Closing the Salmon Season

San Francisco -- For the first time in history there will be no West Coast salmon fishing season. The unexpected collapse of the Sacramento River's fall run chinook fishery led the Pacific Fishery Management Council to vote to cancel all commercial salmon fishing this year from the California coast to north-central Oregon. "This is a complete disaster by any standard," said Don Hansen, the council chairman.

The suspected culprits?  Diversion of fresh water to agribusiness by the federal government, and global warming's disruption of the ocean's food chains. In reality, the salmon season was only a shadow of its former self, because the other salmon runs on rivers like the Klamath and the San Joaquin had already been destroyed. An article in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of how the mismanagement of the Klamath by the Bush administration had set the stage for this year's catastrophe, and how that mismanagement has devastated the Yurok people who live along the lower Klamath and rely on its fisheries.

There's a debate about whether it's too late -- in a scientific sense -- to bring this fishery back. But the more fundamental question is whether we can muster the moral will to restore natural ecosystems even when it is feasible. We know how to restore a great many landscapes and species -- we simply have to give natural processes more room to do what they are best at, which is create and expand life. Yet last week at the Global Philanthropy forum, in a panel on the problem of deforestation in places like Haiti, I asked for examples of large-scale restoration of forests or grasslands. I offered one example -- U.S. soil conservation programs launched in the 1930s did, indeed, dramatically restore the American heartland (at least, until the agricultural fence-post to fence-post policies of the Nixon Administration reversed that). And the Conservation Reserve program launched in the 1980s also worked -- until the corn ethanol boom tempted farmers to withdraw from it.

But those were successes born in an era of agricultural abundance. On last week's panel of very knowledgable people, not one could offer a story of large-scale success during a historical moment of scarcity -- which is what we are facing now, with so many of our resources. There are some smaller-scale successes with fisheries, but if we really want to reforest the world to help curb global warming, or restore the oceans to maintain our fisheries, we are going to need to act in a much more calculatedly self-serving way -- which ironically means being much more generous with nature. Leaving large-scale ecosystem restoration to The Market just won't cut it.

Comments

[sheila]

"which ironically means being much more generous with nature. Leaving large-scale ecosystem restoration to The Market just won't cut it."

Uh, so are you saying it's "generous with nature" to kill off hundreds of thousands of acres of it for gigantic wind and solar farms instead of aggressively promoting conservation and local, decentralized wind and solar on previously developed land? Because I find just the opposite to be true. When Carl Zichella bloviates about the "costs" of rooftop solar, and cronies up with Big Energy, he never, ever factors in the "costs" of total desert ecosystem death, even though we see examples (like the salmon) over and over and over.

As you say, the Market cannot be the arbiter of what is good for nature, so why does Carl play cheerleader for "cheaper" solar and wind projects which totally, permanently and unnecessarily destroy enormous wilderness areas and which only profit utility chokeholds? Why does he not see that the Market would be better served by having 25 million small renewable energy producers and NO eminent domain, groundwater depletion and wilderness losses?

Ivanphah, for example (concentrating solar) will suck at least 35 million gallons of groundwater/year out of the vital desert habitat. My PV panels? not a drop. But yet Carl Z works much harder for Ivanpah than for me? Ironic, again.

[jimrl8]

Despite the West Coast Chinook harvest season, our best source of wild Chinook salmon is still available from the Alaskan fishery, one of the few truly sustainable fisheries left in the world. Please consult the NRDC's website and wallet cards for health and sustainability-related consumer recommendations.

(Side note #2: To the author, Carl Pope, I wish to recommend that you consult the 6th or, perhaps the 7th edition of "Names of Fishes" to see that the correct spelling of Chinook is capitalized as I have done here, since the name is taken from a Native American tribal origin; in fact, the NY Times article that is linked in this story did choose to capitalize Chinook. The change was made and accepted several years ago despite the Associated Press' slow response to this change. Our own Sacramento Bee is very reluctant to correct this point, as I've heard, because they are waiting for the AP to lead the way.)

[Rokjok777]

I'm lucky enough to have participated in the last good year for San Francisco salmon, 2005. It was awesome to be able to go out on the ocean within sight of the city and the Golden Gate bridge, and bring back a superhealthy bounty for my family. Talk about local food! California's history (as the history of most other places) is a story of serial over-exploitation of natural resources. First it was cattle and hides, which were shipped around the Cape to make leather boots in Boston. That died when the state got overgrazed. Then it was whales, which supplied lamp oil to the world, we all know how that ended. The seeming inexhaustable fisheries of Monterey Bay were next, John Steinbeck's famous Cannery Row. Now gone, the buildings boarded up. Next was redwoods, now these giants can only be seen in 5% of their former range. Then there was gold. Now mostly gone. Now all those tract homes in the Central Valley, built with sub-prime financing, used up all the salmon spawning habitat. I hope people can think for a minute what this means for the future of our lifestyle, and our species...

[Rockerbabe]

Now that salmon maybe off the dinner plate for at least a year, probably for more than a year; all of us fish lovers will be hunting around for a substitute - assuming there are acceptable substitutes, although, I can't think of one item that could ever replace fresh salmon. [And no, I will not under any circumstances, eat anything from china.] I pray and hope that the US fisheries are able to take steps to reverse this collapse before we have a new President.
It is so sad that the Bushies and their market pals have no respect for wildlife, the people in general and salmon in particular. The farmers are just going to have to make some sacrifices, like the rest of us, if we are all going to survive. But then again, Bush and Co. has shown a callous disregard for the needs of the poor and hungry as well as the homeless and soon to be even more homeless as the forclosure scandal unwinds. This sad, selfish period of time in America is slowly coming to an end, and I for one, will be delighted to see a change.