More than two years ago, state and federal officials shook hands over a volunteer-driven, grassroots salmon conservation plan that promised to prevent an endangered-species listing for seven Maine rivers many feared would devastate the struggling Down East economy.

Now it is clear that the underfunded, poorly organized conservation plan is officially a shambles and the hand shaking has turned to finger pointing. As if to validate the perception that the state has consistently failed to recognize the urgency of the situation, the new Atlantic Salmon Commission, charged by the Legislature with restoring order, held its first meeting just this week with a public-sector representative still to be appointed by the governor. Not like there’s any great rush — the federal decision on the Endangered Species Act listing isn’t expected before November and the two lawsuits filed by conservation groups are still working their way through the courts.

This is usually the point in the ESA process at which federal officials are engaged in heated debate as they weigh the pros and cons of a listing. In this case, they’re probably laughing out loud.

It’s been a true tragi-comedy of errors. Salmon rivers drained for agriculture irrigation. The aquaculture industry being asked to contribute significant resources to restocking and then being told the fish it raised aren’t wanted. Federal and state authorities putting young salmon of different ages in the same spot in the same rivers, pointless feuding over stocking levels. Disagreements over whether weirs to capture aquaculture escapees should be placed where they’ll do the most good for salmon or where they’ll be the most convenient for people. Arguing for argument’s sake. “We’ve been shooting ourselves in the foot,” state biologist Ed Baum said the other day. If nothing else, the candor is admirable.

The decline of wild Atlantic salmon has been under way for decades. They’re gone from the rest of New England, but for reasons the litigating conservation groups and the federal agencies have yet to explain, it did not become a crisis worthy of ESA listing until it reached the banks of seven rivers in the most impoverished and politically powerless stretch of the Eastern Seaboard. There is new evidence of alarming declines in Maritime Canada, long considered the model of watershed protection.

Yet the inevitable perception is that Maine wasted the last two years creating the illusion of activity; that state officials were so preoccupied with avoiding the ESA listing that they forget to actually get around to restoring salmon. If the listing comes to pass, the trigger to which Mr. Baum referred was pulled in Augusta but the pain will be felt way Down East.