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What will the Obama conservation record look like ?

TODAY'S NYTIMES:

Editorial
Salmon Test

Published: August 11, 2009

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration must notify a federal court next month whether it will do what is necessary to save endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest. The decision will tell us a lot about how the administration sees its obligations under the Endangered Species Act. The Bush team evaded its responsibilities with amazing acts of legal casuistry.

A dozen salmon species in the Columbia River Basin have been declared endangered or threatened — their spawning grounds destroyed by logging and commercial development, and their route to the sea made more arduous by a gauntlet of hydroelectric dams.

Over the years, the Bonneville Power Administration, which runs the dams, and other agencies have unblocked spawning streams and increased water flows over the dams to help young fish reach the sea. But that has not been enough to restore what scientists regard as sustainable fish runs. And it has not been enough for James Redden, a federal district judge in Oregon who has become the salmon’s most reliable defender.

Since 2003, Judge Redden has rejected two recovery plans devised in the Clinton and Bush administrations. Both promised further habitat restoration and further modifications in dam operations. Neither, in the judge’s view, did enough to ensure the fish’s long-term survival. And while the Endangered Species Act requires that every effort be made to ensure the recovery of a species, the Bush plan promised little more than allowing the fish to go extinct at a slower rate.

Judge Redden was about to toss a second Bush plan earlier this year on some of the same grounds when the Obama administration asked for time to review it. The judge said fine, while warning that he could not accept any revision that adopted the Bush administration’s misinterpretation of the law.

Significantly, he also said that any new plan should leave all recovery options on the table, including the idea of breaching four dams on the lower Snake River. We have long recommended such a course, which many scientists see as the surest means of restoring the fish.

The judge has now given the administration 30 days to get this right. The official who will ultimately make the decision is Gary Locke, the secretary of commerce and former governor of Washington. We would be surprised if he recommended immediate breaching. Ways must be found to replace the power that the dams generate, which amounts to 4 percent of the region’s total. But he has to do better than his predecessors, otherwise Judge Redden could well place the operations of the hyrdroelectric system under court order and devise a plan of his own.

This means that at the very least Mr. Locke must reject the Bush plan, promise to devise a new one in close consultation with regional interests and keep dam removal on the table as very real backup if all else fails.

TODAY'S NYTIME

No Fish - more of everything else ....

From Today's NYTIMEs:

Science / Environment

On a Hunt for Fishless Lakes, Teeming With Life

By MURRAY CARPENTER

Published: April 28, 2009

Far from barren, biologists say fishless lakes are hubs of biodiversity. Lacking piscine predators, they are home to a greater abundance and variety of invertebrates than lakes with fish, and provide breeding grounds for frogs, salamanders and waterfowl. But as fish are moved around — legally by fisheries agencies, illegally by anglers and bait growers — fishless lakes are becoming increasingly rare.

Rugged and sparsely populated, the Maine woods have some of the last fishless lakes in the Northeast. Some, like this one, are kettle lakes without inlets or outlets, excavated in the eastern Maine lowlands by melting blocks of glacial ice. Others are clear tarns in high mountains, with outlets too steep for fish to ascend. Still others are simply too acidic for fish. All probably have been fishless since the glaciers receded.

Happy New Year

from Ted Williams blog at FFR

"American Museum of Fly Fishing Apparently Run by Morons "

"Just heard from an unimpeachable source that the American Museum of Fly Fishing is going to make none other than VP Dick Cheney--the Anti-Christ of trout and all things wild--the guest of honor at its spring meeting. I had thought that this outfit had a modicum of common sense. Obviously, I was mistaken. Hey, American Museum of Fly Fishing: Get a life! Wake up! Smell the coffee! Where you been these last eight years?

Best,
Ted"

A centrist will not do

Advice from those radicals at Mother Jones

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect public health and the environment. Yet the agency has not done much protection of the environment, public health or the public interest in many, many years. The President-elect's pick for the agency is going to have to turn around an environmental crisis that mirrors the financial one. While Obama's rumored cabinet picks are largely people who cut their teeth in the Clinton administration, or showed rare bipartisanship over the past eight years, one place a centrist will not do is the Environmental Protection Agency.

There are some good environmental laws on the books; the problem is enforcement. The Bush administration has encouraged the worst industrial practices by, for example, refusing to regulate mercury from power plants or allowing mountaintop removal mining—and the incrementalists who ran EPA during the Clinton administration bear at least some responsibility. They should not be invited back.

The new EPA leadership is going to have to do two things.

The first is to throw the moneychangers out of the temple, literally: Replace Bush's corporate goons with public servants who will put science first, and rebuild the agency's enforcement capability and take on corporate interests who, not unlike the financial industry, have operated in an anything-goes world. The second, and perhaps more important role, will be to rebuild confidence in the agency and in the federal government's commitment to protect our citizens and our environment.

read the rest here...

Genetics Reveals Big Fish That Almost Got Away

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2008) — Researchers from the University of Hawaii, the Wildlife Conservation Society, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, National Marine Fisheries Service and Projecto Meros do Brazil discovered a new species of fish—a grouper that reaches more than six feet in length and can weigh nearly 1,000 pounds. This newly discovered species can be found roaming the tropical reefs of the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Was the massive fish hiding among the corals and sea grass to evade marine biologists? No, it was just a case of mistaken identity, as explained in a recent genetic study in the journal Endangered Species Research.

Tiny Invasive Snail Impacts Great Lakes, Alters Ecology

From the Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2008) — Long a problem in the western U.S., the New Zealand mud snail currently inhabits four of the five Great Lakes and is spreading into rivers and tributaries, according to a Penn State team of researchers. These tiny creatures out-compete native snails and insects, but are not good fish food replacements for the native species.

"These snails have an operculum, a door that closes the shell," says Edward P. Levri, associate professor of biology at Penn State's Altoona Campus. "They can be out of the water for longer than other snails and when fed to fish, they are not digested and sometimes come out alive. This has a potential to alter the salmon and trout fisheries because they alter the food chain."

Diporeia - great lakes food chain link disappears

A Great Lakes Mystery: The Case Of The Disappearing Species

from the Science Daily
June 2 2008

In the same biological class as krill and shrimp, these rice grain-sized crustaceans dwell on lake bottoms and feed on descending algal plankton. Their bodies contain 30 percent to 40 percent lipids like fats and oils, making them a vital energy and nutrient source for the entire food web.

They are already gone from many large areas of lakes Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, said collaborating researcher Tom Nalepa. In Lake Michigan, there are almost no Diporeia found at depths shallower than 90 meters. Just 15 years ago, their density often exceeded 10,000 animals per square meter at such depths, said Nalepa, a research biologist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

The spread of invasive zebra and quagga mussels - voracious filter feeders with an overlapping diet - largely coincides with Diporeia's decline and is widely believed to be at least partially responsible. But research cannot yet explain the link, Nalepa said.

read the whole article

The Fishing Pause Ends: Part 3

So this morning the fishing pause ends.

What is the fishing pause ? In Wisconsin the early season catch and release inland trout season ends a week before the regular season starts. Last week all fishing for trout was closed on the inland streams. This morning the regular season starts, and one might be sure that most of the catch and kill that occurs throughout the season will happen in the next couple of weeks across the states trout streams. If science mattered we would know that the continued selection of the largest classes of fish for harvest have destabilizing effects on the stream populations and ultimately are negatively selecting for large fish, as those are the ones that are generation after generation failing to reproduce. We can also know that across the board hatchery fish are no replacement for wild fish. Hatchery fish have smaller brains, and reproduce at a vastly lower rate in the wild. A recent study indicates that the Chinook salmon runs in California had as few as 10% wild fish, with the concomitant problems that comes both in putting a far weaker fish into the environment and masking the collapse of the wild fish population. Yesterday all fishing for salmon on the west coast was closed:

All salmon fishing banned on West Coast

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.

The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.

It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.

It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.

It isn't as if this should be a surprise. We consistently pay no attention to the facts as they sit in front of us regarding management of these resources. These are not isolated scientific data sets. The recent article in National Geographic about the the collapse of the international fish stocks had this quote:

For reasons not fully understood, when areas are closed to fishing, snapper aggregate within them, forming large resident populations. Spiny rock lobsters ("crayfish" to New Zealanders) do the same. Their density inside the reserve is about 15 times higher than outside. Commercial crayfishermen have cashed in on the reserve's success because the outward migration of crayfish—a process marine biologists call spillover—brings the crustaceans to their pots, strategically placed just outside the boundary. These former skeptics are now some of the reserve's staunchest defenders. They refer to it as "our reserve" and act as marine minutemen, reporting poachers and boundary cheats.

S0 do these macro systems say anything about the rivers of the Midwest ? Our own history of the elimination of species, the Michigan Grayling, the Lake Superior Coaster and the Lake Michigan Lake trout all speak to the fact that all of these natural systems have been damaged and continue to be the wanton acts and policy of who and what we are as the alpha predator.

A curious thing happens when fish stocks decline: People who aren't aware of the old levels accept the new ones as normal. Over generations, societies adjust their expectations downward to match prevailing conditions. The concept of a healthy ocean drifts from greater to lesser abundance, richer to poorer biodiversity.

So today the fishing pause ends.

The Fishing pause: Part 2, more Damn Science

From the Science Daily


Fishing Throws Targeted Species Off Balance, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2008) — Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why. A new study published in the journal Nature by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues has identified the general underlying mechanism.

Research led at Scripps with a distinguished team of government and international experts (including two chief scientific advisors to the United Kingdom) demonstrates that fishing can throw targeted fish populations off kilter. Fishing can alter the "age pyramid" by lopping off the few large, older fish that make up the top of the pyramid, leaving a broad base of faster-growing small younglings. The team found that this rapidly growing and transitory base is dynamically unstable-a finding having profound implications for the ecosystem and the fishing industries built upon it.

"The data show that fished species appear to be significantly more nonlinear and less stable than unfished species," said Professor George Sugihara of Scripps. "We think the mechanism involves systematic alteration of the demographic parameters-and especially increases in growth rates that magnify destabilization in many ways-which can happen as fishing truncates the age structure."



How exploited and unexploited fish populations differ. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego)

Read the whole article here

The fishing pause: Part 1- Damn Science

From the Science Daily

Fewer Fish Eggs, Smaller Fish Result From Over-fishing

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2006) — The practice of harvesting the largest individuals from a fish population introduces genetic changes that harm the overall fish population, a UC Riverside graduate student and colleagues have determined. Removing the large fish over several generations of fish causes the remaining fish in the populations to become progressively smaller, have fewer and smaller eggs with lower survival and growth, and have lower foraging and feeding rates, the researchers report.

The figure shows the decrease in body size in Atlantic silverside as found by a research team led by UCR graduate student Matthew Walsh. The silverside, having been reared for five generations in laboratory experiments, are all the same age. The fish shown here are from the fifth generation. The fish on the left are from populations from which large individuals were harvested over five generations; the fish in the middle are from populations from which fish were harvested at random over five generations; and the fish on the right are from populations from which only small fish were harvested over five generations. (Photo credit: M. Walsh)