Today, the House Committee on Natural Resources held a markup on 19 bills including H.R. 4582 (Rep. Jeff Denham), the “Save Our Salmon Act,” which will exclude striped bass from the fish doubling requirement and other provisions of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA).  H.R. 4582 passed as part of a broader unanimous consent package.

“This is bipartisan and common-sense legislation means less money, time and water wasted,” Rep. Denham said. “The committee unanimously approved the bill today and I look forward to seeing it enacted into law soon.”

The non-native striped bass poses a direct threat to the endangered Pacific salmon. Federal, tribal, state and local governments have spent billions of dollars and sent millions of gallons of water into the ocean on ESA-related recovery efforts, exacerbating the California drought.

In a February 10, 2016, Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee oversight hearing on predation, a National Marine Fisheries Service witness testified that some salmonid populations in California are “extremely low due to an abundance of striped bass.” One focus of the hearing was the Central Valley Project Improvement Act's statutory goal to at least double the natural production of anadromous fish, which includes both salmon and one of their non-native predators, striped bass.

As a result, Rep. Denham introduced H.R. 4582 to eliminate this ongoing federal conflict between protecting striped bass and endangered salmon in California. At the Subcommittee’s April 20, 2016 legislative hearing on H.R. 4582, the Administration testified that: “In consideration of the striped bass’s function as a fish that contributes to mortality for listed species and is not native to the Bay-Delta or even California, the Department has no concern with the removal of striped bass from the CVPIA’s fish doubling goals.”