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Those Dammed Salmon! by Greg Stahl Elevation Magazine, Fall 1999

The story goes that Idaho's Redfish Lake won its name from the glow 25,000 shimmering sockeye salmon created when they returned each spring to its ideal spawning waters—some 900 miles from their start in the wide, blue Pacific Ocean. Idaho's Salmon River Basin naturally holds 70 percent of the potential reproductive habitat for salmon in the entire Columbia River drainage, confirms the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Last year, one lone sockeye survived the journey to that high alpine lake at the foot of the jagged Sawtooth Mountains.

One fish.

Scientists declared last year's return the worst chinook showing ever recorded and blame the decline on the lower Snake River's four dams. Under the bold auspices of hydroelectric power and agriculture, eight formidable walls of concrete and earth cork the migratory rivers and stop young traveling salmon dead in their tracks. Forty years of industrial progress, regardless of whether it is right or objectionable, has caused Idaho's salmon and steelhead runs to dwindle from what were once among the world's largest to nearly nil. That is fact.

Of the five million fish that once journeyed to and from Idaho, 20,000 now remain.

Also rather discouragingly, all of Idaho's native salmon species are presently either extinct or listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. In 1986, the last of the Snake River's coho salmon vanished and the species was declared extinct. Sockeye and chinook salmon were listed as endangered and threatened, respectively, in 1991 and 1992. Idaho steelhead—a species that amounts to a rainbow trout with a penchant for transcontinental, ocean-bound travel—made the list in 1997. All three species' populations continue to decline.

What's a government to do?
There are few sands left in the salmon's hourglass and, as the new century nears, so approaches the ultimate of all bureaucratic cure-alls: a deadline. The Clinton Administration has recognized the dire straits its waning salmon population faces—extinction after all is ultimate—and has set December 31, 1999 as decision day. How the heck are they going to save the salmon?

Species extinction is a distinct possibility if the wrong course is chosen. Our elected representatives and those who shape the salmons' fate, the National Marine Fisheries Service, are looking at three options:

• Maintain the status quo, which means barging young salmon around Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams on the lower Snake River by truck and dumping them back in below the last of the eight dams.
• Increase barging efforts.
• Partially breach the four dams, breaking new flow-ways by removing an earthen part of each of the four dams.

Mumblings from the peanut gallery
The U.S. Government plays a paradoxical role. Though faced with the responsibility of protecting the nation's indigenous species, it must also defend the economic prosperity of its citizens. For this reason, among others, politicians waiver between the contradicting parameters defining their role. Man or fish? Economy or ecology?

Most scientists agree that only the third option, removing an earthen part of each of the four dams, will restore salmon runs to historic levels. Currently, we are getting less than one half of one percent of our fish back. So if a thousand fish go out only three or four come back. To reestablish the salmon runs we need twenty to sixty fish to return for every thousand young salmon smolts going out. The National Marine Fisheries Service, the Northwest Power Planning Council, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, and even the Bonneville Power Administration all agree: the eight federal dams (four on the lower Columbia, four on the lower Snake River) are responsible for at least 80% of the human inflicted toll on the endangered salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin.

For over 20 years, barging has failed to reverse the gradual decline of salmon populations. In a March, 1999 letter to President Clinton, over 200 notable scientists endorsed partial breaching of the four dams:

"The weight of scientific evidence clearly shows that wild Snake River salmon and steelhead runs cannot be recovered under existing river conditions," states the letter to the president. "Enough time remains to restore them, but only if the failed practices of the past are abandoned and we move quickly to restore the normative river conditions under which these fish evolved....Biologically, the choice of how to best recover these fish is clear, and the consequences of maintaining the status quo are all but certain." Keep in mind, conditions able to support a 1.5 million count chinook population have not existed since Europeans first settled the Northwest.

The last Idaho Department of Fish and Game report explains that in the 1960s, before construction of the four lower Snake dams, 100,000 chinook returned to Idaho each year. Breaching the dams is predicted to bring the number of chinook returning annually back to the same figure.

Those who live in communities along the lower Snake River are singing a different tune—one discordant to the scientists'. They argue their small, often agriculturally-based town economies will suffer powerful blows should navigable waters, recreation, irrigation flows and inexpensive hydroelectric power be denied them through the breaching of the dams. As it stands, the dams make barging wheat possible from inland Northwest towns to Portland, Oregon. As well, they supply nearly five percent of the Pacific Northwest's electricity.

Lewiston, Idaho, as a port city at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, relies on the dams. Nearby wheat farmers, whose industry still drives a large part of the Lewiston economy, are among those who depend heavily on the reservoirs which make the lower Snake navigable. For the past year, Lewiston Chamber of Commerce President Todd Klabenes has tried to rally anti-breaching support from the area's local governments and businesses. He says the Lewiston residents' very way of life depends on the dams.

For others, the preservation of the nation's natural ecology tips the scale more than protecting one area's economy. Idaho Rivers United (IRU) is an organization that strives for healthy aquatic ecosystems. IRU contributor Scott Levy spent the past five years producing a documentary film about salmon called RedFish BlueFish in which he addresses the "economic or ecologic" question. In making the film, Levy extensively, even obsessively, researched the salmon and dam issue and continues to maintain an Internet site (www.bluefish.org) with up-to-date information on the topic.

"Worldwide, we're looking at mass extinction right now," he says. "It is man's effects and his way of looking at the world that are responsible. The Columbia River salmon are just a great example of what's going on. The science is strong that breaching the dams will return the fish, and the economic effects can all be mitigated."

In RedFish BlueFish, he opines that our society is built on walls and barriers. "Winners require losers in our struggle to survive," the film's youthfully-voiced narrator reads. "One side's profit is the other side's loss." And lately, nature is often the loser. Either economics or ecology will stand in the winner's circle and—place your bets where you may—the December 1999 statement will ring in the champion.

For more information, see Idaho Rivers United's URL: www.idahorivers.org.