**Do you agree or disagree with Buzz??? Comment Below**
The 4 lower Snake River Dams.
Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite
This contention has been going on for a long-time, but it seems that momentum is building. Buzz Ramsey, longtime tackle rep for Luhr Jensen, Yakima Bait & Pure Fishing to name a few, is passionate about this subject. Listen as he details his opinions on the best way to improve smolt to adult ratio on salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin.
Though there is fish passage, the reservoirs created by those dams warm temperatures and make the journey less safe from predators like birds and other fish.
By opening up the lower Snake, it would bring massive economic growth not just in those areas of the river, but it would also benefit the entire lower basin by lowering temperatures for lower river fish. There is opposition from irrigation, farming, barging and tourist ship industries. They have valid concerns, but the plan that Rep. Simpson is bringing will allocate money to create new opportunities for them to continue to flourish.
What are your thoughts? Comment below.
12 comments
Yup, time to rethink the native gill net decision. Native Americans have double dipped this society, utilizing western medicine, western building, and thousands of “capitalist” systems. But somehow we still let them gill net, killing thousands of by-catch native and smaller run fish.
Maybe only allowing them to dip net would be a healthy change. Plus it’s more work, getting back the current generation of native to their roots instead of drugs/alcohol that’s 4x as prevalent in adolescents on tribes.
What “massive economic growth” would Blowing the lower Snake River dams bring?? Be specific. Those dams were built to create massive economic growth to the barren regions along the Snake River in Washington and Idaho.
Do the easy, cheap, and possibly quick to accomplishto, mandatory to accomplish changes needed to rebuild fish runs, before ever removing those SR dams.
Getting rid of predatory birds, fish, and pinnepids that consume a vast majority of all down river smolts, .. and pinnepids as well as commercial tribal and non-tribal gill nets that kill a huge number of adult salmon and steelhead returning to rivers and through lakes in their quest to spawn. Other methods of fishing can be used by tribes that can catch fish while giving them the ability to selectively retain or live release targeted fish instead of killing everything that swims into the gillnets they currently use.