Rocky Barker has recently penned another impressive piece for the Idaho Statesman – Everything We’re Doing to Replace Vanishing Salmon Might Be Killing Them Off Faster. The intro from the article –
As once-uncountable Northwest salmon stocks have dwindled, humans have tried a number of remedies to bolster or replace the disappearing fish.
We’ve caught them at dams and trucked and barged them past obstacles. When the fish return home, we strip them of their eggs, fertilize them in buckets and grow new generations of baby salmon in hatchery raceways.
But what if humans have it all wrong?
What if those efforts are not just failing to work, but actually reducing the salmon’s odds of survival? What if hatchery fish do more than just dilute the genetic fitness of the wild, native salmon that evolved to live and spawn in particular conditions in specific stretches of individual streams?
What if the billions of human-raised fish rob food from native fish competing in the limited waters of damaged ecosystems?
What if by focusing on creating more fish for people to catch and eat, we’ve simply pushed the weakened salmon closer to extinction?
That’s the conclusion of biologists Rick Williams and Jim Lichatowich, who argue that our reliance on hatcheries, our indiscriminate catch techniques, and our destruction and fragmentation of habitat are at the root of the fish’s struggles. The secret to saving the resilient, adaptable salmon might be simply getting out of their way.
“We’ve lost faith in nature,” said Williams. “Because of our long reliance on substitute nature, we’ve lost faith in salmon to reproduce itself in quality habitat.”
If you have any interest whatsoever (and you should) in Northwest Salmon, and haven’t read the full article, click on through the link above and git ‘er done today.
The biologists referenced in Barker published a much larger piece in July 2017 – Wild Pacific Salmon: A Threatened Legacy; click through to download a copy of the 46-page report. It’s damned impressive and a clarion call for a change in approach…
