The great salmon compromise

November 15, 2015 11:43 PM

More than perhaps any creature, salmon epitomize modern wildlife management. We are willing to bend over backwards, to the point of comedy, to recover species we cherish: We captive-breed black-footed ferrets; we shoot barred owls to save spotted owls; we patiently teach whooping cranes to migrate behind aircraft. Yet coexistence occurs strictly on our terms — and there is always at least one term left non-negotiable. We spend millions on wildlife crossings over highways, yet would never close the highways themselves; we relocate imperiled trees to help them weather climate change without daring to retool our carbon-based economy. In the Columbia Basin, the dams, and their power, are the inviolable condition, the infrastructure that fish and managers must turn cartwheels to accommodate. We will give salmon everything, except what we don’t want to give.

The great salmon compromise: High Country News' Ben Goldfarb explores the complicated legal and biological tradeoffs in federal and tribal salmon recovery efforts in the Columbia Basin.

In a sense, the “avoid jeopardy” standard is a legal manifestation of a condition called shifting baselines syndrome, the long-term ecological amnesia that causes each successive generation to accept its own degraded present. Sure, 2.3 million fish passed over the Bonneville Dam this year, but 16 million used to migrate up the Columbia annually; it is proof of our reduced standards — and the Endangered Species Act’s low bar — that we celebrate a fraction of historical runs. And shifting baselines have management implications. “What we have is a prevention of extinction policy, rather than a policy that achieves real recovery,” Rod Sando, former head of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told me. “Recovery would mean managing dams in a different way” — with more spill, or by breaching them altogether.

posted by Dip Flash (7 comments total)

There might be other answers.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:56 AM on November 16, 2015

There might be other answers.

There's a lot more to that story than your wikipedia link lets on.
posted by pracowity at 2:26 AM on November 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Elwha River restoration project seems to be going pretty well, so far.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:29 AM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

I would say salmon do not epitomize wildlife management, they set one end of the scale. Salmon management is unlike most other wildlife management to a huge degree. The amount of money (billions) and human interest (millions) is just scales of magnitude higher than management of any other species. You can check the per species expenditure in the FWS' annual report (pdf).

Anyway, my first conservation biology prof told me that conservation isn't about managing the animals, it was about managing the people. It's been true for my work on bird, herp, and now fish conservation and at least now that I work in fish conservation, people are willing to put up money to help the problem.
posted by hydrobatidae at 8:34 AM on November 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

Managing salmon? People? Can't wait to see how President Trump manages.
posted by larry_darrell at 12:10 PM on November 16, 2015

What a fantastic article! High Country News has been doing amazing work this year.

I'm so glad they highlighted the key role of the Nez Perce in continuing to challenge the Accords, even if the author makes the case that their rejection of the agreement could be largely explained by the pristine nature of the habitat they're protecting. A good friend of mine is a forest manager for the Nez Perce tribe, and from hearing about his experiences, I'd say he's doing some of the most important conservation work in this region. I never appreciated the incredibly crucial role that tribal leadership has played in conservation in the West until I moved out to Montana, and I wish that the broader environmental movement would do more to acknowledge and learn from these successes. Billy Frank and Rebecca Miles should be well-known names and role models for environmental activists. I would love to see a broad review of the use of treaty rights in environmental battles - I wonder if there are other cases where this would be an effective approach. It would be lovely to see environmental advocates help strengthen treaty rights, too.

The way that the Accords have silenced tribes from even talking about anything not in the biological opinion is particularly shameful, especially when paired with the way they also silence scientists within federal and state agencies and prevent the presentation of evidence that would challenge the BiOp and lead to any changes in management from within.

The other perennial takeaway from the salmon story is the keystone importance of Judge James Redden, who has singlehandedly been responsible for some of the most important conservation decisions of the last quarter-century in the Pacific Northwest. The impact he's been able to make almost makes me want to go to law school so that I could have even a chance at having the kind of impact he's made. While I'm sure there are many disadvantages to "gavel-to-gavel" management, salmon in this region would have been toast without his rulings, and it fundamentally seems like a mistake to give up one of the only effective levers for conservation in the entire region. I don't fault the Accord signatories, especially given the economic trade-offs built into the plan, but it's unfortunate to see the chilling effect this agreement has had on environmental science, policy, and advocacy on these issues.

I also really appreciated the way the author made a point to emphasize that the 'avoid jeopardy' condition is far from a true recovery:

In a sense, the “avoid jeopardy” standard is a legal manifestation of a condition called shifting baselines syndrome, the long-term ecological amnesia that causes each successive generation to accept its own degraded present. Sure, 2.3 million fish passed over the Bonneville Dam this year, but 16 million used to migrate up the Columbia annually; it is proof of our reduced standards — and the Endangered Species Act’s low bar — that we celebrate a fraction of historical runs. And shifting baselines have management implications. “What we have is a prevention of extinction policy, rather than a policy that achieves real recovery,” Rod Sando, former head of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told me. “Recovery would mean managing dams in a different way” — with more spill, or by breaching them altogether.

This is some of the most effective environmental journalism I've ever read. Thanks for posting!
posted by dialetheia at 5:34 PM on November 16, 2015 [3 favorites]

What's really hard to swallow is that we have 800km of Columbia River in Canada that salmon used to reach the very end of and now we have no salmon at all. I live near the headwaters and yet I would guess that only a small proportion of locals even know that salmon used to swim all the way here. A couple generations is a long time in Western Canada.

I hope that will change in some way during my lifetime, but it would be a huge shift. Likewise in Canada, the push is coming in large part from the native communities.
posted by ssg at 11:54 PM on November 16, 2015 [2 favorites]