Salmon bill passes Congress

WASHINGTON — A bill providing millions of dollars to improve the habitat for endangered Pacific salmon and other land management projects is on its way to President Bush’s desk.

The House and Senate passed the $19.1 billion Interior spending bill Wednesday, rushing to get work done before the House shut down and the Senate closed its buildings to allow experts to test for anthrax risks.

The bill contains more than $14 million for the Fish and Wildlife Service to enhance fish habitat and protect salmon runs in the Northwest. It includes money for research on bull trout habitat and hatchery reform.

Almost $26 million is also devoted to the Elwha River project to restore what were once the most robust salmon runs on the Olympic Peninsula. It will allow for the design of a plan to remove two dams on the river.

And some $4 million in the Bureau of Indian Affairs will go toward a program to aid tribal health, salmon and economic development.

Steve Moyer, vice president of Trout Unlimited, a conservation group, said he thought the bill contained what he had a reasonable right to expect. But "for fish people there is never enough money … for fish," he said.

The funding, which will be used in the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, is just part of the federal salmon package — most of which is found in another spending bill that funds the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service.

The Interior bill funds the Interior Department, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, among other programs. The package is $300 million more than was spent in the last fiscal year.

George Behan, a top aide to Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee, said the bill allocates "an enormous amount of money in the Pacific Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula itself in restoring the habitat" for endangered salmon.

The challenge still ahead, Behan said, is securing adequate money for salmon recovery efforts in the bill that funds NOAA.

The Interior bill also includes $1.7 million for water supply and management activities in the Klamath Basin on the Oregon-California border. Much more will be needed.

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