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Date:         Wed, 9 Feb 2000 18:52:04 -0800
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From: Dana Wolfe <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Sierra Club Action Daily Vol. II, #175 - February 9, 2000
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 Sierra Club Action Daily
 Vol. II, #175
 Wednesday, February 9, 2000


 ___________________________________________________________________________

 Quote of the Day:

 "Four dams, nay four mounds of earth, are little to ask of those who have
 profited so much. Honor President Thomas Jefferson and his Corps of Discovery
 by, as Captain Lewis suggests, distinguishing yourselves as the Corps of
 Recovery."

 -- Captain William Clark (AKA Dr. John Osbourne, Sierra Club Northern Rockies
 Chapter Conservation Chair) at a Feb. 8 federal hearing on bypassing four
 Snake River dams

 _____________________________________________________________________________

 LEWIS AND CLARK ON HAND TO HELP SAVE SNAKE RIVER SALMON


 The support for breaching four dams on the Snake River and allowing the river
 to flow free was overwhelming at a federal hearing Feb. 8 in Spokane,
 Washington.  The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported that proponents of
 breaching the dam in an effort to restore its salmon greatly outnumbered the
 proposal's opponents.

 According to the story, "four Snake River dams would be history if the
 decision were left to the people who had their say Tuesday in Spokane."

 Sierra Club Northern Rockies Chapter Conservation Chair Dr. John Osborne
 invoked the spirit of Captain William Clark when, disguised as the famed
 explorer and with Merriwether Lewis at his side, he delivered moving
 testimony in support of their cause.  Here's Osborne's persuasive address:

 "I am Captain William Clark, former governor of Missouri territory,
 superintendent of Indian Affairs, and, with the esteemed Captain Merriwether
 Lewis, explorer of  the once magnificent rivers of the Northwest.

 "Returning to these waters, I am overcome with despair to find the Columbia
 and Snake river salmon nearly eradicated by a nation I so proudly once
 served.  I am suffused with melancholy I have not previously known, not only
 at the breadth of this tragedy, but at the purposefulness with which my
 people have embarked upon this destructive course.

 "The Corps of Discovery recorded 122 unknown animals, none more plentiful
 than salmon.  So plentiful as to make these rivers boil in the manner of
 turbulent rapids. So plentiful a man could pull ashore and, in a single
 place, see 10,000 pounds being cured by the native bands who lived
 judiciously, but prosperously, beside these waters.

 "It is not coincidence that when the Snake River flowed, as one of our men
 noted,  'swifter than any horse could run,'  it was swollen with millions of
 sockeye, coho and chinook.  Nor is it accident that because the damming hand
 of this nation transformed these living waters into putrid ponds, only a few
 hundred salmon remain.

 "We first tasted the salmon of the Pacific along the Lehmi River, when we
 took fellowship with the Shoshoni people.  But salmon were the sweetest as we
 struggled out of  the terrible mountains of the Clearwater country, an ordeal
 of such note that my men ate even their candles.

 "Fortune provided our greeting by the Nimipoo (Nee-me-poo), the Nez Perce,
 who fed us salmon and camas root. We were so starved that we ate ourselves
 ill.

 "The Nez Perce again gave us hospitality as we waited for the melting of the
 snows in the high country on the return home. I humbly extend my regrets and
 apologies to Chief Twisted Hair and his people for the wanton carelessness
 and selfishness of the people of my nation who later pushed West.  The Nez
 Perce honored their word.  We continue to violate ours, in no small measure
 by our efforts to eliminate the salmon.

 "Honored assembly, because of the Nez Perce, because of the salmon, we
 survived to open the great Northwest, for your forebearers and you. These
 sacred fish bind our nation. Should your generation allow their total demise,
 history will mark you with indelible shame.

 "You have taken from these lands and rivers in every manner possible. Your
 dams sever the arteries that bring sustenance for the rivers, the streams,
 the giant white pine, and all of the animals and plants that thrived here.
 Can you not give back in some small measure?

 "Four dams, nay four mounds of earth, are little to ask of those who have
 profited so much. Honor President Thomas Jefferson and his Corps of Discovery
 by, as Captain Lewis suggests, distinguishing yourselves as the Corps of
 Recovery."

 Captain Clark couldn't have said it better!

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