Support the Recovery of Wild Salmon

If you’ve ever watched salmon spawn—okay, you probably have never actually sat by the water and passed the time watching salmon spawn, but you’ve probably seen them on TV or something—you know what hell these little fish already endure just to reproduce. Hell, if our moms and dads died just trying to get us fertilized, they’d be like, no way, I’m heading off to the East Australian Current with the turtle hippies; screw spawning.

So it’s like adding insult to injury continuing on with Bush II’s federal plan for salmon in the Colombia and Snake Rivers—which was to pretty much sit and do nothing.

But for once, Bush II isn’t just to blame; over the past 20 years, the government has failed to create a good plan to restore the salmon population. You might think, well, it’s not up to us to protect the salmon from living or dying—after all, they’re the ones who die when they try to reproduce!

But we’re the ones fishing and eating the salmon, causing their numbers to dwindle much further than they would through their own naturally self-caused demise alone would. And we’re the ones messing with their habitats, causing the most destruction of all.

The government has, in fact, been dragging its feet because it’s more interested in preserving four dams on the lower Snake River for barge transportation. After these dams were built, the salmon pollutions sank by up to 90% in the regions; removing these dams would definitely aid the salmon population and allow it to regain its numbers.

We can help these little rakish reproducers recover their numbers by passing the Salmon Solutions & Planning Act (H.lR. 3503). Congressmen Tom Petri (R) of Wisconsin and Congressmen Jim McDermott (D) of Washington have created this plan in order to set a course to recover the salmon we’ve lost. The plan also calls for new jobs and clean energy around the salmon solution, making it a win-win situation for both people and fish.

This bipartisan legislation currently has 25 cosigners from Congress all across the country. While that’s fantastic progress, many more supporters are needed in order to pass the legislation.

To ask your representative to sign the bill, click here. Be sure to add your own comments to your message to make it personal and more effective; your representative wants to know what you really think and, after all, it’s his or her job to convey what you think to Congress!