In April of 2008, Salmon For All submitted ”An  Overview of the Select Area Fisheries Enhancement Project” to the Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commission as a briefing paper.

The Select Area project began at the local level in the 1970s as a terminal fisheries project in Youngs Bay sponsored by the Clatsop Economic Development Council. In the mid 1990s, the Bonneville Power Administration funded a study of the possibility of expanding the project to other off-channel terminal locations in the Columbia River estuary. Over the years, this effort became known as the Select Area Fisheries Evaluation project, and eventually as the Select Area Fisheries Enhancement project. The Select Areas now include: Youngs Bay, Blind Slough/Knappa Slough, and Tongue Point/South Channel on the Oregon side of the river; and Deep River on the Washington side of the river.

It should be noted that development of the SAFE program was never intended to be a substitute for fishing commercially on the Columbia River main stem when it is biologically defensible to do so. The objective of the Select Area fisheries is to supplement the lower river commercial fishing economy, which traditionally has focused on harvesting Columbia River salmon on the mainstem Columbia River. We strongly oppose any effort to restrict the Columbia River commercial fishery to the Select Areas. See Salmon For All’s “Rebuttal to the SAFE for Salmon proposal” at: http://www.salmonforall.org/04.2009/rebuttal-to-safe-for-salmon/.

Salmon For All’s April 2008 white paper on the Select Area program is appended as a PDF file, as well as Appendix A, Site Selection Criteria, and Appendix B, Funding Overview:

SAFE Overview, a Salmon For All white paper

Appendix A, Site Selection Criteria

Appendix B, SAFE Funding Overview

Written by SFA at 3:57 pm. Filed under Resources | Comments Off