Allen Epps wrote:

.......If we can get agreements with landowners to
plant riparian boundaries and such I'd rather see it than just blanket
federal rules for tens of thousands of miles or acres with no analysis
of where efforts can make a difference and one's of over regualation.

That analysis *was* done, which resulted in the original designation of
protected critical habitat. The roll-back just announced is the *direct*
result of concerted pressure from a number of lobbies (ranching, logging,
mining, etc., but *primarily* the National Association of Homebuilders) to
ignore real science in favor of the pseudosort we've been treated to so
much of in the past few years......

BTW, as long as the nets are deployed in adherence to treaty rights, they
need to be left alone:

http://www.ecotrust.org/nativeprogra...the_pearl.html

Everybody wants to point fingers.... Tribes, sea lions, "ocean
conditions", the commercial catch, Mexican immigrants, politicians,
loggers....

......better just to find a mirror and point at that.

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Lot of causes, sure, but there's almost no doubt that the key one, the
overriding one, is massive loss of habitat. Lost to dams, lost to poor
ranching and logging practices (which, fortunately, are improving), and
lost especially now to suburban sprawl (which is rapidly worsening).....

Why? Because the knowledge and technologies that *already* exist to allow
us (and even greater numbers of us) to live comfortable lives AND restore
and protect salmon/steelhead are somewhat costly, somewhat inconvenient.
We--US, essentially all of us--are just too damn in love with money and
luxury and waste and sprawl and over-watered, pesticide-drenched,
cooky-cutter lawns and cheap gas and unfettered ease and blame games and,
well, .... it's just too bad for the poor fish, you know?

Hell.

JR