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RESTORING WILD SALMON TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: WHAT DOES RISK ASSESSMENT OFFER?
Citation:
Lackey, R T. RESTORING WILD SALMON TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST: WHAT DOES RISK ASSESSMENT OFFER? Presented at Annual Meeting, North Pacific International Chapter, Americal Fisheries Society, Mt. Vernon, WA, April 10-12, 2000.
Description:
Over the past two decades, risk assessment has become the most popular analytic approach to evaluate ecological policy options. Its principal use has been to evaluate relatively simple technical questions (e.g., regulatory actions associated with specific chemicals or hazardous waste sites). Recently, however, there has been interest in applying risk assessment to "complex" ecological policy problems such as the decline of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest). Although its use has become commonplace and widely accepted, especially among technocrats, risk assessment remains contentious. The most heated debates revolve around delineating the initial risk "question" to be answered. In analyzing salmon decline as a public policy issue, for example, what precisely is the "risk" question being asked? The answer is far from self-evident, nor is there likely to be a consensus any time soon. Ecological risk assessment will be most beneficial when it evokes policy debate centered on society's trade-offs, rather than on scientific proxies for policy preferences. Otherwise, it will become the latest in a century long procession of analytical tools used in salmon policy making, each of which has played a role, albeit limited.