California’s Salmon Crisis – Hearing Before the California Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife

March 10, 2009 In March 2009, Holly Doremus, Faculty Co-Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, Berkeley Law and Richard Frank, Lecturer in Residence, Executive Director, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, Berkeley Law testified before the California Assembly Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife. The testimony addressed the current salmon and steelhead spawning declines (which had been found by the American Fisheries Society, in 1991, to include extinction of 106 Pacific salmon runs and 101 more at high risk) and assesses the future risks which global climate change might bring with ocean and river fluctuations. It also offered proposed solutions to the problems of regulatory overlap, regulatory fragmentation, inertia, lack of necessary fiscal and staff resources, and political will within the conservation effort’s regulatory system. Testimony on California’s Salmon Crisis.