KEY NOTE ADDRESS TO THE NATIVE FISH SOCIETY

Jeff Dose
April 6, 2002

As everyone here tonight is undoubtedly aware, the abundance and distribution of native salmon in much of the Pacific Northwest has declined dramatically, when compared to historical conditions. As evidenced by the attention paid by the regionâs top elected officials, the large expenditure of public and private funds, and almost daily coverage in the media; restoring our native salmon is a widely shared goal. I readily admit that I have a very personal stake in the outcome.

Growing up in the coastal town of Coos Bay during the 1950âs, many of my most vivid memories involve salmon. Spending time down at the bustling docks of Charleston where the fleet of salmon trollers numbered in the 100âs and seeing the happy faces of the many charter boat patrons as they carried off their silvery catch are among my most cherished memories. Many of the kids in my neighborhood were from fishing families and seasonal work at the canneries was an important part of their lives. In Coos Bay, a young boysâ first trip ãover-the-barä was a never forgotten rite of passage. My brothers and I used to wrestle coho salmon when they returned to the tiny, unnamed stream down at the end of our street ö a stream long since put in a pipe and paved over.

In the 1950âs, salmon ö wild salmon, a bounty produced without cost from the regionsâ rivers and streams ö were an essential part of the economy and culture of coastal Oregon. In the course of a few short decades, it has been almost entirely lost. The troll fleet is gone, the few remaining boats list at their moorings and the ãFor Saleä signs in the windows are covered with cobwebs. A couple of charter boats remain, mostly subsisting on ever-diminishing stocks of bottom-fish. Much of the time, the docks and boat launches of the sport fleet stand empty, or nearly so. My sons have never seen, heard, or smelled operating cannery.

As has been widely chronicled in the media, several popular publications and many scientific journals, there is frequently a large gap between rhetoric and reality when it comes to implementing policies dealing with the protection and restoration of natural resources. For example, although it is approaching its 30^th birthday, The Clean Water Act has not restored a single listed water body in this state, not one. The Endangered Species Act has only de-listed a handful of the hundreds of species on the list, and a few of those were because they went extinct. So too, it is with salmon.

Salmon were one of the first natural resources that were commercially exploited by Anglo-Europeans when they began to colonize the west coast of North America. By the late 1800âs, nearly every river of any size between San Francisco and the Canadian border had one, or more, canneries - and a fishing fleet to feed them. Technological development, such as the ability to preserve fish flesh in metal cans, larger and faster boats, better nets, and contraptions like fish wheels, resulted in frighteningly efficient exploitation.

It didnât take very long for this harvesting efficiency to have impacts on salmon. By the turn of the century, less than 100 years after the area was first explored by Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery, it was obvious to nearly everyone involved in harvesting and processing them that salmon abundance was declining severely. Some previously abundant runs were so depleted that they didnât even bother to fish for them.

At the same time, other threats to salmon were beginning to loom - threats that would prove to be more devastating and permanent than the over-fishing ever could be. In response to a growing population in the East, the nation turned to the West, and its natural resources, to help feed and house the growing populace. Logging and livestock grazing along rivers and streams raised water temperatures, increased sedimentation and degraded salmon habitat. Irrigation developments dewatered streams, blocked the upstream migration of spawning adults, and prevented the downstream passage of juveniles. Finally, plans were being made for an expansive system of large dams throughout the region that would provide dependable river transportation, flood control, irrigation water, and an abundance of cheap hydroelectric power that would spur industrial growth.

The system, at least for a while, did all that it promised. It also profoundly altered the salmonâs relationship with its environment. It turned rivers into lakes, blocked access to 1,000âs of miles of habitat, changed migration timing, increased juvenile mortality, reduced water quality, created optimal conditions for native and exotic predators, and a host of other effects ö large and small. Predictably, salmon became extinct in many areas (an estimated 40% of historical salmon habitat has been lost completely) and populations plummeted elsewhere throughout the region (commonly to levels at 1-5% of those present at the beginning of the 20^th century).

In the grand tradition of Western culture, the solution for depleted salmon populations would of course be found in new technology, not conservation or protection. The solution for both overexploitation and the severe loss and alteration of salmon habitat, would be the same - artificial propagation in hatcheries.

Throughout the 20^th century, a nearly unshakable belief in this hatchery technology has dominated the funding and management culture of state and federal salmon management agencies. It has also been widely embraced by elected officials, salmon user groups and the general public as well. All this despite a large body scientific information, some of it over 50 years old, that strongly suggests that there are serious problems with this approach. Completely forgotten is that the wild salmon populations that we seek to restore are the products of millions of years of evolution, not semi-domesticated animals, and as such, must be viewed in a much longer time scale ö an evolutionary context.

Again, despite all the information that damns it, the overwhelming majority of public and private resources, financial and other, continues to be poured into hatcheries. This occurs, in part, because state fish managers (who depend in large measure on license sales for funding) are ãlocked inä with fishermen in a self-reinforcing loop of deception.

Managers (correctly) point out that the status of most wild salmon populations is so poor that for any fishing (and, not coincidentially, license sales) to occur, it will have to be for hatchery fish. This information results in rabid support for continued funding for hatcheries. This creates political pressure to continue funding the ãtreadmillä of technology, while genuine ecosystem restoration and needed hatchery reforms go begging ö which retards or prevents recovery of the wild stocks ö which leads back to the first step.

Legitimate science tells us that successful salmon recovery will require substantial changes in our hatchery practices as well as the current land and water uses. This is because self-perpetuating, long-term salmon recovery is dependent on preserving the largest amount of genetic diversity possible. This will be accomplished only by maintaining and restoring the natural productivity of locally adapted salmon populations in a wide variety of different local environments across the entire historical range of salmon. As Iâve pointed out previously, most of these local environments have either been lost or are severely degraded as a result of human activities over the past 150 years. This means something will have to change if we are going to recover salmon. It is the threat of changes or even cessation of these land and water uses that scares the special interests and elected and appointed officials. It is also why the purveyers of mythology and pseudo-science have found such a ready audience.

Unlike many other sensitive species, a relatively large body of science exists and restoring salmon has a high degree of, at least vocal, support from society at large. Billions of dollars have been expended in restoration attempts, and undoubtedly many billions more will be. Also, there are a number of existing federal laws that contain some really quite strong policy statements that relate to salmon management. Yet, far more stocks remain depressed or are declining than are recovering. Why?

One likely reason is that the governmental agencies in charge are laboring under the illusion that spending large sums of money will ãmitigateä for continuing inappropriate, ecologically damaging actions. Salmon recovery has not failed because of a lack of scientific information, inadequate funding, or poor policies. It has failed because responsible elected officials and governmental agencies, state and federal, have not used sound ecological principles when implementing those policies, and they have not been held accountable for doing so. In place of ecological sciences, the rationale used by government entities with salmon recovery responsibilities is frequently based on popular mythology, pseudo-science, and perceived short-term political and economic imperatives.

In 1992, the National Research Council identified two guiding principles for the effective restoration of aquatic ecosystems: 1) Re-connect fragmented habitats, and 2) Restore watershed processes. Kauffman et al. (1995) found that the first and most critical step in effective aquatic ecosytem restoration is halting the activities causing degradation or preventing recovery. Roper et al. (1997) concluded that for restoration programs to be successful, there must be a shift away from simplistic technofixes - such as large-scale hatcheries or instream habitat ãimprovementä ö to ecologically-based restoration of watershed processes. Following these principles requires reversing the root causes of degradation, not covering it up with hatchery fish or denying its existance. It means doing things like: removing dams, leaving the water in the streams, allowing rivers to access their floodplains, and restoring vegetation and erosional processes throughout entire watersheds by eliminating or greatly reducing logging, roading, and livestock grazing. As Oregon State University aquatic ecologist Stan Gregory has sagely been saying for some time now ãThere is no free lunch, folksä.

It appears to me that our society ö and most certainly our elected and appointed officials ö cannot make the kind of hard choices that are needed. Instead, weâre treated to a propaganda machine extolling the virtues of compromises based largely on the types of simplistic technofixes that are, on balance, little more than minor tweaks of the status quo. This is the same type of mentality that has led to the notion that we can have both abundant harvests by releasing 100âs of millions of hatchery fish and restore threatened relic populations of wild fish ö and we can do it by only making minor changes to our land and water uses. Pretty incredible, really. This is the sort of wishful thinking that pervades what has become a restoration ãindustryä, an economically and politically-motivated industry that increasingly features computer-screen biologists, answer-for-hire consultants, quasi-official technocrats, and, of course, lawyers ö rather than ethically-minded, independent restoration ecologists and conservation biologists. It is an industry that appears, to this observer, to be far more interested in its own individual and corporate self-interest ö rather than the genuine restoration of wild salmon and the rivers and streams they depend upon.

It is the difficult and unglamorous work of groups like the Native Fish Society to battle and scrap to reform the salmon recovery industry as it presently exists. At least in a democratic society, weâve got the opportunity to try. I wish you the greatest success.

THANK YOU!

Jeff Dose is the Senior Fish Biologist for the Umpqua National Forest in Roseburg, Oregon.

Disclaimer: The views contained in this article are the authorâs and his alone.