Four tribes with treaty rights on the Columbia River have been forced to shut down their fishery for the first time in five years due to an unexpectedly low run of salmon.

"We need to figure out what happened," Charles Hudson of the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission told The New York Times.

The run is so bad that the tribes were forced to use donated fish and old fish for the first salmon ceremony. "We kept waiting for the fish to show up, and it never did," Clifford Shippentower, a member of the Umatilla Tribe, told The Times.

Tribal officials blame four federal dams on the river for poor runs. They want the dams removed but the Bush administration won't agree.

Get the Story:
Weak Salmon Run Shuts the Northwest's Fisheries (The New York Times 5/11)
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Relevant Links:
Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission - http://www.critfc.org

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