Nobody Really "Gets It" on Saving Endangered Salmon

The plight of threatened and endangered Pacific salmon and Steelhead is, at the very least, a major regional environmental issue in my part of the country. Hundreds maybe thousands of earnest, dedicated, and intelligent people have devoted their careers to salmon conservation. That work is the center of my career, and while not nearly as intelligent as most of my colleagues and adversaries, I know a thing or two about the risks salmon face for their long term survival and conservation.

That's why it drives me crazy to read editorials like the one below. To me, the writer only provides more proof that folks who should know even a little about the issues of salmon conservation, and who purport to "educate" the public, seem to know nothing at all. Still they blow hard relentlessly. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board, April 11, 2008:


Wild Salmon: Let science rule

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

"The possibility of $40-a-pound wild salmon arises out of many factors. More than fuel prices, demand or cyclic ocean conditions, a likely increase in salmon prices stands as a testament to human devastation of a precious species, its habitat and the environment.

The biggest problems now are among Sacramento River chinook, which are caught off the coast of California and Oregon. But there are numerous troubled runs from Alaska, Puget Sound watersheds and the Columbia River.

While experts debate the ins and outs of each turn in the salmon woes, the troubles have roots in political unwillingness to make well-informed decisions about fish and habitat. The Bush
administration's treatment of the Columbia River is a case in point.

It's modestly encouraging that federal agencies reached a settlement with four Columbia River tribes on fish, habitat and dam improvement issues. But the heart of a continuing legal fight over the operation of the river and its hydroelectric system remains whether the government is
handling decisions responsibly. Until good judgment and sound science guide salmon decisions, the sky will be the limit for prices. And the odds for a return of plentiful salmon runs will continue to dive."

OK, so tres_arboles has an opinion on all of the this "let's really listen to the science" stuff. We f*cking know what the science has to say about salmon conservation. We know nearly all we need to know at this point in history to plan tactically and strategically for their conservation. The question is not, whether or not we have the science. The question is not, whether having assembled the science, are we failing to "let it rule?"

The question is whether we denizens of salmonland have the guts, stamina, and money to live up to the stated aspirations of political and other opinion-making leaders. Because authentic salmon conservation doesn't need any more science. Salmon conservation requires large-scale, protracted, structural business- and lifestyle-affecting changes, that must be made by every one of us. And that's just to get started on the habitat restoration piece.

All credit to those authentic leaders (and there are a few) in the region that are out front on salmon conservation, and probably risking their career legacies to be so. But the fact of the matter is the habitat piece alone, the part I am most familiar with, is the hardest and most pervasive part, and affects every citizen of the region whether they know it or not. It means changing expectations from infrastructure, especially transportation. It means changing patterns of water appropriation and consumption that would require changes in western water law. Such changes would probably spark armed insurrection in the rural west. It means preventing land use change in rural places and undoing some of the habitat change from past land use change in suburban and urban places, where that's even possible. More fighting words. It means getting California and Oregon to follow Washington State's lead in working with private forest land owners to fully overhaul forest practices in protection of forested riparian habitat and other sensitive areas where change hastens habitat demise to non-function. Fighting words for some, but the precedent's been set here.

Again, this is just the habitat part; and not even the hydropower system present on the Columbia River and pervasive in the region. I'm not even getting to the hatchery management and fisheries regulation. Then, yet another, even more cynical spin on the "let science rule" argument, from today's letters to the New York Times editorial page:

"Your April 15 editorial “The Trouble with Salmon” is correct that closure of the West Coast commercial fishing season is necessary. It then reiterates familiar rhetoric: blaming the Bush
administration, dams, water withdrawals and so on for the problem.

The salmon “problem” has persisted through several administrations, and in rivers with and without dams. The demise of salmon in the Columbia-Snake River Basin was narrowly averted as far back as the 1890s, when massive over-fishing was the problem.

Political parties and dams make convenient targets; however, other factors come heavily into play. New science now shows ocean conditions to be a huge, unpredictable factor, over which we humans have no control.

We need to look beyond the convenient, usual suspects and take a more holistic
approach if we are to truly solve the salmon problem.

Terry Flores
Portland, Ore., April 16, 2008

The writer is executive director of Northwest River Partners, an alliance of river users concerned with science-based salmon recovery."

To me, the only interesting aspect of Mr. Flores' letter is the the identifying sentence added below the signature: "The writer is the executive director of the Northwest River Partners, an alliance of river users concerned with science-based salmon recovery." Umm, emphasis added. NWRP and it's constituents could give a shit about science, except as where he points out in his own, cynical palaver, "New science shows [that we have no control over the biggest factor influencing salmon viability: 'ocean conditions']. Whatever. Pretty unique turn on the 'ocean conditions' research and literature. The last time I checked, the fact that ocean conditions are variable, even stochastic means we have to plan even more intensively for the strategic protection and restoration of the habitat we do have control over. And that means a serious look at pulling down some of your beloved dams, Mr. Flores.

You could stop all fishing today and forever and you'll still not be able to ensure the long term survival of endangered species of salmon and steelhead. So let's stop with the finger pointing and the vacantly high-minded (whether cynical or well-intentioned) grasping for "science." Science is not a machine with a button which, when pushed, gives the exact answer to very hard questions. It's actually far more elegant, complicated, grimy, and useful than that! Let's instead look at the social science of what a society is willing to acheive and start work there. Because only then can we validly begin to assemble and assess the right questions to subject to a scientific method of inquiry on salmon conservation.

I'm done ranting. Time to deliver the cabinets and go surfing.