Salmon conservation
Salmon habitat can be degraded by many different factors including land development, timber harvest, or resource extraction.
Wild salmon in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and southern British Columbia have been on a 160+ year downward trend and are now at very low levels.
[4] In California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and southern British Columbia, many runs are reduced to less than 10% of their historical numbers; some have disappeared.
Throughout the region, many wild salmon stocks (a group of interbreeding individuals that is roughly equivalent to a "population") have declined and some have disappeared.
There are still relatively healthy runs of wild salmon (and habitat) in some locations such as the coastal watersheds of Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and some areas of southern British Columbia.
1820–1840 — With the arrival of trappers in the Pacific Northwest in the early 19th century, a systematic, intense harvest of beavers began.
Large numbers of beaver can considerably alter the aquatic environment, in most cases improving salmon rearing habitat.
By the 1850s, excessive harvest and the impacts of mining activities had decimated salmon in streams in and surrounding the California Central Valley.
Later, there were calls for the creation of salmon hatcheries to provide supplemental stocking to overcome the devastating effects of mining operations.
By 1900, stocking from hatcheries had largely won out over preserving or restoring natural habitat as the preferred recovery strategy.
Over the next several decades, millions of dollars were spent to develop an elaborate system of dams and canals in the Klamath Basin (and elsewhere).
Massive public works projects, such the high dams of the Columbia Basin and elsewhere, were built even though the anticipated and ruinous effect on wild salmon was understood.
1955–65 – The technology for cheap, effective home and commercial air conditioning developed rapidly after World War II.
Directly relevant to salmon runs, electricity demand is now high for both winter and summer, necessitating more generating capacity and transmission lines.
In the last 20 years, Washington State Fisheries, in cooperation with local tribes, has decreased the Puget Sound salmon harvest by as much as 90%.
The problem with this method is that the reaches between the core and satellite areas are given a low intrinsic potential, which may result in a lower priority for protection.
They call this the "Proactive Sanctuary Strategy", which aims to preserve the stream habitats in the western United States and Canada with particularly high values, areas considered "salmon strongholds".
The idea was revived in the early 1990s when conservationists realized the shortcomings and lack of coordination between efforts by federal, state, and local authorities.
The first aims to create "a series of intact and diverse (in terms of life histories, genetics, and species) Pacific salmon populations in full basin sanctuaries.
The final principle establishes a "system of strongholds (regional priority sub-basins)"[2] which would contain the most biologically significant populations and habitats.
Such limits may include exclusions from areas of great value to salmon such as ideal spawning grounds or places where young fish may be vulnerable.
Until this kind of planning and funding is a reality, smaller scale projects like the one recently adopted in Puget Sound represent a bridge between old and new methods.
By combining the currently most practical basin sanctuary methods with proven legislation and community cooperation, salmon habitat in the Puget Sound will be well on its way to recovery and preservation.
Recently efforts in Northern California have been successful in increasing the size of very young salmon in a short period of time.
[11][12] Pacific salmon use a variety of freshwater and marine habitats and during migrations cross multiple international borders which makes effective conservation strategies difficult to organize and implement.
For example, native populations of these species are found in watersheds in Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, Russia, Alaska, Yukon, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and California, as well as in much of the North Pacific Ocean.
Salmon are a very resilient species, but human causes are driving them to the brink of disaster as we continue to invade their habitat space.
Dams, population growth, and other human factors are significantly affecting the abundance and distribution of salmon runs around the Pacific Rim.
As Mindy Cameron wrote in a 2002 Seattle Times article, "billions of dollars have been spent to reverse declining salmon runs, with no guarantee of success.
