Have Salmon Endangered Maine?

But the governor's office dismissed it as "junk science," and hired two obliging researchers, one from the state university, to confirm the allegation. Then, armed with their own junk science, the governor and his industry cronies went after the USGS's Tim King. "This was just outrageous, completely politically motivated," says Leon Szeptycki, Trout Unlimited's eastern conservation director. "It was incredibly wasteful and damaging. This poor guy Tim King got dragged through the mud. It got really personal. Tim didn't have a dog in this fight; all he cared about was doing the work. He provided really elegant genetic and statistical evidence of a native population structure." Maine's congressional delegation bought into the governor's bogus accusation, diverting $500,000 from salmon restoration to order up a redundant genetic study by the National Academy of Sciences. Lo, more than two years later, NAS reported that Tim King had gotten everything right.

So what happened to Maine's aquaculture industry? Is it, as former-governor Angus King predicted, "dead, D-E-A-D, dead?" Well, salmon farming looks like it might be heading in that direction, which is some of the best news for wild salmon that's come out of the state since listing. Production is a third of what it was in 1999, and far fewer escapees are showing up in the rivers. But what, if anything, has the ESA to do with the industry's current woes?

"As far as we can tell the only industry more regulated than we are is nuclear power," says Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association. "We had one major operation, Fjord Seafood, a Norwegian company, pull up stakes entirely. We have other companies that have scaled way back, and the last independent salmon farmer in the state [Erick Swanson of Trumpet Island Salmon Farm in Blue Hill Bay] is quitting."

Long before Belle mentioned the listing he went through a long litany of other grievances, particularly foreign competition and the February 2002 court order to get rid of European fish, which supposedly grow faster than North American strains but threatened to genetically swamp them. Interestingly enough, this order resulted not from the ESA but from the Clean Water Act. Fish farms are major sources of pollution, fouling water with feces, decaying feed, pathogens, antibiotics, pesticides and exotic genes-all of which are regulated under the statute. Forced depopulation of European stock did in Atlantic Salmon of Maine and crippled other operations. They'll even admit they are victims of the Clean Water Act.

But in fact, they are victims of themselves. Before listing they used every possible legal and political maneuver to retain their European fish. Despite the fact that this violated state and federal law, the governor's office and the congressional delegation backed them, talking the feds into looking the other way. But sometimes the cruelest word a regulator (or parent) can utter is "yes." The stubborn commitment to European fish caused major loss of production because the court not only required salmon farmers to get rid of their alien fish but to do so immediately. They had to depopulate their pens and, for the rest of the season, were left with nothing. Heritage Salmon, Inc. and Stolt Sea Farm, Inc.-based in Canada, where European stocks have long been outlawed-had North American fish on hand and therefore were able to convert their Maine operations.

In addition to fining salmon farmers for violating the Clean Water Act, the court required them to "fallow" production sites. "As a result we have about 400 people out of work in Washington County," complains Belle. "When you're mandated to go [temporarily] out of business by a court order I would say that's a pretty imposing event." True. On the other hand, fallowing-vacating a site for at least one growing season-is nothing more than good sense and standard procedure in many types of agriculture. Because the industry had declined to take this precaution, sea lice proliferated. Lice themselves are a major scourge of penned salmon, but they transmit a far more deadly scourge-infectious salmon anemia, a rapidly spreading virus that replicates in gills, kidney, liver, intestine, spleen, muscles and heart, causing hemorrhaging and killing victims in under a month. In 2002 an outbreak required Maine salmon farmers to destroy most of their stock-every fish in Cobscook Bay, about 1.5 million adults. Heritage Salmon Inc., in whose pens the outbreak apparently started, was fined $15,000 for failing to report positive test results. Another outbreak in 2003 required more destruction. Yet another outbreak is underway as I write. And now, to the alarm but not surprise of wild-salmon advocates, the virus is showing up in Penobscot and Merrimack salmon.

Maine's last independent salmon farmer, Swanson of Trumpet Island Salmon Farm, isn't going out of business. He's just switching to mussels. It's a growing trend, and great news for everyone, especially wild salmon. Around the time of listing, salmon (by value) accounted for about 95 percent of Maine's aquaculture industry; now they're down to half. Oysters and mussels are taking up most of the slack, but a state-of-the-art aquaculture center at the University of Maine is figuring out how to raise cod and halibut. "There's a real effort to prop up the industry and go to alternative species," says Andy Goode, director of US programs for the Atlantic Salmon Federation. "I think there's recognition that, with salmon, the industry just can't compete." The fortunes of any undertaking are enhanced by diversity; so, to the extent that the ESA has provided incentive for conversion from salmon to shellfish, it has helped Maine aquaculture.

Maine's blueberry industry, which produces half the continent's wild blueberries, is having its share of problems, too-none of which is related to the ESA. For one thing, the brutal, largely snowless winter of 2003-2004 freeze-dried the buds, wiping out half the crop. For another, in 2003 a jury ruled that three Maine blueberry processors had illegally conspired to fix prices. With triple damages and attorneys' fees the processors would have had to cough up about $60 million. The growers, who had brought the suit and who couldn't survive without processors, agreed with the defendants that this would put everyone out of business and eventually settled for $5 million.

Still, Dave Bell, director of Maine's Wild Blueberry Commission reports that the industry's general health is "very good." One reason is that, unlike salmon farmers, blueberry growers devised contingency plans when it became clear they could no longer irrigate their crop by dewatering salmon rivers. Even without the listing, state and federal clean water laws would have forced growers to develop alternative water sources. Now they irrigate mostly from distant wells and artificial ponds. So, as a motivator for wise business practices, the ESA listing has benefited the blueberry industry, too. "There are some cost-share programs to help growers develop alternative water sources," says Bell. "As long as everyone works together proactively to address issues and solve problems we can co-exist. I've always believed that if we can have salmon in Down East Maine again, it's good for everyone." That sure sounds more positive than some of the industry's pronouncements when the commission was suing the feds for listing salmon.

Foreign competition, not the ESA, has hurt Maine's forest-products industry. But, according to Michael Barden, director of Environmental Affairs for the Maine Pulp & Paper Association, there have been encouraging recent developments such as the booming economy in China, where there isn't much pulp capacity, and the decline of the dollar, which is making it more profitable for US firms to export their product. Barden's association was also a partner to the state's unsuccessful suit opposing the listing of salmon, but since then all association members have sold their forestland and therefore aren't suffering even imaginary inconvenience. The only measurable effect of the listing on the forest-products industry has been to provide it with a windfall in the form of state, federal and private funds used to buy its development rights. International Paper, for example, has sold a conservation easement that protects a 1,000-foot corridor on both sides of 210 miles of the Machias River and six major tributaries. The public still gets to hunt and fish, and IP still gets to cut its timber, albeit on a sustainable basis. The second phase of the project will protect the river's headwater lakes. "This kind of habitat protection was called for under the state plan," says Tom Rumpf of The Nature Conservancy, the deal's lead negotiator. "But no way could the state have afforded it without ESA money."