Court for the District of Oregon. Columbia River Fish Management Plan. October 7, 1988.
Summary
This plan coordinates eight different governing bodies, referred to as Parties, in plans to manage various aspects of the Columbia River for the benefit of future generations. The parties entering into the plan include the United States of America, the Nex Perce Tribe, the Umatilla Tribe, the Warm Springs Tribe, the Yakima Indian Nation, the State of Oregon, the State of Washington, the State of Idaho, and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe. The different issues addressed by this plan center around fish. It addresses issues of harvest allocations, management, and fish production and attempts to respect the economic and cultural interests of all parties involved.
Specifically, this plan secures harvest rights to the treaty tribes “at their usual and accustomed fishing areas, by such reasonable means of those tribes' choise as are compatible with conservation requirements and the rights of other fishermen to take, under applicable state or federal law”(7). As the plan seeks to protect harvest rights of all fisheries, it simultaneously pursues a coordinated effort to “protect, rebuild, and enhance upper Columbia River fish runs”(Preamble).
Beyond methods of protection, enhancement, production, and management, the parties have agreed upon ways to settle conflicts and communicate differences with one another in the hopes of avoiding litigation as a means of dispute settlement.
Commentary
This management plan is very lengthy, yet necessarily so. Such an endeavor to unite numerous parties with differing interests must be very specific on every account so that all parties are satisfied and adequately represented.
It is also encouraging to see a collaboration of this nature in which tribal nations and state governments can work together for a common purpose of improving all parties' situations in relation to fishing in the Columbia River. The nature of the problem that this plan addresses is communal so it is only fitting that this attempt to wrok toward a solution is also communal.
reviewed by Julie Krogh
Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
HC 441: Science Colloquium, Columbia River Ecology
Fall term, 2005
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