The Columbia and Snake rivers of the Pacific Northwest once hosted the world's greatest wild salmon runs, with up to 16 million fish each year. Today, it is the most heavily dammed river system on Earth. In fact, four dams on the lower Snake River are driving all remaining Snake River salmon toward extinction. Southern Resident orcas, which rely on these salmon as their main food source, are starving as a result. Only 80 of these unique marine mammals are left.
Join us in asking the Army Corps of Engineers to remove these dams, giving salmon and orcas a chance to thrive.
Dear Administrator Mainzer, Commander Spellmon, and Director Lee:
Subject: Remove the Snake River dams - restore wild salmon
Endangered southern resident orcas depend on wild salmon as their primary food source. You can't talk about orcas without talking about salmon. And you can't talk about salmon without talking about the four outdated, salmon-killing dams on the lower Snake River.
Scientists have concluded that the single best thing we can do to save wild salmon is to take down these four lower Snake River dams. You must consider this alternative fully and fairly in the court-ordered environmental impact statement you are preparing for managing the Columbia and Snake River dams.
Your analysis of this alternative must be based on the best available science about salmon and other species that depend on them, including endangered southern resident orcas. Your analysis must also fully account for the market and non-market economic costs and benefits of dam removal, including the benefits of a restored river and the money tax- and rate-payers will save if the dams go. You must incorporate in your evaluation replacing the electricity from these dams with low-cost carbon-free power, not power from fossil fuels. And you must actually mitigate for the existing and future impacts of climate change on Snake River salmon.
Such an analysis will lead you to conclude that these dams must go. We don't need them anymore--but we do need to bring back our irreplaceable wild salmon. The biggest step we can take on the path to salmon restoration in the Snake - and preservation of our precious southern resident orca population is to remove the lower Snake River dams.
[Your comments]
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
