Wheat farmers fear extinction if Snake River dams are removed to help orcas

In the southeastern corner of Washington state, wheat goes down the river, while salmon are trucked up around dams on the road. “And taxpayers pay for all of it,” said Sam Mace, with Save Our Wild Salmon. “Isn’t there some option of switching this around,” Mace asked, >(Salmon Cannon?)< “the fish on the river and the wheat off the river?” In Western Washington, it could seem like a no-brainer: The orcas of the Salish Sea are hungry, because there are fewer and fewer of the salmon they depend on. Removing the four dams on eastern Washington’s Snake River would help the salmon that use the river to spawn–and thus the whales that eat the salmon. But the view from eastern Washington is different. There, the dams are important to the state’s wheat growers, fourth- and fifth-generation farmers who are worried about their future. >click to read< 13:33

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