Comment from Mark Baird on NOAA Fisheries Coho Salmon Recovery Plan

Klamath – Siskiyou Counties:

The Coho Recovery plan is the latest coercion tactic trotted out by NOAA and the USFWS.  According to Julie Weeder, the plan is strictly voluntary, however Ms Weeder went on to say that regulations may follow.  USFWS was treated harshly at a recent Board of Supervisors meeting as the service explained the plan to the BOS.  All five supervisors had some extremely negative comments for Ms Weeder and the USFWS.

The USFWS wants 8000 returning spawners in the Scott and 9000 returning spawners in the Shasta every single year for the next twenty years before it would consider de-listing the Coho.  Fish and Game Bulletin number 34, available on the Internet, has the fish counts back to the late 1920s. There have NEVER been that many Coho in either river.

Coho Salmon are not considered commercially viable fish.  No one really wants them.

The “Native Americans” did not like them as they were not oily enough.

King or Chinook are the commercially desirable fish.

Coho is just another environmental tool to destroy agriculture in Siskiyou County.  Ms Weeder admitted that the data which all of this hoax is based upon came, supposedly from some unnamed cannery on the Central Oregon coast.  This cannery supposedly caught 210,000 Salmon once.  She did not say the fish this imaginary cannery caught were Coho.

Then the service took satellite pictures and measured the creeks and tributaries, and to make a long story short, divided the lengths of the creeks into 210,000 fish and came up with 8000 a year for the Scott River.

They did not even know that a lot of the creeks mentioned are naturally dry most of the year and have no fish in them much less Coho.  The shade criteria for some the habitat came from the rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula.  Not the semi-arid mountains of California.

Yes, its true.  They made it all up as they went along.

We are going to pay for this hoax with our tax dollars and if Ms Weeder is telling the truth about anything it is that REGULATIONS WILL FOLLOW.

I  took the liberty of speaking for POW at this meeting and also at the Board of Supervisors Meeting.  I do not remember exactly what I said but it was some thing like this.

We will not submit, we will not comply. We will not sign our property or our Liberty over to anyone.

We will fight to protect our Constitutional rights to Property and the Liberty to use that property to better the lives of our families.

I asked Ms Weeder whether she thought the USFWS had any hope of success without landowner cooperation?

I then told her that the USFWS DID NOT HAVE OUR COOPERATION AND PROBABLY NEVER WOULD HAVE UNLESS AND UNTIL HER AGENCY DRAMATICALLY CHANGED THE WAY IT CONDUCTED THE PEOPLES’ BUSINESS.

Mark Baird
Vice President Scott Valley Protect Our Water