Saving The Wild Salmon

The salmon has been disappearing from the waters of Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest for some years now, and in order to reestablish this important member of the regional ecosystem, dams may have to be broken.

The salmon embodies have a rich culture lore and for many communities along the Pacific northwest and the east Coast the salmon plays or perhaps, it may be better to say has played a major role in livelihood generation. The Yakama, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Warm Springs tribes along the Columbia River basin in the Pacific Northwest hold, each spring, a salmon feast which honours the sacrifices the fish make for the welfare of the tribes. The salmon have been scarce over the past several years, so scarce that this one plentiful provides had to be purchased so that there would be enough food for the feast. The salmon has for centuries, according to the Alternet story, been vital to the culture, economy, diet, and religion of the four tribes. The rush to hydroelectric power over the past century and the construction of dams has radically altered the mighty Columbia River and its tributaries. For example, the Dalles Dam which was, built in 1957, drowned Celilo Falls, a stretch of river once heralded as "the Wall Street of the West" because of its supreme fishing. Thus one of the great fisheries of the West vanished, and energy development continued at the expense of tribal communities. "We rely on the salmon for our ceremonies, subsistence, and livelihood," says Fidelia Andy, chairwoman of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, a nonprofit created by members of the four tribes. The Columbia basin tribes have an inherent sovereignty, just like federal agencies, and are responsible for protecting the fish. Fish biologists, hydrologists, and other scientists are attempting g to save the salmon by preserving their habitat, devising management plans, and restoring the area's waterways to their natural condition. They have turned to urging the federal government to ensure its new salmon management plan is in line with their own. The ground work for the Commission began in the late 1970s during a period Olney Patt Jr., the group's executive director, describes as "a time of turmoil for the environment and the tribes," when utilities built numerous dams and reckless irrigation practices formed. The, salmon runs that once numbered in the millions dropped on the affected waterways to the low thousands, hundreds, or in some cases, have disappeared all together. The Commission is cooperating with conservation groups and businesses to restore the salmon's spawning habitat throughout the Columbia River basin through habitat conservation, monitoring, and education. The main objective of the group's salmon restoration plan (called Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit, "Spirit of the Salmon") is to halt the decline of salmon populations above Bonneville Dam in the Columbia within seven years. In addition, the group aims to rebuild salmon populations to annual run sizes of four million above Bonneville Dam within 25 years. Four dams may have to be breached for this goal to be accomplished; the dams are presently along the Snake River, the Columbia's largest tributary. A breach consists of removing a portion of the dam, in this case allowing salmon to travel more easily up and downriver. The salmon is an anadromous fish which means that they spend their adult life in salt water and return to freshwater to breed and those that have to pass over the dams in the river basin are listed as threatened or endangered. The threatened or endangered status means that the federal government must protect the fish under the Endangered Species Act. NOAA Fisheries is the federal agency in charge of restoring salmon populations and is currently devising a plan to protect and recover salmon stocks, which may include habitat enhancements and breaching the dams. Not everyone is pleased with the dam breaking plan; some landowners who rely on set irrigation patterns less than pleased. Bruce Suzumoto, NOAA's assistant regional administrator in the Pacific Northwest, says his organization is working to make "the best plan possible for all parties involved," including the Commission and the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency that operates federal dams in the Pacific Northwest. "We're going to do our best with the information we have and comments we've received," he says. "It's never going to be perfect." In 2007, NOAA received some 16,700 e-mails with one underlying theme: remove the dams. Nearly all of the messages read: "removal of the four lower Snake River dams must be a cornerstone of any truly effective salmon and steelhead plan." The Commission has delivered 141 pages of commentary along with about 500 pages of appendices to NOAA. The federal agency has responded by twice pushing back its decision; the deadline is now May 5. NOAA's delays "are steps backwards," says Nicole Cordan, policy and legal director for Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition, a nationwide organization working to restore salmon to rivers and streams of the Pacific Northwest. "They've received so many," Patt says. The Commission remains hopeful that the agency's decision will complement their own management plan -- both for the survival of the rivers and the tribes. "Economically, the low salmon populations have really hurt the tribal fishers that rely on fishing for an income," says N. Kathryn Brigham, the Commission's vice chair. "Some years tribal fishers struggle to cover their expenses to fish. Fewer fish means less financial support is being put back into the tribal economy."