BOISE Eight Snake River sockeye salmon made it back to Idaho's Redfish Lake last year, but Republican congressional candidate Helen Chenoweth does not take its endangered species status seriously.
''How can I, when you go in and you can buy a can of salmon off the shelf in Albertsons?'' she said Friday. But Idaho Fish and Game officials reply she doesn't know what she is talking about.
Chenoweth was the featured speaker at the second annual ''endangered salmon bake'' Saturday in Stanley, near the headwaters of the Salmon River and Redfish Lake. The cooked salmon come from the West Coast.
She said she is trying to use humor to deflect Democratic Rep. Larry LaRocco's campaign radio ads which call her ''crazy'' and ''out of touch'' for taking part in last year's bake.
''I thought maybe I'd like to invite Mary and Louise (two characters in the ad) to come in also so they could really understand that human beings out there do eat salmon,'' she said.
''I'd be happy to offer up snail escargot for them, too, but the Bruneau snails are so small that we'd have tough pickin','' she said, referring to the Idaho desert snail proposed for federal protection.
Chenoweth said the Snake River sockeye is not endangered.
''The sockeye salmon is not returning in the numbers that they want because they chemically controlled the environment of Redfish Lake and diminished the population of the parent stock, which is the kokanee,'' she said.
She said the sockeye is a product of the mating of kokanee with the right combination of recessive genes.
''That's very poor information,'' said Dexter Pitman, Idaho Fish and Game anadromous fish manager. ''It's just totally in error.''
