Salmon Will Survive

Fire up your word processors, dam bashers. Prepare to write more personal attacks on those with whom you disagree. But whatever you do, don’t discuss the unfolding scientific data.

Today, juvenile salmon are surviving the region’s hydroelectric dams at a rate that is as high or higher than in the 1960s, before the construction of the four Snake River dams that environmentalists want to remove. This, according to a new draft report from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

It is true that fish survival rates plummeted in the early 1970s. Since then, survival rates have recovered. Scientists and engineers have been working continuously to help the young salmon make it by modifying turbines, lowering water temperature in the river and redesigning spillways and fish passage facilities.

It works. And, the report adds, “further improvements are possible.” Scientists keep finding new ways to help fish survive the dams. That’s good news for everyone, except for the ideologues who prefer to attack dams and the humans who benefit from them.