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Taking Stock of Salmon by Howard Garrett Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2010

Re: "An Upstream Battle," Editorial, March 12

Your editorial about Columbia Basin salmon is right on target: The "conflict" between salmon-eating sea lions and killer whales and endangered salmon is really due to salmon depletion from too many dams and diversions.

The killer whales that eat salmon off the Pacific Coast are themselves endangered. As endangered salmon decline toward extinction, so do endangered killer whales. Both are victims of unbalanced river management by the federal government, in California as well as up the coast.

We who care about killer whales are saddened, and angry, to have discovered in the past year that the Obama administration doesn't seem to care about salmon or orcas. It has cast its lot with status-quo management for hydropower of Columbia/Snake dams, rather than with salmon, or killer whales, or the economies and traditions of people who depend on both.

Despite the president's lofty words, sound science has been trumped by narrow politics.

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