Enjoy That Salmon Now

The post below this notwithstanding, I'm absolutely beyond outraged about this latest environmental policy.  You should read the article, but here's the gist of it:  Bush is going to announce a rule change which will begin counting salmon that are born and live in hatcheries alongside wild salmon.  As a result, the total number of salmon will "increase", allowing wild salmon to be removed from the Endangered Species List.  Guess what that means?  Freer access to salmon for the fishing industry, and more space to cut down trees for the timber industry.

Here's a cogent explanation of why this is bad, if it isn't obvious on it's face:

To most biologists, salmon that are born and raised in a cement tank are no replacement for wild fish, even if they share a common genetic makeup. The new approach, which was contained in a single-page draft, dated March 25 and leaked to reporters last month, ignores the findings of the Bush administration's own panel of outside scientific experts, as well as long-held views within the fisheries service.

These biologists say that including hatchery salmon in the calculation for when a fish can be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act is akin to counting animals in a zoo. By this reasoning, river or forest habitats of a rare species will never be protected, so long as the animal can be reproduced by artificial means.

Boldface mine--just wanted to highlight that, yet again, Bush is ignoring his own scientists.

So, in answer to the jackasses who simply say "spotted owl" and insinuate that this is only about salmon, the larger point is that this sort of approach risks gutting the entire network undergirding the Endangered Species Act.

And that's not all--there's also the fact that salmon raised only in captivity tend to have more genetic problems that are reproduced as they reproduce--salmon in the wild self-select out the weaker fish, if you will.  The lack of genetic diversity among hatchery fish makes them less healthy, more sickly, more prone to disease and death. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the guy in charge of this policy is--are you sitting down?  A former lawyer for the timber industry! 

Three years ago, Mark C. Rutzick was the timber industry's top lawyer trying to overturn fish and wildlife protections that loggers viewed as overly restrictive. Back then, he outlined to his clients a new strategy for dealing with diminishing salmon runs. By counting hatchery fish along with wild salmon, the government would help the timber industry by getting salmon off the endangered species list, Mr. Rutzick wrote.

Now, as a high-ranking political appointee in the Bush administration who is a legal adviser to the National Marine Fisheries Service, Mr. Rutzick is helping to shape government policy on endangered Pacific salmon.

8:27:14 PM    comment []

I've been really struggling to write on Enough in the last couple of weeks.  I've not really been certain about the reasons; I certainly am committed to working hard on this project.  And, in general, I greatly enjoy political writing.

But I was having a conversation with my wife yesterday about this.  She sat down at the computer to read the news, and after about three minutes got up and said that she was finding it too depressing to bother.  She said that she used to get some visceral satsifaction over seeing someone really take Bush to task, and that she could get angry over whatever the Administration was doing.  But now, sadness and frustration have taken over as the dominant emotions.

And that really resonated with me.  I still read the news and all my political blogs religiously.  But the news lately, especially from Iraq but not only Iraq, has been so uniformly bad that I can't even properly enjoy my schadenfreude.  I feel overwhelmed when I try to write about some of these matters, because everything Bush is doing is so terrible, and my fear for the future of our country so powerful, that I just want to move on and play Scrabble instead of putting the sort of thought into some quality writing that I really need to do.

Hopefully, it will pass, I'll get angry again, and the quality of Enough will go back up.  I'll try and turn over a new leaf tomorrow.

7:35:24 PM    comment []