Letter: Snake River dams have decimated salmon productivity

The allegation that “[t]he inland waterway of British Columbia and Washington, the Salish Sea, is the favored habitat of the orcas and where they spend most of their time” is false. Much more than three-quarters of their time is spent on the outer coast of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia.

If we were to look only at L pod, the most declining of the three resident pods, we would find that 95 percent of their time is spent foraging on the outer coast. For J pod and K pod, it is much less than 25 percent of their time in the Salish Sea.

Since rivers have flowed in the Pacific Northwest, Southern Resident orcas have always relied to a great extent on Columbia basin salmon. The vast wilderness of the Columbia/Snake watersheds has produced the majority of the salmon along the west coast, and the Snake basin produced more than the rest of the Columbia combined. The four lower Snake River dams have decimated that amazing natural productivity, and hatchery fish are not sustainable and are smaller with each generation.

This is truly a decimation of a unique population of orcas that is totally unnecessary.

This story was originally published December 25, 2016 at 4:03 AM with the headline "Letter: Snake River dams have decimated salmon productivity."