Saving Maine’s salmon

In late January and early February, while Maine’s political leaders were sounding off against the proposed listing of Atlantic salmon under the Endangered Species Act, the Clinton administration was unveiling the details of its budget proposal. Part of the proposed federal budgert for the coming year would allocate funds for salmong recovery, but unfortunately for Maine, only a minuscule amount of the $250 million proposed for salmon recovery will go toward saving the state’s Atlantic salmon. Instead, a massive percentage of hte funding is directed at the conservtion and recovery of Pacific salmon stocks from California to Alaska, which begs the question: Despite all the beef over Maine’s salmon, where’s the bacon?

Whether or not they agree that Maine’s salmon merit listing under the ESA, most Maine people by now agree that the salmon need all the help they can get. If Maine is to reverse the species’ slide toward extinction, help will require more than the promises in the state’s conservation plan, and more than the $850,000 the Maine Legislature, much to its credit, recently voted to invest in the plan. Saving the salmon will also require more than merely listing them under the ESA, for without the funds necessary to develop and carry out a recovery plan, listing alone won’t accomplish the job.

Precisely how much funding will depend on the as-yet unspecified details of a salmon recovery plan, but it’s fair to say it won’t require anything like $250 million. After all, that amount is more than four times the total estimated value of Maine’s salmon aquaculture industry, the very enteprirse Gov. Angus King claims would be most threatened by the prospect of listing Maine’s salmon.

The politicians who have spoken out against the listing of Maine’s salmon hve emphasized Maine’s economic dependence on natural resources. That may be true, but the real burden involved is a matter of scale. For starters, it is useful to compare Maine’s “resource-dependent” economy with the economies of Washington and Oregon, the two states with the lion’s share of the 26 Pacific salmon populations now listed as threatened or endangeres under the ESA. In both states, salmon occupy the same watersheds as the public and private forests that fuel a huge timber industry. Salmon also share the same rivers that power the vast hydro-electric system that keeps the lights on for indusrial, commercial and residential customers. Clearly, where salmon are concerned, the economies of the two Northwest states are fare more natural resource-dependent than Maine’s.

Given the extent to which salmon recovery affects the nerve center of the Northwest’s economy, how is it that Washington’s and Oregon’s governors can be united under the salogan “extinction is not an option” and be cooperating with the federal government in recovering their beleaguered salmon stocks?

Conspicuously absent from the salmon debate in Maine is the `’can do” attitude that is motivating the Northwest’s salmon recovery effort. If they want to help the salmon — and the people who lived and work around the rivers they inhabit — Maine’s leaders should put aside the divisive political grandstanding and begin recokoning with the costs of the real-world options availalble to Maine’s industries to reduce the threats to wild salon. Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has a key role in congressional appropriations, and who was most vocal among Maine’s delegation in opposing the listing, has a unique opportunity to foster such an attitude and to back it up with the funding necessary to save Maine’s salmon.

As the federal agencies noted in their October 1999 status report, despite progress on some funds, additional investment is required to reduce continuing threats from agriculture and salmon farming. Despite the doom and gloom scenario painted in the recent public hearings on the salmon listing question, none of Maine’s political leaders has explained to the public how those threats can or cannot be reduced in an economically feasible manner.

Reducing the remaining threats to wild salmon and completing the tasks in the state’s plan that remain unfounded likely will require some infusion of outside funds. If they can bring themselves to support a salmon recovery effort that satisfies the concerns identified in the federal agencies’ status report, Maine’s political leadership has as much right to ask for the federal government’s assistance as that of any state. Under the circumstances, to do otherwise would amount to legislative malpractice. For that reason, along with the need to put an end to the rhetoric that could poison efforts to save Maine’s salmon, it would be best if Maine’s leaders held the beef and began bringing home the bacon.

A resident of New Gloucester and a lifelong Atlantic salmon fisherman, Charles Gauvin is the national president of Trout Unlimited, the nation’s largest coldwater conservation organization. He also serves on the board of directors of the Atlantic Salmon Federation and is an attorney with extensive expeience in environmental matters, principally water quality standards and permits under the federal Clean Water Act.