Tuesday night, December 4th @ 7:00 PM.

City of Richland Maintenance Facility
2700 Duportail St. in Richland (near WalMart)

Damn, I missed it.

Here's the summary:

Gary spent some time showcasing that it IS possible to rebuild fish runs. He cited his efforts on Cedar Creek of the Lewis where they started with 32 fish and rebuilt the run to nearly 20K.

He then went on to say that at some point, you can build and rebuild all you want, but without a political voice to make our leaders choose conservation over profit, you can only postpone the inevitable, and the clock is ticking on our salmon and steelhead. In our case, we've been targeting habitat and hydropower--which are not only important but they are the things that WE can do locally--but we've been missing the impact of harvest, and not the sportfishing harvest, but the commercial high-seas harvest. This is a problem that we can not solve locally--it can ONLY be solved legally at a national level, and in Gary's opinion, it is the number one problem and he makes a very convincing argument backing this statement.

He stated several times that he wanted so badly to believe it was about the fish, and that politics were the side issue, but in the end, he discovered that in todays world, politics is everything.

So here is where the CCA enters the picture. CCA is a national advocacy group, much like the the Nature Conservancy or other similar groups. Their mission is to be a national political voice for fish and fish conservation. If you're thinking, "what does a national organization know of our local resources..." don't worry--in fact--that IS the point. We NEED a national voice, but the CCA is both national AND local, and that is where it's power comes from. They get the job done by building local chapters to do the work on the ground locally, and maintaining a central legal headquarters to be their voice nationally and legally--it's the only way to get the laws changed in this day and age, and changing the law is the ONLY way to save our fish.

When it comes to being heard and protecting our resources, the biggest thing standing in our way as sportfishers collectively is ourselves, and CCA is a means to end this irony. I'm pretty sure we witnessed the seed being planted for a Tri-Cities chapter; look for information to come down the pike soon. In the meantime, you can join by following this link: www.joincca.org/

Don, Travis--did I miss anything?

I think you pretty much got it. I would like to add that the national CCA office seems very dedicated to helping out the Pacific NW. When Gary first went to them about our issues they thought that we (the Pacific NW) were not ready to stand up for our resources. Gary has only been at it for only 8 monthes and has 3000 members from the Pacific NW. That is not bad, but just think about the number of people from the tri-cities alone that fish for salmon and steelhead. Those numbers need to climb sigificantly and I encourage all who are concerned about our fish to join. Just go to their site and read all of the accomplishments CCA and its members have won in the south and it speaks loudly. We can do the same here, but we all need to speak as one.

Great summary, Mark. I was glad to hear it firsthand from Gary although I had read enough over the past month that I had already decided to join CCA.

I look at it this way. There's no miracle cure here that is going to easily fix our salmon runs. If it was easy it would have been fixed long ago. But these guys have been through some tough battles on the gulf coast and came out on top.

An indication to me that these guys are for real is that even though it's only been 8 months since Gary started working on bringing CCA to the northwest... CCA is already over 3,000 strong in the northwest, and is already being included by WDFW and ODFW in policy discussions and task forces. The way to help guide what issues are pursued in the northwest is... join.

Coastal Conservation Association?

Yup!

If you look up the CCA's website, it may seem strange to embrace an organization with roots in Texas as a potential savior for our fish out here in the PNW, but National attention and credibility is exactly what we need. It would have been nice to have had the power to solve the issue from within, and if it were a resident-trout issue, I'd say we should keep the issue local. But our Salmon and Steelhead spend most of their lives off somewhere where we can't help them--it's a little like being a parent--at some point we got to turn 'em loose and trust the world. Well, the world is a tough place, especially for a tastey fish at sea! It's quite likely that the highest impact on our local fish is occurring in the ocean, and our hands are tied locally to do anything about it. The CCA has the national voice and legal backing to change the commercial harvest laws, and if we get local CCA chapters started accross our region, the idea is that the national office will come to the rescue.

Sportfishers make up an enormous constituency, but naturally, the political make-up is incredibly diverse. You get folks that range from your camo/flannel-clad bubba to the yuppie that comes straight out of an Orvis catalog and everything in-between. This diversity of folk makes acheiving unity over fish issues nearly impossible and that has been a huge obstacle in the path of fish conservation and recovery. Ultimately, no matter who you are, if you care about our fish resource now and for future generations, the CCA can unite us all and represent us in DC--that's what we need to save our runs.

There are other organizations that do similar things, so why the CCA? One big reason right now is that they have a well-known champion in Gary Loomis of G. Loomis rods that is out on a war-path rallying support, and leadership is so critical to a movement like this. We may be at a turning point in our fight to save the icon of the Northwest. Consider it, and keep an ear to the ground. I think there are big things coming.

Glock has started a new forum for fish conservation, advocacy, and science issues and topics; look for it in the forums section. I will start using it to communicate news and issues surrounding the CCA and other related fish issues.