[House Minority Leader Richard] DeBolt said there’s no argument: “Clear-cuts cause slides. That’s what happened in
our area.”
But he also said that other flood damage was caused by environmental protections, not logging practices. He said salmon-protection laws that require buffer zones of trees left standing near streams contributed to more flooding.
A habitat-conservation plan that was supposed to end long-standing environmental disputes around logging and salmon protection has been proved a “debacle,” he said.
“These are really important questions: Who comes first, the salmon or the humans?”
[From Politics | More talk coming on family leave | Seattle Times Newspaper]
When you hear someone make a proposition like that, a false choice, understand that they don’t give a flying $%^&*() about either option. They are a bought-and-paid-for tool of some vested interest. People and salmon co-existed for many years. The real choice is of salmon or institutional practices that destroy salmon habitat, disrupt their life cycle, and in some cases kill them as they swim, either through hydropower turbines or in irrigation ditches in eastern Washington farmland.