Waste and fraud allegations plague ESA salmon recovery program

From CFACT

By David Wojick

Allegations of salmon recovery grant fraud and mismanagement center on billions of federal dollars in public funds failing to restore declining populations, with critics alleging misused funds, misrepresented projects, and ineffective, self-perpetuating, science-grant ecosystems.

Fraud issues include lawsuits over stolen funds, claims of fictitious habitat improvements, and concerns of money being diverted to personal expenses. But waste is the big issue because despite many billions being spent over many years, there has been no recovery. The recovery program has failed.

The Pacific salmon recovery program dominates federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) spending. It accounts for well over half of all federal ESA funding and has done so for many years.

For details on federal ESA spending, see the report referenced in my recent article,”Over $1 billion per year spent on Endangered Species Act.”

The report is “Report to Congress on Federal and State Endangered and Threatened Species Expenditures.” It is for FY 2020 because that seems to be the last time this annual report was published, despite being required by law.

Table 2 of this report supposedly lists federal spending by species ranked from most to least. I say supposedly because there is actually a game being played by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which does the report.

It does not list the salmon spending by species. It lists them by geographical population. There are many of these so the total spending by salmon species does not appear. All we see are much smaller totals for individual populations.

In fact, the FWS and NOAA repeatedly say they jointly “manage 28 species of salmon and steelhead.” There are only four salmon species under ESA management — chinook, coho, chub, and sockeye. Steelhead is even worse because it is not a species. Steelheads are rainbow trout that happen to spend most of their lives in the ocean, but I digress.

A map and listing titled “West Coast Region Salmon & Steelhead Recovery Domains” can be seen here.

Table 2 uses an even finer population breakdown, so that 51 of the first 66 entries are either salmons or steelheads, and most of the billion plus dollars is gone. In short, most of the so-called Endangered Species Act Program is actually the Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Program, and there has been no recovery.

Here are some articles that speak to this failure as a waste of taxpayer’s money.

“The U.S. Has Spent More Than $2 Billion on a Plan to Save Salmon. The Fish Are Vanishing Anyway” found here.

Actually, the populations are not vanishing, they are just not increasing and may be slowly falling. Most are listed as threatened, not endangered. See the map referenced above for each population’s rating.

Here is an older article: “Failing Salmon Recovery Efforts are Costing Taxpayers Billions”

They say it very well: “Over the last two decades, federal agencies have spent more than $8 billion on efforts to restore salmon to the Columbia and Snake River Basin. But, in spite of this spending, salmon populations continue to decline. In fact, a comprehensive review by the Government Accountability Office found that from 1982-2002 there was no “conclusive evidence” that any of the federal efforts to restore salmon had been successful.”

It is entirely possible that these salmon (and steelhead) populations are mostly exhibiting natural variability such that spending our billions has no effect. (If so, it is very much like the climate change case.)

In fact, the latest newsletter from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center describes a dramatic, ongoing 16-year collapse in a fishery that appears to be entirely natural. Natural populations can fluctuate hugely over long-time scales.

If the population changes are mostly natural, then the ESA Salmon Recovery Program is a waste of billions of federal dollars.