Re: “Trump administration’s salmon funding cut threatens decades of progress” (Aug. 20, Opinion):
Thanks for highlighting the Trump administration’s elimination of $1.3 million in federal funding for Washington’s Regional Fisheries Enhancement Teams and for making a case for why the administration ought to reverse course.
Along with the lack of federal investments in enhancement teams, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service knowledgeable Lengthy Reside the Kings that we’ll be shedding $139,000 in annual funding to assist salmon restoration in Hood Canal. These {dollars} have been important to restoring Hood Canal summer season chum and stopping the extinction of Puget Sound steelhead — each listed as threatened beneath the Endangered Species Act.
Salmon restoration can work. Summer season chum adults that had been returning to streams in single-digit numbers in 1999 now quantity within the 1000’s and are on observe to being one of many first salmon populations faraway from the ESA.
However steelhead, our official state fish, are in disaster. The “State of the Salmon” report reveals that the place we now have enough knowledge, Puget Sound steelhead are under restoration targets and falling. This 12 months, the state pulled the majority of the funding to scale back steelhead mortality on the Hood Canal Bridge, and now the federal authorities is lowering assist as properly. We should do a lot better.
Jacques White, CEO, Lengthy Reside the Kings, Seattle
