Charles,

On Sun, 21 Feb 1999 07:53:38 -0800 Charles Swift <charless at umich.edu>
writes:
>Dennis,
>
>Upland habitat does not mitigate for lost riparian habitat.

It might help you to understand what I'm talking about if you'd actually
visited the habitat management units of which I wrote. They are riparian
in every dictionary definition of the word - they simply aren't
traditional, because they are partially sustained with irrigation.

> You should read "River of Life, Channel of Death" by Kieth C. Petersen
to learn exactly how
>much habitat and how many bird species were affected by the dams.

And you, my friend, would do well to read James L. Buchal's "THE GREAT
SALMON HOAX An Eyewitness Account of the Collapse of Science and Law and
the Triumph of Politics in Salmon Recovery". Mr. Petersen's book is
referenced frequently therein and with good reason.

I'll share a thought with you about something a half centruy of life has
taught me: Just because somebody writes something down in a book, that
doesn't make it true. I have the advantage of having actually seen great
lengths of the Snake River's shores between Pasco and Lewiston before the
dams were constructed with my own eyes and thus can tell you that where
raparian areas existed at all, much of it was no more than a four foot
wide ribbon of willow brush (a monoculture) sheltering little or no
animal life. Petersen's book contains shameless exaggerations if he
claims otherwise. I saw more species of birds and also total bird
numbers yesterday in a mile's worth of these areas than you could have
found along both sides of the river from Pasco to Lyon's Ferry in a
February before those four dams were constructed. Please do not take
offense, because none is intended, but to be intellectually honest with
yourself you need to adjust your dogma to fit the facts, not vice versa.


> Also why is it not possible to take irrigation water out of undamned
rivers?

The combination of your ignorance of the subject under discussion and
your prejudice against accepting non-Luddite solutions to the salmon
"problem" leave me gasping in exasperation. How could you even write
something so foolish? Give me enough tax money and I can arrange to have
Snake River water pumped to the moon. But if you con the tax payer into
paying to breach those four dams, do you really believe that you will
then be able to also con them into continuing to pay to maintain the
riparian habitat that was created because of the dam's construction?
That's positively Orwellian.

> It is done all over the country including in much of Idaho and along
free flowing stretches of the Columbia.

I have lived, expect for the three years I spent in the army, my whole
life in the Columbia Basin. This area exists because of irrigation and
water. You're trying to explain the oil business to J. D. Rockefeller.

> Dennis you make some provactive statements but I think in the end the
science will prove you are wrong.

Hey, it's America, you can think anything you want to think and even
better still, unlike D. B. in Portland, I won't threaten you with
violence for not thinking like I do! :-) Of course, it could be you're
not listening to the right scientists. I suspect the question won't be
settled in the lifetime of your grandchildren.

> I will concede that the dams will probably not be breached for
political reasons

What can I tell you? It's a political world we live in. It's not that I
don't care about salmon and the rest of the natural world, for that
matter, it's just that I care equally about humans.

> but this doesn't make everything okay.

Gee, what would it take to make everything O.K.? Send the army in to
depopulate the inland northwest so it could be turned into a big petting
zoo for elitist urban dwellers to safari in? :-)

>And remember it is primarily Idaho salmon and steelhead that were
affected by the dams.

O.K., now let's see, from Pasco upstream there's the Palouse River, the
Tucannon River, the Grande Ronde and the four Washington state Snake
River dams with their fish ladders and by-pass systems, fish friendly
turbines, etc.
Oh, and then the first dam on the Snake River after it gets into Idaho
has what? No fish ladders and no salmon beyond that point. Yes, this is
clearly a problem for Idaho salmon caused solely by those darned dams in
Washington. ;-) Surely you realize that most of the Idaho sockeye
salmon runs were destroyed by irrigation dams without fish ladders in
Idaho prior to 1930. If you don't realize it yet, you need to expand you
education on the subject.

>from a salmon and free-flowing river worshipper,
>Charles.

Tell you what, when all the dams on the Snake and it's tributatries in
Idaho have been removed, come see us about the ones in Washington. :-)


> Dennis K Rockwell
Kennewick, Washington
denniskrockwell at juno.com


>At 10:05 PM 2/20/99 -0800, you wrote:
>>Tweeters & Inlanders,
>>
>>Today I lead an LCBAS field trip to Lost Island and Big Flat HMUs,
>two of
>>the fourteen habitat management units, totaling just under 8,000
>acres,
>>that the U. S. Corps of Engineers has created on both sides of the
>Snake
>>River from Pasco to Lewiston as partial mitigation for the habitat
>deemed
>>lost from construction of the dams on this section of the river. Now
>>that the permanent plantings in these areas have began to mature,
>thus
>>providing good cover and food source, they simply throb with bird
>life
>>(lots of mammal life too), even in the dead of winter. Incidently,
>all
>>this new habitat, many times more than existed along the shores of
>the
>>Snake River in this area prior to the construction of the four lower
>>dams, will die if the those dams are breached. No dams equals no
>>irrigation water and without the irrigation water this habitat, like
>much
>>of the rest of the rest of the Columbia Basin, would dry up and blow
>>away. Well, while we're waiting to see if the Salmon worshipers
>pull
>>that one off, I think I'll just go birding.
>

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