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http://www.wildsalmon.org/patagonia/

 

 

Cutting the Noose From Salmon's Neck

David James Duncan

 

For years, David James Duncan and Patagonia have worked as committed,

effective advocates to protect and restore the amazing and imperiled wild salmon

of the Columbia & Snake Rivers. As an award-winning author, David's eloquence,

reverence, and passion for wild places and wild creatures is without rival. And

Patagonia's conservation policies and programs are cutting-edge. Patagonia was

once among just a handful of companies that recognized that sustainable

practices and conservation advocacy are good for business, good for the economy,

and good for society. Today, a growing number of companies are following in

Patagonia's visionary footsteps.

 

THE PACIFIC OCEAN COVERS 70 MILLION square miles of this planet. A vast network

of birthing rivers is needed to fill a biologically meaningful portion of so

great a sea with salmon. One of the most crucial of such networks is the

Columbia/Snake river system, a single great Y-shaped flow, each wing of the Y a

thousand miles in length, draining 260,000 square miles of continent all told.

 

The entire salmon and steelhead population of the Columbia wing was destroyed in

a day, fifty years ago, by the Grand Coulee Dam. The Snake wing is now the only

significant salmon sanctuary left in this system. Thanks to the Wilderness Act,

hundreds of its tributaries remain intact and healthy. Yet extinction for the

remaining Snake stocks is predicted to begin in 2017 and be complete a decade or

so later. The problem is the infamous lower Snake River dams. A 130-mile

corridor of flaccid, desert-heated, predator-filled slackwater and four killing

sets of turbines sit between the Pacific and the salmon's vast wild refuge,

killing in past years up to 97 percent of ocean-bound juveniles and 40 percent

of returning adults every year.

 

In just 25 years the dams have wiped out 90 percent of the system's salmon,

extirpating many discrete strains. Three billion taxpayer and ratepayer dollars

have been spent " techno-fixing " the dams, yet every surviving salmon is

endangered. Hatcheries cannot replace these salmon. The " man-made " strains are

essentially just batches of identical first-cousins, forced to inbreed till they

self-destruct due to technological incest. It is wild stocks alone that give

hatchery and net-pen salmon their fleeting viability. Without wild salmon in a

river system, there are soon no salmon.

 

An industrial economy can only remain profitable by achieving lasting balance

with the natural economy that supports it. A majority of Americans, including

editorial boards of scores of major newspapers, now embrace this view. The New

York Times, for instance, in April 2000, called the lower Snake dams " a colossal

ecological mistake " and states that " an unprejudiced calculation of costs and

benefits " would force Congress to fund their breaching. When ex-Senator Slade

Gorton saw this editorial, he responded with a tirade in the Times, claiming

that breaching the dams would " destroy the way of life in eastern Washington,

eliminate our transportation system, raise electricity rates and cost our

farmers their irrigation water. "

 

I have bad news for Mr. Gorton: in September 2002 the Rand Corporation - a

conservative research group of sterling reputation among Republicans and

Democrats alike - completed an in-depth study of Northwest energy issues,

including analysis of the four dams' removal. The report concludes that removing

the lower Snake River dams could in fact have a positive economic impact,

bringing new jobs and fresh economic activity to eastern Washington and the

entire Northwest.

 

The Snake River dams are Cold War relics. They were commissioned by a 1955

Congress to power Hanford City as it built plutonium triggers for a nuclear

arsenal aimed at the USSR. They were opposed by President Eisenhower, by the

Army Corps that later built them, by the region's Indian tribes, the West

Coast's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry, and the majority of the Northwest

populace. In the quarter-century since they came on line, nine-tenths of the

inland West's wild salmon have been destroyed, as feared.

 

 

The USSR is dissolved. Hanford City has been a radioactive ghost town for forty

years. The barging channel created by the Snake River dams is like an insanely

misplaced Panama Canal leading nowhere but to tiny Lewiston, Idaho. This " canal "

transports almost nothing but wheat, and runs parallel to freeways and railroads

that could carry the same cargo. Its maintenance costs taxpayers' billions, and

damages the economies of scores of towns in Idaho, Washington, Oregon and up and

down a thousand miles of Pacific Coast. It inflicts religious persecution and

economic apartheid upon 13 Indian tribes whose world view and way of life

centers on the salmon. Its dams provide no flood control. One of the four

provides irrigation, but the water can be pumped to farms from a free-flowing

river with the dam removed. The hydropower provided could be immediately

replaced by existing power sources, or as the Rand study recommends, by solar

and wind generation. In the Army Corp's hearings on dam removal in the year

2000, 80 percent of those who testified in 12 Northwest cities called for dam

breaching. Written support was even more unanimous and poured in from all over

the United States. In rivers where dams have been breached, salmon have returned

in astonishing numbers.

 

The best thing to come out of the Northwest for ten thousand years is the wild

salmon. These magnificent fish - to borrow a trope from Aldo Leopold's A Sand

County Almanac - " will always exist in books and in museums, but these are

effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. " Book salmon

cannot turn the face of the lower Columbia into a glorious crimson cauldron in

the rays of a setting sun. They can't nourish a bear cub, otter whelp, eagle,

orca or child. They can't serve as the sacramental blessing of the tribes. They

can't send energy shooting from the hidden depths of a green river up a line

into the hands, body and heart of a fishing woman or man. Wild salmon show us

how to give of ourselves for the sake of things greater than ourselves. Their

mass passage from the sea's free and invisible into the river's sacrificial and

seen is not just every American's but every earth-born man, woman and child's

birthright. Their bodies are the needle, their migration the thread, that sew

this big broken region into a whole. No kilowatt can replace this. No barge can

transport it.

 

 

 

Cutting the Noose From Salmon's Neck

David James Duncan

 

For years, David James Duncan and Patagonia have worked as committed,

effective advocates to protect and restore the amazing and imperiled wild salmon

of the Columbia & Snake Rivers. As an award-winning author, David's eloquence,

reverence, and passion for wild places and wild creatures is without rival. And

Patagonia's conservation policies and programs are cutting-edge. Patagonia was

once among just a handful of companies that recognized that sustainable

practices and conservation advocacy are good for business, good for the economy,

and good for society. Today, a growing number of companies are following in

Patagonia's visionary footsteps.

 

THE PACIFIC OCEAN COVERS 70 MILLION square miles of this planet. A vast network

of birthing rivers is needed to fill a biologically meaningful portion of so

great a sea with salmon. One of the most crucial of such networks is the

Columbia/Snake river system, a single great Y-shaped flow, each wing of the Y a

thousand miles in length, draining 260,000 square miles of continent all told.

 

The entire salmon and steelhead population of the Columbia wing was destroyed in

a day, fifty years ago, by the Grand Coulee Dam. The Snake wing is now the only

significant salmon sanctuary left in this system. Thanks to the Wilderness Act,

hundreds of its tributaries remain intact and healthy. Yet extinction for the

remaining Snake stocks is predicted to begin in 2017 and be complete a decade or

so later. The problem is the infamous lower Snake River dams. A 130-mile

corridor of flaccid, desert-heated, predator-filled slackwater and four killing

sets of turbines sit between the Pacific and the salmon's vast wild refuge,

killing in past years up to 97 percent of ocean-bound juveniles and 40 percent

of returning adults every year.

 

In just 25 years the dams have wiped out 90 percent of the system's salmon,

extirpating many discrete strains. Three billion taxpayer and ratepayer dollars

have been spent " techno-fixing " the dams, yet every surviving salmon is

endangered. Hatcheries cannot replace these salmon. The " man-made " strains are

essentially just batches of identical first-cousins, forced to inbreed till they

self-destruct due to technological incest. It is wild stocks alone that give

hatchery and net-pen salmon their fleeting viability. Without wild salmon in a

river system, there are soon no salmon.

 

An industrial economy can only remain profitable by achieving lasting balance

with the natural economy that supports it. A majority of Americans, including

editorial boards of scores of major newspapers, now embrace this view. The New

York Times, for instance, in April 2000, called the lower Snake dams " a colossal

ecological mistake " and states that " an unprejudiced calculation of costs and

benefits " would force Congress to fund their breaching. When ex-Senator Slade

Gorton saw this editorial, he responded with a tirade in the Times, claiming

that breaching the dams would " destroy the way of life in eastern Washington,

eliminate our transportation system, raise electricity rates and cost our

farmers their irrigation water. "

 

I have bad news for Mr. Gorton: in September 2002 the Rand Corporation - a

conservative research group of sterling reputation among Republicans and

Democrats alike - completed an in-depth study of Northwest energy issues,

including analysis of the four dams' removal. The report concludes that removing

the lower Snake River dams could in fact have a positive economic impact,

bringing new jobs and fresh economic activity to eastern Washington and the

entire Northwest.

 

The Snake River dams are Cold War relics. They were commissioned by a 1955

Congress to power Hanford City as it built plutonium triggers for a nuclear

arsenal aimed at the USSR. They were opposed by President Eisenhower, by the

Army Corps that later built them, by the region's Indian tribes, the West

Coast's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry, and the majority of the Northwest

populace. In the quarter-century since they came on line, nine-tenths of the

inland West's wild salmon have been destroyed, as feared.

 

 

The USSR is dissolved. Hanford City has been a radioactive ghost town for forty

years. The barging channel created by the Snake River dams is like an insanely

misplaced Panama Canal leading nowhere but to tiny Lewiston, Idaho. This " canal "

transports almost nothing but wheat, and runs parallel to freeways and railroads

that could carry the same cargo. Its maintenance costs taxpayers' billions, and

damages the economies of scores of towns in Idaho, Washington, Oregon and up and

down a thousand miles of Pacific Coast. It inflicts religious persecution and

economic apartheid upon 13 Indian tribes whose world view and way of life

centers on the salmon. Its dams provide no flood control. One of the four

provides irrigation, but the water can be pumped to farms from a free-flowing

river with the dam removed. The hydropower provided could be immediately

replaced by existing power sources, or as the Rand study recommends, by solar

and wind generation. In the Army Corp's hearings on dam removal in the year

2000, 80 percent of those who testified in 12 Northwest cities called for dam

breaching. Written support was even more unanimous and poured in from all over

the United States. In rivers where dams have been breached, salmon have returned

in astonishing numbers.

 

The best thing to come out of the Northwest for ten thousand years is the wild

salmon. These magnificent fish - to borrow a trope from Aldo Leopold's A Sand

County Almanac - " will always exist in books and in museums, but these are

effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. " Book salmon

cannot turn the face of the lower Columbia into a glorious crimson cauldron in

the rays of a setting sun. They can't nourish a bear cub, otter whelp, eagle,

orca or child. They can't serve as the sacramental blessing of the tribes. They

can't send energy shooting from the hidden depths of a green river up a line

into the hands, body and heart of a fishing woman or man. Wild salmon show us

how to give of ourselves for the sake of things greater than ourselves. Their

mass passage from the sea's free and invisible into the river's sacrificial and

seen is not just every American's but every earth-born man, woman and child's

birthright. Their bodies are the needle, their migration the thread, that sew

this big broken region into a whole. No kilowatt can replace this. No barge can

transport it.

 

 

 

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