promise to figure it all out in the future. Federal Defendants need not articulate every detail of a habitat mitigation plan. They must do more than they have here.”

Earthjustice attorney Steve Mashuda, who represented fishing and conservation groups in the case, called today’s win a “victory for the nation and the Northwest.”

“We’re extremely pleased with the judge’s decision, but the work doesn’t stop here,” he said. “Now this region and this administration have an opportunity to change direction and to bring people together to solve this longstanding debate. We hope the President, his team and the region will grab hold of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and build a solution that can serve as a model for the rest of the nation.”

IRU Assistant Policy Director Greg Stahl said the decision is an opportunity to look forward rather than back and to embrace sound science and the law as stakeholders in the region sit down to work out lasting solutions.

“With this decision, it is time for the Obama administration and our senators and representatives in the Pacific Northwest to take action,” Stahl said. “It is time for our lawmakers to take ownership of this issue and craft a path for our future — one that has healthy salmon and rivers in it. This decision clears the way to consider removing the four obsolete dams on the lower Snake River, which are killing salmon and bleeding rural Idaho economies, as well as the state’s ecological and cultural heritage.”

In his decision, Redden stated that the NOAA plan does not pass a legal test, but it doesn’t pass a reality test either. Without major changes to the federal dam system on the Columbia and Snake rivers, the reality is that the American people will lose one of their most valuable natural and economic assets.

“Forty years ago places like Idaho’s Salmon River were salmon strongholds, with huge numbers returning every year,” Stuart said. “Now central Idaho has become a Noah’s Ark, one of the few places where wild salmon can still thrive, and where restoring them is still possible. Judge Redden’s decision represents strong support for Idaho values, traditions, ecology and heritage.”

This is something Idaho’s rural businesses know well. Many rural Idaho businesses depend on fishermen and the business they generate for economic vitality. They depend on retaining and restoring this vital part of Idaho’s heritage.

“These fish are unique on a global scale,” Stahl said. “Some of them swim more than 900 miles and climb nearly 7,000 feet to reach their spawning beds in the Sawtooth Valley. They’re an important economic asset to numerous rural Idaho towns, but the miracle of salmon — and the importance of Idaho to their recovery in the Columbia River basin — can’t be overlooked.”

In addition to remanding the decision to Jan. 1, 2014, Redden’s decision requires the federal government to continue spill water to help flush baby fish from their rearing habitat downstream to the ocean.

“As I have previously found, there is ample evidence in the record that indicates that the operation of the FCRPS (Federal Columbia River Power System) causes substantial harm to listed salmonids,” Redden wrote.

And as was consistent throughout his 24-page ruling, Redden expressed doubts about the government’s habitat improvement strategies.

“As noted, I continue to have serious reservations about NOAA Fisheries’ habitat mitigation plans for the remainder of this BiOp,” he wrote. “Everyone agrees that habitat improvement is vital to recovery and may lead to increased fish survival, but the lack of scientific support for NOAA Fisheries’ specific survival predictions is troubling.”

Stuart put it this way.

“Today is a victory for Idahoans,” he said. “We’re grateful, but we’re not surprised. The judge simply followed the law.”

The Tendoy Store on the banks of eastern Idaho’s Lemhi River is a place arrested in time and frozen in the annals of the Pacific Northwest’s rich salmon fishing heritage. Among the small general store’s charming clutter are groceries, t-shirts, tube socks, post office boxes and a small assortment of dry flies mounted to a white sheet of cardboard.

For more than sixty of her ninety-two years, Viola Anglin has owned and operated the Tendoy Store, but those decades have come with unexpected and unwelcome change. Anglin misses the long-ago mornings when salmon fishermen swarmed her wares, buying salmon eggs and filling up on enough calories to sustain them during days casting lines on the Lemhi.

“I was an angry old lady when the salmon fishing was no more,” she said. “I had loved it and made a terrific living in those days. But when it was gone, it was gone.”

The Lemhi is a key tributary of the Salmon River, named for the deluge of salmon and steelhead trout that once returned to central Idaho each summer from the Pacific Ocean. For thousands of years, salmon have been the beating heart of Idaho. They have fed families, boosted the economy, challenged determined anglers, nourished the bodies and spirits of Native Americans, and have been the ecological…

Click here to read the rest of this in-depth article, derived from IRU’s Salmon Stories project and written for Izilwane, a new anthropological e-zine that works on “connecting the human animal to the global ecosystem.”

The rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building boasts photos of central Idaho's abundant salmon habitat this week, June 13 - 17. Photos courtesy Sen. Mike Crapo's office

The marbled atmosphere of the Russell Senate Office Building rotunda has come to life this week with images of central Idaho’s abundant wild landscapes, crystal-clear streams and pristine wildlife habitat.

Sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the exhibit celebrates Idaho’s wild lands and rivers. Susan Wheeler, Crapo’s Washington, D.C. Chief of Staff, delivered an address on behalf of the senator during an opening reception for the exhibit on Tuesday, June 14. The rotunda exhibit will be on display June 13 – 17.

Captured during two visits to the environs in and around Stanley and the Sawtooth Valley last summer, the photographs are the work of environmental photographer Neil Ever Osborne of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP). The project is part of ILCP’s Tripods in the Mud initiative, which partners environmental photographers with conservation organizations.

“Neil’s photographs are symbolic of the salmon and steelhead that we know we need to save and the habitat needed to sustain them,” Crapo said. “I am glad to have the opportunity to co-sponsor this photo exhibit and pay tribute to the wild salmon of the Pacific Northwest.”

IRU Assistant Policy Director Greg Stahl spent a week in June 2010 on the ground with Osborne.

“From the headwaters of the Salmon River to the meanders of Bear Valley Creek, Neil did a great job of capturing central Idaho’s beautiful landscapes,” Stahl said. “These photographs of Idaho’s abundant salmon habitat celebrate that country.

“Idahoans are rightfully proud to have their state’s beauty featured in the nation’s capital, and we thank Senator Crapo for making it happen.”

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Click here to read an essay by Greg Stahl on the week he spent with Osborne and Save Our Wild Salmon communications specialist Emily Nuchols in central Idaho last summer.