In Our View: Future Is Our Responsibility

The crux of any question surrounding salmon restoration is this hard fact: The past is not coming back.

Gone are the days when unfettered rapids were a hallmark of the Columbia River. When salmon and other species were prodigiously abundant. When the fish could be harvested with a simple wooden scaffold jutting over the water and the use of a long-handled net. With the construction of dams and the introduction of environment-altering development, the questions about salmon in these parts long ago moved from easy harvesting to difficult managing. And for decades now, managing has meant restoration efforts in the Columbia and its tributaries.

Such undertakings have met with intermittent success while impacting the economy and the culture of the region, all the while placing doubt upon the ability of humans to mold Mother Nature to our desires. Whether pondering the fate of salmon runs or the health of Northwest forests or a desire to balance wildlife habitat with economic concerns, attempts often have proved humbling yet educational.

One of the latest efforts is the reintroduction of spring chinook, winter steelhead and coho in the upper North Fork of the Lewis River. The program, as detailed in a recent article by Columbian reporter Allen Thomas, is in its infancy, but knowledge is being harvested nearly every day. Among the surprises for biologists is that the coho and steelhead appear to be congregating in a few favored locations, rather than spreading throughout the watershed. “We typically see coho spawning all over the lower Lewis,” said Erik Lesko, a PacifiCorp aquatic biologist. “Upstream of Swift, the distribution is much less robust.”

In 2014, 9,000 adult coho and 1,033 winter steelhead were trucked from the lower North Fork of the Lewis and released at Eagle Cliff at the head of Swift Reservoir, and plans for this year call for releasing adult fish in multiple locations to see how they distribute. As Chris Karchesky, a senior biologist for PacifiCorp said, “This is a work in progress.”

That pretty much sums up all long-term efforts to bolster salmon populations throughout the Columbia River system. The Salmon Recovery Funding Board, for example, boasts of providing grants to local organizations over the years that have resulted in the removal of 220 barriers to fish migration, opening up about 1,000 miles of habitat. The Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board boasts of “healthy forests, healthy rivers and healthy communities” for north central Washington. And taxpayers throughout the region support salmon efforts with about $100 million a year.

The question, then, becomes one of how much restorative influence people can have upon the rivers. When we have arrived at a place where it makes sense to transport fish by truck to put them where humans think they should be, it might be time to rethink policy. Not that rivers and streams generate the only doubts. In the Northwest’s abundant forests, after all, millions of dollars a year are spent fighting wildfires, and millions more are spent protecting northern spotted owls from barred owls.

While legitimate questions can be raised about whether or not such efforts are worthwhile, some insight can be found in a quote from legendary explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau: “The real cure for our environmental problems is to understand that our job is to salvage Mother Nature.”

That, in the end, is what must inform environmental policy. The past is not coming back when it comes to salmon or forests or ocean acidification, but the future is our responsibility.