Salmon Legislation & Wine Industry Education Consortium

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Congressman Doc Hastings' "Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act," has been approved by the House Committee on Natural Resources. H.R. 1308 is aimed at protecting endangered Columbia River salmon and other fish species by amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, ensuring that the Secretary of Commerce has the authority to issue permits to the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and the Columbia River tribes to control predatory sea lions preying on endangered fish in the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Washington's wine industry has been growing by leaps and bounds and with it the need for industry driven higher education, thus the Washington State Grape and Wine Industry Education Consortium was born. Vicky Scharlau, Executive Director of the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers, explains.

SCHARLAU: The challenge with a growing agricultural industry is that you have needs that are met by 4 year institutions of higher education and needs that are met by 2 year institutions.

So rather than having the challenge that each institution faces with what does the wine and grape industry need in terms of educational offerings, we've stumbled along for a number of years as the industry was growing ten years ago and found that each institution was looking at their stakeholders - just those people that surrounded their college or university, which was good because they were serving a need, but what it didn't do is really allow the whole industry to look at all education required so that all all of our boats float higher.

Tomorrow Scharlau will talk about the higher education institutions that make up the wine industry education consortium and how they are meeting the needs of the state's wine industry as a whole.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.