Endangered Status for Salmon Studied : Environment: Activists ask U.S. to protect five migratory groups. Effects on Northwest industry could be profound.

Federal officials on Thursday set the stage for another far-reaching and potentially bruising Pacific Coast environmental struggle over a dying species and traditional industrial use of the Northwest’s vast resources.

This time the species is the region’s famed salmon, and the resource is its mighty Columbia/Snake river system.

The National Marine Fisheries Service in Portland, Ore., announced it has accepted for consideration petitions from environmentalists and fishermen asking the government to list four wild salmon migrations as endangered. Earlier this summer, it accepted a petition for a fifth run of wild salmon on the river system.

These are the first steps in a process similar to the one that led federal officials to designate the northern spotted owl as endangered.

The law requires the government to take action to prevent extinction of species listed as endangered. With the owl, this has engulfed the entire region in a bitter debate over wilderness preservation and logging, or as some people here see it, owls vs. jobs.

With the salmon, some experts believe the results of listing the salmon could be just as profound for the region.

The Columbia and its tributary, the Snake, make up the region’s biggest, most important and most heavily industrialized river system. It generates 70% of the area’s famous low-cost electrical power, provides a vast water highway and allows irrigation of huge tracts of arid farm land east of the Cascade Mountains.

Any change in management of the system--which today is more a series of lakes impounded behind dams rather than a free-moving river--is bound to have an impact on power rates. Currently, Northwesterners pay about half the national average for electricity, and this inexpensive power is a cornerstone of the region’s economy.

On the other hand, nothing symbolizes the Northwest like the silver-skinned, red-fleshed salmon, a fish that begins life in fresh water streams, migrates to the ocean and then returns in runs to its home river to spawn and die.

Development on the river has affected the fish in fundamental fashion. Some of the early dams were built without effective salmon bypasses, and river flows are sometimes too small during crucial periods of the salmon life cycle to allow the fish to make the change from fresh water to salt.

Additionally, upstream logging is blamed for spoiling the spawning beds.

An organization called Oregon Trout, in conjunction with a host of environmental groups, filed the petitions seeking protection for the wild coho salmon on the lower Columbia and for the spring, summer and fall chinook salmon on the Snake River. Previously, they sought protection for sockeye salmon on the Snake River.

“It is never good news that a species nears extinction. But it is good news that the government has taken an important step on the path toward that recognition in the case of the salmon,” said Andy Kerr, conservation director for the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

Oregon Trout said the decline of wild salmon, as distinguished from hatchery salmon, is startling. For instance, in 1962, the group said, there were 28,000 fall chinook that came up the Columbia. Last year, there were only 600.

Federal officials have until next summer to fully evaluate the petitions and decide whether to list the fish as endangered.

Many leaders on both sides of the dispute expect the government study to result in such a designation for the fish. But they also say they want to avoid a repeat of the spotted owl fight, in which loggers and environmentalists were polarized early in the dispute.

This time, more than 20 groups with a stake in the Columbia and the salmon will begin negotiating this autumn for a plan to restore the wild fishery at the least cost to operations of the Columbia and Snake rivers.