California drought - for salmon, more at stake than dollars
Updated 4:49 pm, Friday, March 14, 2014
In the water crisis that Californians now face, state leaders are necessarily focused on relieving the immediate effects of the drought on citizens. But the salmon and the commercial and sport fishermen who depend on them must be part of the short-term remedial steps.
In the late 19th century, the salmon were a valuable commodity, which made the conflict between the salmon's need for habitat and the Forty-Niners' destructive exploitation of watersheds that washed whole hillsides into rivers in the search of gold seemingly intractable. Spencer Baird, the U.S. fish commissioner, offered a way to resolve the conflict. He said hatcheries would make salmon so abundant that harvest regulation and habitat protection would be unnecessary. Who could resist such a painless solution?
So a myth was born, a myth that relaxed protection of salmon habitat, allowed over-harvest and put the salmon on the path to depletion and, ultimately, listing under the Federal Endangered Species Act.
Taking salmon out of the river and placing them in hatcheries resolved the conflict with the other uses of watersheds, but it didn't help the salmon; in fact, we now know that hatcheries can also be an obstacle to the salmon's survival. Hatcheries never fulfilled Baird's promise. Salmon were over-harvested and their habitat degraded. In their impoverished state, the salmon are vulnerable to events like the current drought.
In some coastal streams, flows are reduced to a trickle, making it impossible for coho salmon to swim upstream to spawning areas. The drought and its effects prompted the closing of fishing on some rivers, including the Russian River. I have seen some speculation that some of California's coastal coho populations might not survive the drought. I hope the recent rains were in time to let the coastal salmon reach their spawning areas.
Unfortunately, over the past century, the salmon management system, rooted in myth, left the salmon so depleted that their economic value will have a hard time competing with big agriculture's need for river water, for industry's need to dilute its wastes and all the others that depend on water from salmon rivers. Roughly 25 million Californians get at least some of their water from sources in the northern, salmon-producing part of the state. If the recent rains don't significantly reduce the water crisis, it will take courageous leaders to resist the inevitable call to relax endangered species protection and delay recovery programs.
The salmon are a commodity, but they are also valued in ways that cannot be measured through market logic and its "invisible hand." The return of the salmon to the rivers of California was an event of such ecological, economic, historical, and even religious (for Indians) value that it was the place-defining event. Even in their depleted state, the return of the salmon is still important to many Californians. It can still evoke a sense of wonder in those who are fortunate enough to experience it, and is important to many who will never see the salmon swimming upstream, headed for home.
Salmon are part of the natural commons; they belong to all of us, and we have a shared responsibility to ensure their persistence. This collective responsibility can bring citizens of a community together for a common purpose. The commons are the glue that holds a community together. The salmon are one part of that glue. In a culture that places a high priority on the unfettered pursuit of individual and corporate wealth, care of the commons is often neglected. Neglect of the commons is even more likely during crisis, when economic factors capture more of the public's attention.
Political leaders need to take the long view and protect salmon because they help define California as a unique place. A future without robust salmon runs is hard for many of us to contemplate.
Jim Lichatowich is a salmon biologist and the author of "Salmon Without Rivers: A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis," (Island Pr