Rules, Agreement Realistically Helpful

Pacific Northwest’s salmon runs got two important boosts in the last few days and neither had a thing to do with dams, on which too much of the public debate has focused.

First, Washington Gov. Gary Locke signed into law a new set of forestry regulations that will improve spawning habitat on privately owned land. Under them, loggers will leave more trees and wider off-limits buffer areas near streams. In addition, new rules governing maintenance and construction of roads and culverts will cut down on silt erosion into spawning beds.

Second, U.S. and Canadian officials announced a 10-year agreement to reduce commercial salmon fishing off the coasts of Washington, British Columbia and Alaska.

This agreement, at last, does something to improve the odds salmon will survive the oceans and return to spawn. For a decade, commercial fishing interests have been locked in a standoff in which no one would agree to cut back. Meanwhile, wild salmon runs were declining - in undammed rivers as well as those with dams.

Last year, Canada and Washington state boldly ordered commercial fishing halted in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Results were immediate and dramatic. For example, the number of spawning chinook salmon on the Skagit River tripled this year.

The new agreement draws inspiration from that success. It has a chance to last because it’s fair: It will compensate commercial fishermen for the agreed-upon catch reductions via buybacks of commercial fishing licenses.

Salmon from the Columbia and Snake rivers will be among the beneficiaries. In the ocean, they mingle with salmon from Puget Sound, Canada and Alaska and fall victim to overfishing.

These improvements to ocean and spawning habitat remind us there is much more to salmon restoration than is evident when the region focuses on the politically unlikely call to breach dams. Indeed, there also is progress at the dams, where refinements recently have led to the highest survival rates for outgoing young salmon since before some of the dams were built. If this news is not enough, there’s more. Wildlife workers started an overdue battle this spring to chase away a huge colony of terns that nest on a man-made island near the Columbia River’s mouth and devour up to 25 percent of the river’s outgoing salmon.

From the standpoint of a young salmon, rushing to the ocean in the spring snowmelt and programmed some day to return and reproduce, the future is brighter than it has been in a long time.