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RESTORING WILD SALMON TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: CHASING AN ILLUSION
Citation:
Lackey, R T. RESTORING WILD SALMON TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: CHASING AN ILLUSION. Presented at What We Don't Know About Pacific Northwest Fish Runs: An Inquiry into Decision-Making, Portland, OR, July 7-8, 2000.
Description:
Throughout the Pacific Northwest (northern California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and the Columbia Basin portion of British Columbia), many wild salmon "stocks" (a group of interbreeding individuals that is roughly equivalent to a "population") have declined and some have been extirpated. There have been substantial efforts to restore some runs of wild salmon; few have shown much success.
Society's failure to restore wild salmon can be described as a policy conundrum that is characterized by: (1) claims by nearly everyone to be in support of restoring wild salmon runs; (2) competing society priorities which are at least partially mutually exclusive; (3) the region's rapidly growing human population and its pressure on all natural resources (including salmon and their habitats); (4) entrenched policy stances in the salmon restoration debate, usually supported by established bureaucracies; (5) society's expectation that experts can solve the salmon problem; (6) use of experts and scientific "facts" by political proponents to bolster their policy positions; (7) inability of salmon scientists to avoid being placed in a particular policy or political camp; (8) policy positions are couched in scientific terms of scientific imperatives rather than value-based societal preferences.
Even with definitive scientific knowledge --and scientific knowledge will never be complete or certain--restoring most wild salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest would be an arduous and likely proposition. Concurrent with the substantial economioc costs and societal disruption required for an credible attempt at widespread restoration, is a questionable plausibility of ultimate success. Given the appreciable known costs and the dubious probability of success, candid public dialog is warranted to decide whether restoration is an appropriate, such less feasible, public policy objective. Provided with a genuine assessment of the necessary economic and social costs of restoration,