River Of No Return Difficult Choices Ahead We Love The Idea Of Bountiful Salmon, But Attaining That May Require Painful Lifestyle Changes

Special Report - Part 3

Salmon are the symbol and the enemy of much that the Northwest values.

They represent the wonder and wildness we treasure. But their survival in the Columbia River basin may require painful changes to the economic and political fabric we’ve created.

It’s a reality the region hasn’t faced. We want it all: the cheapest electricity in the country, a year-round navigation channel all the way to Idaho and abundant salmon.

“The public has asked for everything at once, and that’s why there’s a conflict in what we should do,” said Doug Marker, a staff member for the Northwest Power Planning Council.

“It’s like running the decathlon with one leg. What you get are all these half-steps and compromises.”

Two agencies in charge of saving the fish - the Power Planning Council and National Marine Fisheries Service - have been slapped by federal judges for being too deferential to industry and the status quo.

A federal judge said three years ago the situation “literally cries out for major overhaul.”

That hasn’t happened yet.

It needs to - and not just for the sake of salmon.

This environmental crisis is not the last complex problem we will face. It’s only one of many that will test our ability to solve problems as a region.

“When you start to look at allocation of water and whether there will be enough and other questions about quality of life, you can see problems like this are going to reappear and reappear,” said James Lichatowich, a Sequim, Wash., biologist.

“The Northwest has always had a high quality of life. It’s just been here until now. But in the future, it’s going to be here only if we work at it.”

So far, working at it has meant throwing nearly $3 billion at the salmon problem and generating more finger pointing than results.

“We have this huge stone, and everyone’s trying to move it with ropes, by hand, pulling in opposite directions,” said Robert Walton of the Public Power Council, a trade association of public utilities.

Responsibility is spread so wide over so many agencies and programs, it is too thin to support accountability.

There’s no overall framework, based on science, to structure recovery efforts or yoke agencies together.

This is discouragingly old news. In the past three years, six major reviews of the salmon problem by independent evaluators and policy groups have called for better research, monitoring, evaluation and organization.

Some steps have been taken, but it’s too soon to tell if they will work.

Into this mess comes the Endangered Species Act, like a cop crashing a keg party.

Three Snake River salmon runs were listed for protection under the act in 1991 and 1992.

The listing raises false hopes of finally getting serious about saving Snake River salmon when it may be too late.

“Cynicism is born out of the fact we are in such desperate straits and we truly don’t know what to do,” said Brian Gorman of the fisheries service.

“The chief and maybe fatal flaw of the ESA is it doesn’t allow you to even take the patient to the hospital until the heart has nearly stopped.”

Outsiders are scratching their heads at our stumbling, spare-no-expense crusade to save Snake River salmon.

“The effort is essentially deranged,” said Charles Mann of Amherst, Mass., co-author of “Noah’s Choice,” a book about the Endangered Species Act.

“What I don’t get is why you don’t start on the easy ones first. The Quinault River. The Elwha. Figure that out. Then say, ‘Why not try the Snake?’

“I don’t understand why you are spending huge amounts of money on a problem you don’t know how to solve… If you were a Martian, you’d say, ‘Bottom of the list. That’s too hard. Where else would a timely injection of cash make a difference?”’

It may be too late

Trade-offs are precisely what the Endangered Species Act does not allow.

Once a species is protected under the act, a duty is created to save it - regardless of the cost, likelihood of success, or anything else.

“You have a law that says we have to save everything. It promises the near-impossible, so people keep demanding it,” said Mark Plummer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a conservative Seattle think tank.

Some scientists believe threatened and endangered Snake River salmon are probably doomed.

“It may be a case of a truly unsolvable problem. I worry that we are going to spend a lot of money and still lose those runs because they are too far gone,” said Ross Heath, former dean of the University of Washington’s College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences.

“Then as a society, will we have lost more than we had to? It’s a question we don’t like to ask.”

More fighting is a luxury the region can’t afford, said Alston Chase of Montana, author of “In a Dark Wood,” a book about conservation.

“We have to ask what it is we are trying to achieve and work toward it. Environmentalists and resource users are equally legitimate. No one has the moral high ground here.”

What’s needed are reasonable goals.

“The first step is for everyone to lay aside the rhetoric that the loss of one more salmon will be the end of the world, or one more water right will be the end of the economy,” said Plummer of the Discovery Institute.

“We need a plan that forces sacrifices on all parties. We’ve been spending an enormous amount of money trying to achieve the perfect. The biggest thing we have to learn is how to be satisfied with the good.”

If change is to come, it better be soon. The salmon are running out of time.

A new level of technofix

For Snake River chinook, it’s come to this: Idaho Fish and Game workers raid backcountry streams for baby wild fish, then bring them back to a hatchery, captives of the latest salmon-saving experiment.

The fish are raised in tanks at the Clearwater Hatchery near Orofino, Idaho. Four years later, they graduate to a 10-foot-wide, backyard pool on a black asphalt parking lot.

The 18-inch-long chinook circle endlessly, tucked under netting to keep them from jumping out. They are fed pellets by an automatic fish feeder.

These chinook should be in the ocean, cruising thousands of miles of open water, then rushing through fresh, cold rapids to return to their home gravel to spawn.

But no salmon have done that in Idaho for decades.

Instead most are born in a hatchery, strained from the river with screens, computer tagged and hauled to the ocean in barges. They return, if at all, by hoisting themselves over fish ladders and struggling through miles of lazy reservoirs.

The fish in the parking lot are pilots in a new level of technofix intervention. They’ll grow to adulthood in captivity, then be slit open and their eggs and sperm mixed in a plastic bucket.

Their offspring will be flown by helicopter to backcountry streams, and dumped into the water from fire buckets, to begin a new generation. It might work. No one knows.

Until then, hatchery workers tend the parked salmon like babies in an incubator. The workers seem excited, a little bit proud.

They want wild salmon back as much as anybody. But still, to them the parked fish are kind of neat. So far, they’ve kept the fish alive. Even after cutting Mother Nature out of the loop completely.

The question is for how long.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: These sidebars appeared with the story: CALLS FOR REFORM There are calls to reform the salmon recovery effort, including: Use private contractors to do some of the recovery work, from building irrigation screens to fencing streams and routine construction. Private industry can do some things better, faster and cheaper. Change the way fish and wildlife contracts are selected. Currently, federal, state, and tribal fish managers recommend projects for funding and also help decide which ones should get the money. This creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. Keep better track of how the money is spent. The Bonneville Power Administration shouldn’t worry whether field audits and other sensible reviews of salmon spending offend fish and wildlife contractors. Build a framework to structure salmon recovery based on the best available, peerreviewed, independent science. Monitor for results, preferably using independent, peer-reviewed analysis. To address some of these concerns, a U.S. Senate committee passed legislation this month that would require independent scientific review of salmon recovery proposals. The National Marine Fisheries Service and the Northwest Power Planning Council also are mulling creation of a five-year detailed plan to organize fish and wildlife recovery work.

WHOM TO CONTACT Here are the addresses of major government agencies working to save Columbia Basin salmon. National Marine Fisheries Service - F/NWO 7600 Sandpoint Way NE BIN-C-15700, Building 1, Seattle, Wash. 98115 Northwest Power Planning Council - Central Office, 851 S.W. Sixth Avenue, Suite 1100, Portland, Ore. 97204 Bonneville Power Administration - CKM P.O. Box 3621, Portland, Ore. 97208 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - Walla Walla District, 201 N. Third, Walla Walla, Wash. 99362 Idaho Department of Fish and Game - 600 S. Walnut, Boise, Idaho 83707 Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife - 600 Capitol Way N., Olympia, Wash. 98501-1091