Northwest Salmon fading fast

By Mark Schleifstein,
Staff writer

Answering a mysterious call from somewhere deep within, salmon and trout each year make their remarkable journey from the Pacific Ocean up the rivers and streams of California, Washington, Oregon and Idaho to spawn and die within 100 yards of where their lives began.
Sixteen million salmon once surged through the region's rivers. In recent years, however, some of the massive runs have been reduced to a trickle.
In November, the Chamber of Commerce in Lewiston, Idaho, whose waters used to be abundant spawning grounds, was forced to cancel its annual Steelhead Trout Derby. State wildlife officials had determined that the number of steelhead returning to the Clearwater River would be below safe spawning levels, and ordered all fishers to follow catch-and-release rules.
"It just wouldn't work," chamber spokesman Fritz Adams said. "You have to bring the fish in to be weighed, and the fish die."
Adams said the week long derby, in its fifth year, usually has 1,500 participants, many from out of state, so the blow to tourism income was significant.
The story is the same all along the cascading streams and quiet mountain lakes of the Pacific Northwest: The fish are not coming back.
Their paths blocked by huge hydroelectric dams and their spawning grounds spoiled by pollution, runoff and irrigation projects, Pacific salmon and trout are at the center of the nation's most complicated and dramatic battle over habitat protection.
"Pacific salmon have disappeared from about 40 percent of their historical breeding ranges in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California over the past century, and many remaining populations are severely depressed in areas where they were formerly abundant," the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said last year in a report on the future of salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
"If the areas in which salmon are threatened or endangered are added to the areas where they are now extinct, the total area with losses is two thirds of their previous range in the four states," the report said.
The battle over the future of the fish is being framed by timber interests, hydroelectric power plant operators and developers on one side, and commercial and recreational fishers and environmentalists on the other. The focus of the debate is whether management of the rivers and forests should be tilted to ensure the survival of the fish and wildlife or in favor of providing cheaper electricity and farm products and protecting jobs generated by the logging industry--or if there is a way to do both.
"Those of us from the West come from a place characterized by rough individualism and a sense of personal freedom," said Amy Solomon, executive director of the Northwest Renewable Resources Center in Seattle, who has been in the midst of negotiations among landowners, environmentalists, fishers and Indian tribes over the rights to salmon and logging.
"We have big trees and big fish, and, when you add them up you get big problems."
Overfishing certainly played a major role in the early decline of the salmon and trout; populations were down in the 1930s, even before the dams were built. But environmentalists and state and federal experts say protecting the spawning grounds is the key to long-term recovery.
The battle has recently escalated after congressional Republicans succeeded in rolling back portions of the federal Endangered Species Act, used to restrict development and land use
When a species is declared threatened or endangered, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service formulates a plan to restore the species. In most cases, these plans focus on habitat loss, and run head-on into the concerns of landowners and timber companies that want to harvest trees in federally owned forests where the streams run.
Two birds listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act--the Northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet--use West Coast old-growth forests for nesting. Both birds rely on fish, including salmon, for food. Several salmon species also are listed or proposed for listing as endangered or threatened.
Habitat protection plans aimed at each of these species would have made much of the old-growth forest in the Northwest off-limits to timber removal, to protect the birds' nesting areas and the streambeds where the fish spawn.
Timber interests have objected to the habitat designations, saying that thousands of jobs have been or will be lost by putting the forests off-limits.
Congress approved a provision last year that allows timber companies to cut damaged trees in federal forests while being insulated from lawsuits under environmental laws, including compliance with the habitat protection plans.
Environmentalists and the U.S. Forest Service have complained that timber companies are interpreting the provision liberally and destroying valuable habitat while they rapidly move to cut down trees.
But the timber industry and U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who wrote the timber salvage measure, say the environmental consequences of the harvesting are minor, compared with the lost timber jobs caused by environmental legislation in the Northwest during the past 10 years.
President Clinton agreed to the provision as part of a budget compromise last summer, but he has joined a growing number of congressmen who are calling for the provision's repeal.
Timber companies may have won the public relations battle with the spotted owl, but they are expected to have a tougher time gaining support from Northwest residents who see the fish as a cultural icon as well as a tourist and sport fishing attraction.
Salmon are to the Northwest what crawfish and shrimp are to south Louisiana.