Fishing, not dams, to blame for the loss of salmon

A recent letter to the editor said, “The science is clear that — specific to the Lower Snake River — breach of the dams would provide the greatest benefit to the salmon.”

I strongly disagree! Downstream fish management makes much more sense.

What isn’t harvested (strip-mined) by commercial vessels, using electronic fish-finders and enormous nets, is further decimated by the huge colony of sea lions and by native and sport fishers.

Breaching these valuable (and massive) dams will be a very expensive “oops,” when there are few fish left to swim upstream.

I find it most interesting that our Canadian neighbors are having the same problem with their salmon run on the Fraser River. They have no dams to blame, so they are taking a practical approach: severely restrict fishing limits to enhance future runs upstream.

Why can’t the U.S. see this same root cause?

And, for the record, these four targeted dams have functioning fish ladders, and count all migrating species. Dams further up the Snake River do not. Finally, each sea lion in Astoria consumes 15 to 40 pounds of fish each day! Such factors cannot be ignored.

John Crawford

Shoreline