Aid sought for salmon industry
With another ruinous season looming for Pacific salmon fishermen, a bipartisan coalition of West Coast lawmakers asked the Bush administration Friday to give Congress the go-ahead to distribute disaster funds.
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) joined California’s Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and nearly four dozen other lawmakers to dispatch a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.
Federal regulators are meeting in Sacramento next week to consider a virtual ban on commercial salmon fishing this year because of a steep decline in fish returning to the Sacramento River, which in recent decades had been the West Coast’s prime spawning ground.
If disaster funding is granted, it will mark the second time in three years that the federal government has bailed out the West Coast commercial salmon industry. In 2006, troubles on the Klamath River prompted regulators to cut back the commercial season by 90%, sending many commercial anglers teetering toward insolvency. Congress approved a $60-million bailout.
-- Eric Bailey
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