Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

River Of No Return Spawning Bureaucracy Mountains Of Money Poured Into A Multitude Of Projects Have Had Little Effect In Saving The Northwest’s Premier Fish

Lynda V. Mapes Staff Writer

The money slips away like schools of silvery chinook.

Millions of dollars pour into jungle gyms of pipes, flumes, screens and fish ladders intended to get salmon past massive Columbia and Snake river dams.

Millions more support an army of salmon experts, scientists and political appointees - some paid $75,000 a year to create fish policy.

Another $3 million a year outfits a high-tech police force to nab salmon poachers. Add $4.3 million for a bounty program that pays fishermen to catch salmon-eating squawfish.

In all, taxpayers and electric ratepayers have dumped nearly $3 billion into rebuilding Columbia Basin salmon runs since 1980.

The fish are tracked with sonar, radio tags, microchips, video cameras, and even balloons embedded in their fins.

They are drugged, counted, examined and sorted. Regulated, studied, propagated and managed. Shipped in barges, pickups and tanker trucks.

Somehow, amid all this activity, the most important thing is missing: results. In this Alice-in-Wonderland world, the more money we spend, the less there is to show for it.

A record-low number of adult salmon came home to the Columbia Basin last year. Many runs already are extinct and more are well on their way.

The only thing thriving is bureaucracy and the big-bucks business of saving the salmon. Hundreds of highly paid, well-meaning people are dedicating their careers to the fish.

While almost all government spending is routinely under attack these days, money for salmon just keeps flowing. At least $450 million is spent annually - enough to run Idaho’s entire state government for nearly half a year.

The result is a snarl of programs and agencies that duplicate efforts and work at cross purposes. No one’s in charge, and everyone’s trying to be.

“We are spending a lot of money trying to touch all the bases,” said Mike Smith, a program manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Setting priorities, deciding which measures provide the biggest benefit for the least cost, that really hasn’t been part of the discussion.”

Salmon policy is influenced by so many players a salmon swimming from the Pacific Ocean to its home gravel in Idaho’s Lochsa River travels through 17 different management jurisdictions.

Some salmon managers are optimistic that scientists are close to figuring out what will save the fish. Dams now are safer, habitat is being restored and new technology may hold special promise.

But many other experts are discouraged.

“I’ll tell you how we got here,” said biologist Steve Petit of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “Put a bunch of scientists in a room for 24 hours and we think we can fix anything.

“Well somebody forgot to tell the fish. It ain’t working.”

A steady decline

Columbia River salmon runs once were the most abundant in the world. The mighty swimmers migrated as far north as Canada, and as far east as Idaho Falls, cruising right through Spokane.

Their decline started long ago.

Salmon were mercilessly overfished in the 19th century to feed insatiable canneries crowding the Columbia’s banks.

Even then, losing the salmon was an unacceptable notion. Native people had lived on the fish for thousands of years. Salmon have always been more than a commodity, more than food, more than just a fish.

They define the abundance and wonder of the region. Some people describe the Northwest as wherever the salmon run.

Today, salmon have disappeared from 40 percent of their historic range in the Northwest and California. Runs that appear plentiful are mostly hatchery fish.

The reasons why are plain as the asphalt under our tires, the bright lights of our cities and cheap food on our tables.

More than 9 million people live in Idaho, Oregon and Washington - nine times as many as 100 years ago.

Much of the Basin’s prime salmon habitat lies under shopping malls and housing developments, farms, roads, parking lots and reservoirs.

The Columbia and Snake are no longer natural rivers that run, but shipping, irrigation and hydropower systems operated by people and machines. Eight dams collar the rivers between the Pacific and Lewiston, Idaho.

The ocean and climate have added insult to the salmon’s man-made injuries. Scientists believe natural cycles have depleted ocean food supplies and warmed coastal waters, a deadly combination.

By 1980, the fish were headed toward extinction.

In an attempt to fend off listing salmon under the Endangered Species Act, Congress that year created the Northwest Power Planning Council, which promised to double salmon runs in 10 years.

Instead, after years of bickering and hundreds of millions in spending, the fish kept dying.

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribe petitioned the Snake River sockeye for protection under the Endangered Species Act, and those fish were declared endangered in 1991.

The following year, Snake River spring/summer and fall chinook were listed as threatened.

Some Washington runs are doing well. This summer, Cedar River sockeye had their strongest run of the decade through the Ballard Locks in Seattle.

Five times as many adult spring chinook cleared Bonneville Dam so far this year as last, and returns of immature chinook are running at 150 percent of the 10-year average.

Still, biologists caution against reading too much into partial returns from one season. Some Idaho streams that were home to salmon for 10,000 years saw no fish come back last year.

Guilt over the near demise of the Columbia River salmon, coupled with an abundant source of cash, provide the perfect set-up for big spending and little oversight.

The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells electricity generated by the Columbia and Snake river dams, pays about 80 percent of salmon recovery costs.

The only spending limit is a $435 million-a-year cap on Bonneville salmon costs over the next five years, softened by a $325 million emergency fund.

Even with the spending cap in place, the utility will spend more than enough to build a new Mariners’ baseball stadium every year through 2001.

The rest of the salmon money comes from Mid-Columbia public utility district ratepayers, Idaho Power customers, and state and federal taxpayers. That spending is not included in the cap.

When it comes to saving endangered salmon, none of the usual cost-benefit analysis applies.

The Endangered Species Act requires rescue and recovery, no matter what the cost. No one is allowed to pull the plug. So we pay for intensive life support, an ever-escalating, invasive effort to prop up runs that have dwindled, in some cases, to the last fish.

Larry’s last journey

In 1992, only one sockeye made it back to Idaho’s Redfish Lake, a 21-inch-long male. Biologists called him Lonesome Larry.

He swam three months and more than 900 miles from the mouth of the Columbia River, climbing 6,100 feet to reach the lake.

No other sockeye in the world swims farther or higher than Redfish Lake sockeye. The salmon normally spawn and die once they reach the lake. Last year, no sockeye returned.

Biologists killed Larry on arrival and collected his sperm to spawn a new generation in captivity. He was stuffed, mounted and hung in the Idaho governor’s office.

Today, Larry is on permanent display at the nature center at the Boise headquarters of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Biologists are raising the offspring of Larry and 13 other Redfish Lake sockeye in tanks. The scientists lined the tanks with lake gravel and are trying to teach the fish how to avoid predators and find food.

They began releasing some of the fish in 1994 in a last-ditch effort to save the sockeye from extinction. Biologists hope the first adults make it back by next year.

Bureaucracy thrives, fish don’t

State, federal, regional and tribal agencies have piled on the salmon problem.

Meet the major players: The National Marine Fisheries Service is in charge of saving all salmon officially listed as endangered or threatened. It has the power to tell other agencies what to do to protect them.

The Northwest Power Planning Council is a four-state agency charged with setting river policies to give equal consideration to saving fish and generating power. But the council’s authority is limited: Only Bonneville has to listen to it.

The Bonneville Power Administration, the biggest electricity wholesaler in the region, is required by law to pay for fish and wildlife programs aimed at repairing environmental damage caused by the dams.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates the dams and builds screens, pipes, ladders and other devices intended to get salmon safely past those dams.

Also involved are 13 Indian tribes, and fish and wildlife agencies for Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

Each player has its own mission. No single salmon-saving plan is agreed to. The fisheries service has a plan. So does the Power Planning Council. So do four tribes whose right to harvest salmon is guaranteed forever by treaty.

“Everybody in this business wakes up wanting to strangle each other every morning,” said Doug Marker, a senior staff member of the Power Planning Council.

No one knows exactly how many people are at work trying to save the salmon. The best numbers include people who also work on wildlife and fish other than salmon. Bonneville did a head count in 1993 and came up with 960 full-time workers throughout the region paid by the utility’s fish and wildlife dollars.

A telephone directory of fish and wildlife managers in state, federal and tribal governments, assorted salmon commissions, work groups, and activist organizations fills 66 pages.

A computer printout of contractors hired by Bonneville to do fish and wildlife work fills nine single-spaced pages and includes contractors from 20 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.

Bonneville employs its own full-time fish and wildlife staff of 36 with a payroll that tops $2 million a year.

At the Corps of Engineers, spending on salmon more than doubled since 1992, to $120 million this year.

Today, one in every six Corps employees in the Northwest works in one way or another with salmon. That is the equivalent of 470 people working full time for the fish.

The Power Planning Council has 14 people in four states working on fish and wildlife. Spending has risen steadily, from $89 million last year to $127 million this year.

The council is led by eight political appointees, paid between $73,000 and $75,000 a year. Members serve three-year terms and are chosen by the governor of their state. There’s no requirement they know anything about salmon.

The current council includes an optometrist, a former paper company lobbyist, and a former logging company manager and heavy equipment operator.

The salmon bureaucracy keeps getting more complex.

This year, the fisheries service created a new constellation of salmon managers: a technical management team, an executive committee, a gas bubble disease panel, a system configuration team, a research review team.

The fisheries service also wants to form a group called an implementation team to draw up a five-year plan to herd the bureaucracy.

“We don’t have a detailed work plan,” said Donna Darm of the fisheries service. “It’s hard to allocate the amount of money we are talking about logically and consistently without one.”

Down on the river

With no consensus on how to save the fish, agencies try a little of everything, from the high-tech to the low.

Don Jackson stands guard in his pickup parked along the Snake River at Lower Granite Dam, his anti-seagull command post.

Jackson is paid by Bonneville to fire a steady barrage of firecrackers from a gun to keep seagulls from eating baby salmon.

He calls it “shooting pyro.”

“I’ve got three sounds. One that makes a really squirrelly noise, screamers. Those are good. I’ve got bombs. And whistlers. They’re not nearly as good.”

The salmon are easy pickings. They have balloons embedded in their fins that inflate and float the fish to the surface after they make it through the dam.

Scientists race around in motorboats collecting the fish to see how they fared.

Jackson fires off a deafening blast and a gull flaps away. This is one salmon program with immediate results.

The Corps of Engineers isn’t so lucky.

On the other side of the dam, the Corps launched an $11.5 million experiment this spring to test a surface collector prototype. It’s supposed to corral young salmon into pipes to get them through the dam.

The 4-million-pound device was installed a month behind schedule, and didn’t go together right. It’s a metal box, as big as a boxcar, scabbed onto the dam. Nearly half its doors stuck either open or closed.

The fiasco also killed salmon, when the Corps dumped more water over the dam to protect divers bolting on the collector.

Three-hundred miles downriver, Corps biologist Gary Johnson looks into a driving rain, watching osprey and seagulls fish for salmon. Dirty hunks of Styrofoam, old tires, plastic soda bottles and other trash turn in lazy circles as the reservoir twines against Bonneville Dam.

Six million dollars worth of screens were built over intake pipes leading to some of the dam’s turbines as recently as 1983. The screens were intended to keep fish out of the turbines. “They’re terrible,” says Johnson.

The screens, pipes and flumes are part of a salmon bypass system believed to be state-of-the-art when built.

A $678.7 million powerhouse can only be used if salmon are guided away from deadly turbines and sent safely downriver.

But the bypass system does such a poor job, the powerhouse is used only when absolutely necessary. It sits idle about half the time.

Part of the problem is that the bypass system’s outfall pipe dumps salmon into the river and right into the jaws of waiting squawfish. The Corps’ proposed solution: move the pipe, at a cost of $10 million.

A $40 million surface collector also is on the drawing board to keep fish away from the turbines. “It’s something to take a shot at,” Johnson says. “It might work. It might not.”

Other programs aim to protect fish in the reservoirs. Bonneville will pay a $3 to $5 bounty for every salmon-munching squawfish you catch.

Ulysses Woody, of Cottage Grove, Ore., raked in $18,940 in squawfish bounty last year.

Bonneville paid out $861,339 in 1995. It even hired a full-time fishing instructor, paid $25,000 for five months’ work.

The utility spent $4.3 million in all to take 217,350 squawfish out of the river last year. That’s about $20 a fish. Three of every four dollars went into administrative costs, including research and monitoring.

For all-out effort, check out Bonneville’s well-heeled fish cops.

The agency pays for a four-state police force to patrol the Columbia and Snake for poachers and habitat vandals.

It’s a full-time force of more than 35 officers, outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, including an $85,000 fixed-wing airplane with $392,339 in heat-seeking radar equipment; night-vision goggles at up to $5,011 a pair; $1,999 binoculars; infrared spotlights at $2,500 each; guns and body armor.

Bonneville bought the troops a $127,999 three-bedroom house near Stanley, Idaho, and a $59,812 modular home.

It also sprang for pickups; snowmobiles; all-terrain vehicles; a minivan; kayak; motorcycles; a $32,999 motor home; three $30,000 Zodiac boats; numerous chase boats and patrol boats with various outboard motors, radar, and trailers; a $60,000 one-ton surveillance truck with covert intelligence equipment, and two horses for $3,400. The saddles and tack cost $4,600 and the horse trailer another $6,000.

In 1995, the force spent $3.6 million, made 1,484 arrests and tracked down 139 illegally caught salmon.

On their patrols, officers learned that compliance with fishery laws topped 96 percent in some states.

Fishing for results

Salmon spending is poorly tracked. No one knows if many of these programs actually help the fish. There’s little independent review of recovery efforts, and no overall framework guiding the work.

“I don’t see any accountability anywhere, and I’ve been involved with implementation of the fish and wildlife program since 1980,” said Tom Vogel, a biologist for Bonneville.

“I hate to see money poured down a rathole. If it’s a legitimate effort to save fish in the Columbia, fine. But this is a crime. This thing has never gone anywhere because we don’t know where we want to go. I can’t tell what we are trying to achieve.”

Salmon programs are approved by a baroque process that strains the money through a quadruple layer of bureaucracy.

The result is a piecemeal recovery effort mostly based on who asks for what, rather than what independent science shows is best for fish. Salmon recovery turns into a jobs program, with agency managers warning of layoffs if projects aren’t funded.

Here’s how the system works:

Federal, state and tribal fish managers recommend projects to be funded. They also offer themselves as the contractors to handle most of the work. The private sector rarely submits bids, because the projects aren’t widely advertised.

Next, the Power Planning Council reviews the suggested projects and makes its own recommendations.

The recommendations go to Bonneville, which writes the contracts and cuts the checks after adding any other programs the National Marine Fisheries Service demands to help threatened and endangered fish.

What’s missing is tough accounting to determine if the programs work.

“In terms of systematic monitoring and evaluation, that doesn’t exist,” said Marker, the Power Planning Council staff member. “We have these cerebral discussions, but nothing really happens. You can’t say what you are getting, what was the result for the money spent.”

Contractors handling most of the salmon recovery work are other government entities. So Bonneville has been reluctant to demand its money’s worth, said Gerald Bouck, a biologist with the utility from 1983 until he retired in 1994.

“You go through the motions of trying to have a contract, but you basically leave your money on the stump and hope you get something for it,” he said.

“There’s this stated policy of accountability, to get what we pay for,” said Tom Clune, assistant manager of fish and wildlife for Bonneville. “Then there’s the ghost agenda to throw money out the door, shove it down people’s throat so they don’t make any noise, and buy their friendship.”

In an internal review of its fish and wildlife division in 1993, Bonneville noted that pressing for results on contracts “could be threatening to federal agencies, state agencies, tribes, and other fish and wildlife stakeholders.”

A Department of Energy inspector general slammed the utility’s oversight of fish and wildlife programs in a 1994 audit.

Investigators found that of $300 million in contracts awarded between 1990 and 1993, most were let without competitive bids.

They also found Bonneville didn’t get what it paid for in three out of five contracts reviewed worth $413,000, and in some cases paid twice.

The utility spent $9.6 million for work supported by record-keeping so casual no billing or invoice records could be found. It allowed some agencies to work off an open letter of credit.

Bob Lohn, who leads Bonneville’s fish and wildlife division, said the utility tightened accounting methods after the audit. Managers knew where the money was going even though the paper trail was thin, he said.

Lohn said some of his staff’s frustration comes from genuine disagreement over how to help the fish. They think Bonneville is wasting money on recovery work that’s doomed.

But it’s not the utility’s call to decide which projects have merit, Lohn said. Bonneville made the conscious decision to rely on the Power Planning Council and fisheries service to make those choices.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to have my folks ask hard questions,” said Lohn, who agreed that pressing for results has been difficult. “But it’s always a question of a balancing act of how to ask hard questions and maintain proper respect for other sovereigns.”

The Power Planning Council also is supposed to monitor its fish and wildlife programs. But it too has stumbled.

The council hasn’t tied spending on multi-year contracts to documented results.

About two-thirds of 221 projects recommended for this year’s fish and wildlife program are renewals, some dating to 1982. Few are subjected to independent peer review.

Even when reviewers warn that programs are flawed, some projects survive.

Bonneville spent $938,880 to improve fish habitat along Oregon’s Fifteenmile Creek near The Dalles from 1987 to 1989.

The utility hired three independent scientists to review the project. Their 1993 study found no documented increase in returning fish, and said farmland erosion around the project and high water temperatures below it could wipe out any gains from the work.

After that review, the utility spent another $1.7 million on the stream to continue the project, which is now up for another $1.2 million through the year 2001.

That would pour nearly $3.8 million into restoring about 45 miles of stream, at a cost of $85,600 per mile.

Stay the course?

William Stelle, head of salmon recovery for the National Marine Fisheries Service, used to refer to the salmon rescue campaign as a “food fight.”

Not anymore. Now, the region is on the right track, Stelle said. New computer chip technology to track salmon headed downstream will provide definitive answers about how best to save the fish.

While some salmon-saving devices have been disappointments and even outright flops, the dams are safer for fish than ever before, Stelle said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on dam improvements may help an estimated 98 percent of baby salmon get past the concrete alive. That may help more fish survive overall.

Last year, for the first time, the fisheries service directed the Corps of Engineers to operate the dams with fish safety as a top priority. That changed the way turbines were operated and determined if water was released for fish.

Some logging practices have been improved, and the salmon catch by sport and commercial fishermen has been cut back from excesses of earlier years.

Fragile stream banks are being re-planted and cattle fenced out. More irrigation ditches and pumps are screened.

All that is expected to help fish.

The fisheries service and the Power Planning Council formed a joint, independent science advisory board this summer. They promised the board will help put a solid scientific foundation under salmon recovery.

The council also is talking about creating a framework by December to organize salmon projects.

And Congress is getting involved again. A Senate committee adopted legislation this month that would create another independent science panel to review proposed fish and wildlife projects funded by Bonneville.

The panel would determine which programs are cost effective, benefit fish and wildlife, have a clear objective and include provisions to monitor and evaluate results.

Given more time, more research, more money and help from Mother Nature, salmon runs will rebound, Stelle said with confidence. “We need to stay the course.”

Others doubt it. “Stay the course?” said Dave Cannamela, biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “We’re in a plane headed toward the X axis and we need to stay the course to make sure we hit it? Is that it?”

Witt Anderson, who helps direct salmon recovery for the Corps, said only one thing is certain: A lot of money has been spent and salmon are a long way from saved.

“I don’t see us turning the corner any time soon.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 18 Photos (16 Color) 2 Graphics: 1. An upstream battle 2. Dwindling salmon returns

MEMO: These 11 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. SALMON TYPES There are six different species of salmon: chinook, chum, coho, pink, sockeye and steelhead, which is an ocean-going trout. These species include thousands of different salmon stocks, native to a particular area. Washington state alone has 435 different salmon stocks. Much of the money being spent on Inland Northwest salmon preservation is for three imperiled Snake River salmon stocks. The Snake River sockeye is listed as endangered. The river’s spring/summer chinook and fall chinook are considered threatened. 2. NAME THAT FISH The word salmon is derived from the Latin root salire, which means “to leap.” Salmon can jump distances many times their length, climbing rapids and waterfalls to reach spawning grounds hundreds of miles inland.

3. AUNT BONNIE Most people know the Bonneville Power Administration as the giant utility that runs the Columbia River hydropower system. But in the salmon recovery world, it has other names, too. Mike Field, an Idaho representative on the Northwest Power Planning Council, calls Bonneville the “sugar daddy” because it pays most of the bills for salmon projects. A scientist who does salmon research for the utility refers to it as “Aunt Bonnie.” “She’s not very smart,” he says, “she’s easily confused, but she’s very, very rich.”

4. ‘IS THIS THE END?’ People who look through the viewing windows built into Columbia River fish ladders expect to see salmon swimming by. They’re often disappointed. Elaborate signs posted in visitor centers at the dams tell viewers all about the fish they aren’t seeing. At McNary Dam near Umatilla, Ore., a gorgeous salmon mural was being painted last April to decorate the fish viewing area. But the windows were empty, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fish counter was bored to death. He hadn’t seen a fish all morning. Upriver at Little Goose Dam, a Corps of Engineers sign near the base of the fish ladder promises: “Ingenuity Overcomes Obstacles.” Comments recorded in a visitors’ log show some people weren’t convinced. “No fish,” one visitor wrote. “Where are the dam fish?” remarked another. A third asked: “Is this the end?”

5. WELCOMING THE FIRST FISH The arrival of the first spring salmon was an important day for Northwest tribes. The fish was regarded as the scout for the village of Salmon People who lived beneath the sea. If the first salmon was welcomed, its fellow Salmon People would follow. The fisherman who caught the first salmon laid it down carefully with its head upstream, so that others would swim upstream, too. He then took the fish home and summoned the village to begin the First Fish ceremony. The fish was cleaned with fern leaves, never with water. It was cut with a stone knife or mussel shell. It was roasted on a stick before the fire, or broken up by hand and boiled. Everyone took a piece of this first salmon, which had to be eaten before sundown. The heart was burned and the bones thrown on the riverbank or in the water so the salmon could take them back again. No one could fish until the ceremony was over. “Indians of the Pacific Northwest” by Ruth Underhill

6. SHADOW OF GREATNESS Dams are reviled by some urban environmentalists, but they’re sacred in the high desert towns of Washington and Oregon. Outside Umatilla, Ore., tumbleweeds cruise the pavement and highway signs warn: “Blowing Dust Area.” The tallest things around are Bonneville electricity transmission towers that march across the basalt plains. At a local motel, meeting rooms are named McNary, Bonneville and John Day, in honor of the great dams. The towns themselves grew up around riverside ports and irrigated farms that owe their lives to the concrete.

7. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? All salmon aren’t the same. Farmed salmon are the fish usually carried in grocery stores and served in restaurants. They are fed a diet of fish pellets, and raised in pens made of netting submerged in water before being shipped to market. Hatchery salmon start their lives in captivity but migrate from fresh water to the ocean and back upstream. At the hatchery, salmon eggs are mixed with milt, or sperm, in plastic buckets, then incubated in trays. The baby fish are raised in concrete tanks, and released into streams. They migrate from freshwater to the ocean, where they live usually for one to three years. Then they start their return to the hatchery. Along the way they are caught by sport and commercial fishermen. Hatchery fish make up more than 90 percent of some runs. Wild salmon spawn naturally in streams. They migrate to the ocean, where they live typically for one to three years. They return to their native streams to spawn the next generation, then die.

8. FISH GUARANTEE Treaties signed by the U.S. government in 1854 and 1855 recognized Native Americans’ right to harvest salmon. In the Treaty of Medicine Creek, signed by the U.S. Congress and several tribes, the federal government made this promise: “The right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians, in common with all citizens of the Territory, together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses on open and unclaimed lands.” U.S. District Judge George Boldt cited those words when he wrote a landmark court decision in 1974 guaranteeing tribes the right to half the salmon catch forever.

9. EARLY GLIMPSE Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw their first salmon after crossing into the Columbia Basin. Lewis made this entry on Oct. 17, 1805, after dinner with the Yakama Tribe: “Side opposite of this rapid is a fishing place & Mat Lodges, and great quants. of Salmon on scaffolds drying. Saw great numbers of Dead Salmon on the Shores an floating in the water, great numbers of Indians on the banks viewing me and 18 canoes accompanied from this point. The waters of this river is clear, and a Salmon may be seen at the deabth of 15 or 20 feet…”

10. A CHIEF’S CONCERNS Tribal leader Che-law-teh-tat expressed grave doubt and grief about signing the Treaty of Point-No-Point in 1854 that took away Indian title to parts of the Northwest. “I wish to speak my mind as to selling the land — Great Chief! What shall we eat if we do so? Our only food is berries, deer and salmon — where then shall we find these? I don’t want to sign away all my land, take half of it, and let us keep the rest. I am afraid that I shall become destitute and perish for want of food…”

11. SALMON FOR SALE At the Made in Washington store in downtown Spokane, $40 cedar boxes of smoked salmon are one of the most popular gifts purchased for out-of-town friends and relatives. “We ship them all around the world, especially at Christmastime,” said store clerk Jolene Wright. “The salmon are very much a Northwest symbol.” Downtown storefronts in Seattle are crowded with salmon shirts, salmon potholders, salmon jewelry. Even the dams sell the salmon mystique. Visitors at Bonneville Dam might not see any salmon when they check out the viewing windows at the dam’s fish ladder. But in the gift shop they can buy a salmon squeaky toy, salmon egg bubble gum, and even plastic salmon nests, called redds.

These 11 sidebars appeared with the story: 1. SALMON TYPES There are six different species of salmon: chinook, chum, coho, pink, sockeye and steelhead, which is an ocean-going trout. These species include thousands of different salmon stocks, native to a particular area. Washington state alone has 435 different salmon stocks. Much of the money being spent on Inland Northwest salmon preservation is for three imperiled Snake River salmon stocks. The Snake River sockeye is listed as endangered. The river’s spring/summer chinook and fall chinook are considered threatened. 2. NAME THAT FISH The word salmon is derived from the Latin root salire, which means “to leap.” Salmon can jump distances many times their length, climbing rapids and waterfalls to reach spawning grounds hundreds of miles inland.

3. AUNT BONNIE Most people know the Bonneville Power Administration as the giant utility that runs the Columbia River hydropower system. But in the salmon recovery world, it has other names, too. Mike Field, an Idaho representative on the Northwest Power Planning Council, calls Bonneville the “sugar daddy” because it pays most of the bills for salmon projects. A scientist who does salmon research for the utility refers to it as “Aunt Bonnie.” “She’s not very smart,” he says, “she’s easily confused, but she’s very, very rich.”

4. ‘IS THIS THE END?’ People who look through the viewing windows built into Columbia River fish ladders expect to see salmon swimming by. They’re often disappointed. Elaborate signs posted in visitor centers at the dams tell viewers all about the fish they aren’t seeing. At McNary Dam near Umatilla, Ore., a gorgeous salmon mural was being painted last April to decorate the fish viewing area. But the windows were empty, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fish counter was bored to death. He hadn’t seen a fish all morning. Upriver at Little Goose Dam, a Corps of Engineers sign near the base of the fish ladder promises: “Ingenuity Overcomes Obstacles.” Comments recorded in a visitors’ log show some people weren’t convinced. “No fish,” one visitor wrote. “Where are the dam fish?” remarked another. A third asked: “Is this the end?”

5. WELCOMING THE FIRST FISH The arrival of the first spring salmon was an important day for Northwest tribes. The fish was regarded as the scout for the village of Salmon People who lived beneath the sea. If the first salmon was welcomed, its fellow Salmon People would follow. The fisherman who caught the first salmon laid it down carefully with its head upstream, so that others would swim upstream, too. He then took the fish home and summoned the village to begin the First Fish ceremony. The fish was cleaned with fern leaves, never with water. It was cut with a stone knife or mussel shell. It was roasted on a stick before the fire, or broken up by hand and boiled. Everyone took a piece of this first salmon, which had to be eaten before sundown. The heart was burned and the bones thrown on the riverbank or in the water so the salmon could take them back again. No one could fish until the ceremony was over. “Indians of the Pacific Northwest” by Ruth Underhill

6. SHADOW OF GREATNESS Dams are reviled by some urban environmentalists, but they’re sacred in the high desert towns of Washington and Oregon. Outside Umatilla, Ore., tumbleweeds cruise the pavement and highway signs warn: “Blowing Dust Area.” The tallest things around are Bonneville electricity transmission towers that march across the basalt plains. At a local motel, meeting rooms are named McNary, Bonneville and John Day, in honor of the great dams. The towns themselves grew up around riverside ports and irrigated farms that owe their lives to the concrete.

7. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? All salmon aren’t the same. Farmed salmon are the fish usually carried in grocery stores and served in restaurants. They are fed a diet of fish pellets, and raised in pens made of netting submerged in water before being shipped to market. Hatchery salmon start their lives in captivity but migrate from fresh water to the ocean and back upstream. At the hatchery, salmon eggs are mixed with milt, or sperm, in plastic buckets, then incubated in trays. The baby fish are raised in concrete tanks, and released into streams. They migrate from freshwater to the ocean, where they live usually for one to three years. Then they start their return to the hatchery. Along the way they are caught by sport and commercial fishermen. Hatchery fish make up more than 90 percent of some runs. Wild salmon spawn naturally in streams. They migrate to the ocean, where they live typically for one to three years. They return to their native streams to spawn the next generation, then die.

8. FISH GUARANTEE Treaties signed by the U.S. government in 1854 and 1855 recognized Native Americans’ right to harvest salmon. In the Treaty of Medicine Creek, signed by the U.S. Congress and several tribes, the federal government made this promise: “The right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations, is further secured to said Indians, in common with all citizens of the Territory, together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses on open and unclaimed lands.” U.S. District Judge George Boldt cited those words when he wrote a landmark court decision in 1974 guaranteeing tribes the right to half the salmon catch forever.

9. EARLY GLIMPSE Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark saw their first salmon after crossing into the Columbia Basin. Lewis made this entry on Oct. 17, 1805, after dinner with the Yakama Tribe: “Side opposite of this rapid is a fishing place & Mat Lodges, and great quants. of Salmon on scaffolds drying. Saw great numbers of Dead Salmon on the Shores an floating in the water, great numbers of Indians on the banks viewing me and 18 canoes accompanied from this point. The waters of this river is clear, and a Salmon may be seen at the deabth of 15 or 20 feet…”

10. A CHIEF’S CONCERNS Tribal leader Che-law-teh-tat expressed grave doubt and grief about signing the Treaty of Point-No-Point in 1854 that took away Indian title to parts of the Northwest. “I wish to speak my mind as to selling the land — Great Chief! What shall we eat if we do so? Our only food is berries, deer and salmon — where then shall we find these? I don’t want to sign away all my land, take half of it, and let us keep the rest. I am afraid that I shall become destitute and perish for want of food…”

11. SALMON FOR SALE At the Made in Washington store in downtown Spokane, $40 cedar boxes of smoked salmon are one of the most popular gifts purchased for out-of-town friends and relatives. “We ship them all around the world, especially at Christmastime,” said store clerk Jolene Wright. “The salmon are very much a Northwest symbol.” Downtown storefronts in Seattle are crowded with salmon shirts, salmon potholders, salmon jewelry. Even the dams sell the salmon mystique. Visitors at Bonneville Dam might not see any salmon when they check out the viewing windows at the dam’s fish ladder. But in the gift shop they can buy a salmon squeaky toy, salmon egg bubble gum, and even plastic salmon nests, called redds.