Posted: Dec 20, 2005  11:02

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has fallen heavily on Idaho. With the listings of several species of salmon in the early 1990’s, our natural resource based industries, private property, jobs, recreation, economy, and land use practices have all been negatively affected. As the State Senator from District 8, representing most of northcentral Idaho, it has been most frustrating to watch the Federal agencies and the courts take away our rights and our freedoms to “save endangered fish” and have no real power to make things right.

Now, thanks to Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), that has changed. I have joined as a client of the conservative public law foundation to challenge in Federal Court the listings under ESA of the Snake River spring/summer and fall chinook salmon, along with numerous other salmon listings throughout the Northwest. The PLF suit is asking the court to invalidate the listings and stop enforcement of ESA and/or associated rules along with civil and criminal actions as a result of the illegal listings.

This lawsuit will force NOAA Fisheries to follow both the law (ESA) and a previous Federal Court ruling (Alsea Valley Alliance v Evans Sept 2001) to count ALL the fish, hatchery and wild, which make up a species when determining if the numbers are low enough to deserve listing under ESA. NOAA decided that wild fish, and hatchery fish with the adipose fin, would be part of the threatened population but hatchery fish with the fin removed would not be counted. Yet all three sub-populations of fish are of the same species with the same genetic makeup. To invalidate the listings would return common sense and a secure future to those who now face only continued uncertainty.

Every year since 1995, Dworshak Reservoir near Orofino is drained to a muddy pond in a failed experiment to send Idaho water downstream to “cool” Lower Granite and to spill fish over dams. This has cost Clearwater County, and Orofino specifically, millions in recreational and business losses, has threatened resident fisheries and reduced water quality. Spilling water over dams costs Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) ratepayers millions of dollars in lost revenue thus driving up the cost of electricity to Idaho rural electric co-ops who buy power from BPA.

These false salmon listings have blackmailed southern Idaho farmers into giving up precious water for flushing fish with the threat that if they don’t, the federal government will come take all their water. The listings have cost Idaho Power Company (IPC) millions of dollars in “mitigation” for simply operating their legally-owned dams in Hells Canyon which again negatively affects all ratepayers of IPC. The Idaho utility is facing mandatory spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable projects including reintroducing salmon upstream. This action alone will spell doom to the farming communities and private property owners along the Weiser, Payette, Owyhee, and Boise rivers and tributaries.

Federal land managers have been paralyzed, unable to complete timber harvest plans, watching as forests die from lack of bug and disease control and then burn by the hundreds of thousands of acres. Lumber mills have closed for lack of timber and rural communities shrink as families are forced to relocate for work.

I am proud to join with PLF to stop further harm to Idaho citizens, return reason and common sense to land and water management decisions, and get NOAA out of the business of managing private property in Idaho.