Dan - What are they predicting now?

Was it a 1:900,000 chance that we will get hit in the year 2014?

If I'm around I'll volunteer. Did you realize that those odds are thousands and thousands of times better than the odds of winning any of the government sponsored lotteries?

I noticed that. My luck........I win the BIG drawing tonight, and then get whacked on the noggin by a meteor on my way to pick up the check.

1 in 900,000 doesn't sound like good odds.....but on a universal scale, I'd say it's a little closer than I want them passing by.

CWUgirl,
Boy someone gave you some bad info. WT didnt win there lawsuit it was an out of court settlement. WT did as they always do took the tax payers money and dropped the suit. They had been trying to stop the release of smolts from the hatcheries. That did not happen.

Yes, I know they settled out of court.....they proved that the WDFW was in the wrong in what they were doing and increased the monitoring so that they'll have to follow the rules. The cash settlement covered their lawyers, they didn't make money off of their suit. If the state was in the wrong, of course they should pay the lawyers!

CW...Boy you would make a good side-kick for Ramon! Like Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody...He could whisper in your ear and pull your strings and you could tell everyone about how WT is saving the world from all those bad hatcheries.

The WDFW lawsuit settlement is but one in a string of similar acts by WT. Lots of environmental extremists use the courts to extort legal fees and force their views on the majority.

I think your analogy is a little before my time, but offensive all the same. Shame on you for resorting to petty name calling. If you had read my post on the WT thread, you'd see I'm not a member nor do I support WT, so please get your facts straight before making such assessments of my character.

Maybe not the majority of fishermen, but I believe a sizable amount of people in the US/Canada value wild animals, including salmon, and would like them to continue to exist. I don't understand the attitude that fishing is more important than the fish themselves. Perhaps I just see more value to them than the fight they have when hooked or their taste when cooked. I value them in those ways as well, but it is absolutely essential in my mind that wild stocks continue to exist. If we loose them, I think we'll lose a little of ourselves.

sorry you took offense CW....just a little joke gone bad...anyway I think that we all want species to survive but in a sensible manner that recognizes that human beings are the supreme species.

Grandpa, I have a lot of thoughts about ESA and how it is used but it's late so it will have to wait. I must comment on the supreme species comment. In my mind supremacy is a stretch. Top of the food chain, I could buy though. In my mind, there is only one Supreme and it ain't Diana Ross.

Grandpa: There you go again, assuming things not proven. Human beings are the supreme species you say. Got any evidence of that? I remember Mark Twain saying, "I care not what race a man may be. Being human being is condemnation enough." And even if we should assume that humans are the supreme species shouldn't that make us recognize the obligation to protect others?

Eddie: Who says we are the top of the food chain? Ever had athletes foot?

There I go trolling again ....Just because I place my needs and survival over those of my beloved dog does not mean that I don't watch out for her welfare every day. Some certainly don't feel that way and as long as they don't burn my SUV I'm fine with that.

The only problem with the ESA is that it's the very last line of defense before extinction.

By the time it can be invoked the species is already in dire threat.

If you don't like the ESA, then it's your moral duty to support actions to prevent species from being pushed to the brink.

Unless of course you're God, and thereby know the ultimate plan and which species should be here or not.

In the words of the immortal Bill Watterson:

The aliens came
From a far distant world
In a large yellow ship
That blinked as it twirled.
It rounded the moon
And entered our sky
We knew they had come
But we didn't know why

Bright the next morning
With noisy commotion,
The ship moved
Out over the ocean.
It lowered a tube
And drained the whole sea
For transport back home
To their galaxy.

The tube then sucked up
The clouds and the air,
Causing no small amount
Of earthling despair.
With nothing to breathe
We started to die
"help us! Please stop!"
Was the public outcry

A hatch opened up
And the aliens said,
"We're sorry to learn
That soon you'll be dead,
But though you may find
This slightly macabre,
We prefer your extinction
To the loss of our job."

I've always considered a listing under ESA as a message that we really screwed up. Once we've gone down the path to the point a critter won't survive without intervention, there has to be some regulatory mechinism to create change. Without it, people would continue on their merry way and nothing would change. I know it's not popular with a lot of folks, but ESA is a way of putting critters first and us second.

With salmon for example: if we continued to put people first, it would just be a matter of time before salmon were gone. I know there are those that will argue that we can have both, but I don't believe it for a minute. As long as the human population continues to grow unchecked, we'll continue to convert fish habitat to people habitat. We obviously can continue to pump out hatchery fish, but wild fish just can't survive if they don't have a place to live.

This whole "supreme species", "top of the food chain" argument really grates on me.

It's one thing for a species to prey on other animals, deplete their numbers to where they're too tough to find, then adapt by hunting other prey, or by dieing off to numbers that the existing prey will support.

It's another thing entirely to destroy your prey species, or even non-prey species (this is the real difference between us and other animals) with secondary means like dumping sewage, pesticides, and clear-cut debris into their habitat.

Other species leave non-prey species pretty much alone, and intact. We don't. Just because we have the capability to affect pretty much every species around us doesn't mean it's right to do so.

No, I'm not suggesting that spending $Ms to protect a fly, or bankrupting 1400 farming families to protect a sucker is smart management, but decimating species out of indifference is NOT an indication of supremacy in my book.

Face it, as a species coexisting with other species, humans are arrogant buttheads.

skywalker

Humans have re-engineered the natural food chain by over protecting some species and under protecting others. The imbalance we create in some cases causes more harm than good and distorts the natural order of things.

I just realized I'd never commented on the original question...no, as it's being enforced, it seems pretty inadequate.

The problem is, WHO gets to make the judgement calls on what gets protected, and what is a reasonable level of protection? It can't be a farmer dependant on irrigation, and it can't be a sportsman, it can't be a commercial fisherman, it can't be the BPA, and it can't be a logger. Who DOESN'T represent a conflict of interest? Who DOESN'T have his own agenda? It's a tough call.

Extreme environmentalists have hijacked the law and are using the courts to make a mockery of the original intent of the ESA .

And on that note, my apologies for leaving said environmental extremists off of the list of those with their own agenda. They certainly fall near the top.

hawaii contains about half of all the ESA listed species and if it wasn't for the ESA they'd be long gone...not that they won't be anyways ...and everytime i see an i'iwi or monk seal or humpback or koa tree i'm glad to have it...