March 6, 2023 — With more bad news forecast for California salmon, several fishing advocacy groups called Friday for the state to impose an immediate closure of the 2023 salmon season and seek federal assistance for a fishery disaster.
In a joint statement the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, the Golden Gate Fishermen’s Association, and the Northern California Guides and Sportsmen’s Association said Gov. Gavin Newsom with the state legislature and agencies must ask for “disaster assistance funding for affected ocean and inland commercial operators.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife held its annual pre-season briefing March 1 “and reported some of the worst fisheries numbers in the history of the state. These numbers follow years of drought, poor water management decisions by federal and state managers, occasional failure to meet hatchery egg mitigation goals, inaccurate season modeling, and the inability of fisheries managers to meet their own mandated escapement goals,” the fishing groups said.
“Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point that we have been warning was coming; another collapse of our iconic salmon fisheries”, said George Bradshaw, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “The harvest models, escapement goals and model inaccuracies show there is no warranted opportunity to harvest chinook salmon in the state of California in 2023.”