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Portland, Oregon
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Tribal leaders from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission
(CRITFC) are praising the Obama Administration today for a long-sought
funding increase for tribal treaty rights-based natural resource
management. The president’s FY 2011 budget increases the Rights
Protection account in the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget 60% over
the past decade’s level for a total of $28.5 million dollars.
The Obama Administration’s increase comes after a decade of
stagnant funding and a strong message from Congress through its
FY2010 appropriations bills that tribal resource management was
“long-neglected”.
“We are appreciative of the time this Administration has
taken to recognize and understand treaty-based resource management,
and then, budgeting pro-actively,” said McCoy Oatman (Nez
Perce), CRITFC Chairman. “We would also like to acknowledge
Interior Assistant Secretary Larry EchoHawk for making the Northwest
one of his first trips after his appointment and hearing from tribal
leadership.”
Rights Protection, located in the Department of Interior’s
Bureau of Indian Affairs budget, supports legally defined management
and co-management authorities for tribes in the Pacific Northwest
and Great Lakes areas to protect treaty fishing resources on both
reservation lands and treaty ceded territories often co-managed
with state and federal agencies. Among these authorities are harvest
management, research, enforcement and international treaty implementation,
such as the Pacific Salmon Treaty.
“These are clearly difficult budget times for the nation,”
said Babtist (Paul) Lumley, CRITFC executive director. “The
importance of tribal co-management has been elevated as state budgets
have dwindled, particularly in the natural resources realm. The
national investment in Rights Protection will pay multiple dividends
through resource protection, collaborative management and employment.”
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About CRITFC
The Portland-based Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission is
the technical support and coordinating agency for fishery management
policies of the Columbia River Basin's four treaty tribes: the Confederated
Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes
of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, the Confederated Tribes
and Bands of the Yakama Nation and the Nez Perce Tribe.
CRITFC, formed in 1977, employs biologists, other scientists, public
information specialists, policy analysts and administrators who work
in fisheries research and analyses, advocacy, planning and coordination,
harvest control and law enforcement. |
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