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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 6, 1999)
Tribes’rights to shellfish upheld By Hal Spencer The Associated Press OLYMPIA, Wash. — In a huge victory for Washington tribes, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday affirmed their right to harvest shellfish on private beaches. The decision stunned private proper ty owners. The court rejected without comment an appeal of a lower court ruling that upheld the tribes’ shellfish rights. State of ficials, shellfish growers and private property owners had challenged that decision, con tending the Indians’ 19th centu ry treaties give them no legal claim to shellfish on private property. “Once again, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the tribes’ treaty-reserved rights to natural resources in western Washington are as valid today as the day the treaties were signed,” said Billy Frank Jr., an elder in southwest Washington’s Nisqually Tribe and chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “We’re just stunned that this could happen in America, that our property rights and our priva cy rights could be trampled,” said Barbara Lindsay, a spokes woman for United Property Owners of Washington, most of whom own shellfish-bearing beach lands in the Puget Sound region. “No tribes anywhere else in America have a treaty right to en ter private property as they do here,” said Lindsay, one of thou sands of property owners affect ed by the ruling. Tribal leaders hastened to say that Monday’s court action does not mean Indians will be indis criminately tramping private beaches to dig clams, mussels and other shellfish. “It’s a long process before you can go on a beach and harvest,” said Doug Williams, a spokesman for the Northwest In dian Fisheries Commission. “There must be a biological assessment of the area, sampling and testing and a written notice. In fact, as far as I know, there has been only one harvest off of a private landowner’s beach” since the 1994 ruling on tribal shellfish rights in U.S. District Court in Seattle. The case was subsequently appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap peals. Tribal members also will be permitted to harvest on private property only five days a year. Still, Lindsay said, in the end “we will have people on our beaches, invading our privacy” to dig for shellfish. “When people bought these properties, they had no idea there were treaty rights to shellfish.” Commercial shellfish growers contend the ruling could threaten their livelihoods and “will crip ple or destroy the growers” by al lowing tribal members to enter their property. “Our members are devastat ed,” Bill Dewey, a spokesman for the Puget Sound Shellfish Grow ers Association, said Monday. “This is an incredible burden for the growers.” But lawyers for the 17 Indian tribes noted in their appeal that the 9th Circuit ruling allows tribes to harvest only shellfish that would exist naturally, with out the growers’ help. Dewey doesn’t see it that way. “The burden is on the grower to prove” which shellfish are nat urally occurring and which are not “for every bed,” he retorted. "This is an incredible burden for the growers.” Attorney General Christine Gregoire, whose office sided with the private property owners, said she was disappointed by the high court action. In the 1855 treaties, the tribes gave up most of their land in then-Washington Territory in exchange for reservations, mon ey and the right to continue fish ing in traditional fishing grounds. A series of court rulings during the 1970s defined what areas must be considered traditional Indian fishing grounds, and af firmed the tribes’ right to take up to half of the salmon and other fish from those areas. In 1989, a coalition of 17 tribes and the federal government sued Washington state, seeking to clar ify the Indians’ right to gather shellfish under those treaties. In 1994, U.S. District Edward Rafeedie said shellfish are cov ered by the 1970s rulings, and the Indians, therefore, can take up to half the shellfish within their traditional fishing areas — including lands now privately owned. But because the treaties also Four teen-agers rescued from snowy mountain The Associated Press GRANTS PASS — Four teen agers were rescued Monday from the snow-covered slopes of 4,438-foot Onion Mountain after they failed to return from a 100 mile bicycle trip on Easter Sun day. Douglas Williams and Chester Blacksmith, both 16, Josh Fost, 18, and Jake Hamlin were alive, but one of the four was unable to walk because of frostbite, the Josephine County sheriffs office said. The Air Force Reserve’s 939th Rescue Wing in Portland sent an H-60 Pavehawk rescue helicopter to the scene at 1 p.m. to airlift the teen-ager out. He was stranded about 300 yards up the side of a cliff, Air Force Reserve spokeswoman Karole Scott said. The injured teen-ager was suf fering from frostbite and hy pothermia; his three friends al ready had been evacuated by a snowmobile, she said. The sheriffs office had re leased no further information by mid-afternoon, and none of the four had shown up at local hos pitals. The teen-agers were reported missing at 11:25 p.m. Sunday, about 12 hours after they left for their trip. Rescuers launched a search and found bicycle tracks on the road leading to Onion Mountain Lookout, an old Forest Service fire lookout, but were unable to follow the tracks because of deep snow. It appeared the teen-agers were pushing their bicycles farther up the mountain, the sheriffs office said. Rescuers returned with snow mobiles and a Sno-Cat Monday morning and found the four about 7 a.m., about four miles be low the lookout. said the Indians could not har vest shellfish “from any beds staked or cultivated” by other cit izens, the judge said the tribes can take shellfish only from nat ural beds and not from cultivated beds. That barred the Indians from harvesting on most proper ty owned by commercial shell fish growers. 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