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FACTS, FANTASIES, AND FORECASTS: THE FUTURE OF WILD PACIFIC SALMON
Citation:
Lackey, R T. FACTS, FANTASIES, AND FORECASTS: THE FUTURE OF WILD PACIFIC SALMON. Presented at Environment Matters Lecture Series, Illahee Society, Portland, OR, December 4, 2003.
Description:
Throughout the far western contiguous United States (California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho), many wild salmon stocks have declined and some have disappeared. The decline has taken place over the past 150 years, but there have been decades when the numbers increased. Overall, wild salmon runs generally are now less than 10% of 1850 levels. The decline was caused by an extensively studied, but still poorly understood, combination of factors, including:
intense commercial, recreational, subsistence, and, especially now, mixed-stock fishing;
freshwater and estuarine habitat alteration due to urbanizing, farming, logging, and ranching practices, as well as pollutants from a myriad of sources;
dams built and operated for electricity generation, flood control, irrigation, and other purposes;
water withdrawals for agricultural, municipal, or commercial requirements;
stream and river alteration, especially channeling, diking, and bank stabilizing;
stocking from hatcheries to supplement diminished runs or produce salmon for the retail market;
predation by marine mammals, birds, and other fish species;
competition, especially with exotic fish species, many of which are better adapted to the altered aquatic environment;
diseases and parasites;
decreases in marine-derived nutrient replenishment of watersheds through annual decomposition of spawned-out salmon; and
possibly others.
Determining the relative importance of the many causal agents has been complicated by the overlapping influences of random and cyclic changes in ocean and climatic conditions. The runs remain relatively low for many of the same reasons that caused the original decline. In spite of the failure over the long-term of most wild salmon restoration efforts, the goal (and current legal requirement) of restoring these runs still appears to enjoy widespread public support. Billions of dollars continue to be spent in a so-far-failed attempt to reverse the long-term, overall decline. How can it be that the direct causes of the decline are reasonably well known, have been studied in great detail, and the public appears to be supportive of changing the downward trajectory for wild salmon, yet the long-term prognosis is poor for California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho? The answer is that effecting any change in the long-term downward trend for wild salmon is probably futile in the absence of substantial shifts in the core drivers that are expressed as the proximal causes of the decline. Except for climate and ocean conditions, core drivers over which society has minimal control, society can control other core drivers:
the economic rules of the game, especially the international and domestic drive for economic efficiency;
the increasing scarcity and competition for key natural resources, especially for high-quality water;
the rapidly increasing number of humans in the region and the requirement to meet their basic needs; and
individual and collective lifestyle choices and priorities.
Without substantial changes in these four interrelated core drivers, the status of wild salmon through this century will likely continue the well documented downward path of the past 150 years. An impartial assessment of current individual and societal priorities, as revealed by actual choices and behavior, provides little indication that the public appears willing to make substantial changes in any of the core drivers. Not all salmon restoration options require draconian changes in these drivers. There are options that are likely to be ecologically achievable and appreciably less socially disruptive than current wild salmon recovery strategies, but these options also have much more modest restoration objectives, require extensive hatchery intervention, and/or involve creating protected areas.