Mark York
Staff Writer

Fish population dangerously decreasing

Salmon populations have dwindled over the years due to several issues: dams on rivers that bar them from their spawning grounds, clear-cut logging that destroys spawning and rearing habitat, over-fishing and an unwillingness to accept that these practices are the causes of the problem. One of the tools used by federal agencies is raising artificial populations of salmon in hatcheries to mitigate the damage done from the aforementioned practices in the U.S. economy.

Recently the government has contended that these artificial populations are the same as the “wild” stocks even as they continue to decline with these supplemental additions factored into the equation. These artificial salmon are not the same and should not be factored into the endangered status formula, and the only reason for doing so is to remove the species from the list so that the land-use practices can continue. That’s how the species became endangered in the first place. That is President George W. Bush’s goal.

All salmon species are anadromous, meaning they are raised in fresh water but spend their adult lives in salt water. Some species are raised artificially in hatcheries. The Endangered Species Act has been designed to protect wild self-sustaining populations in their evolutionary home range rivers and not all salmon are self-sustaining. Therefore, they shouldn’t be counted for purposes of the ESA criterion.

All salmon are salmon, but not all salmon are wild salmon, hence only wild salmon can be considered “endangered” under the act. Until now, that is with the continued implementation of Bush logic.

An Evolutionary Significant Unit is defined by the National Marine Fisheries Service as a population that is reproductively isolated from specific populations and represents an important component of the evolutionary legacy of the species.

The term “evolutionary legacy” is used in the sense of “inheritance,” which means something received from the past and carried forward into the future. Specifically, the evolutionary legacy of a species is the genetic variability that is a product of past evolutionary events and that represents the reservoir upon which future evolutionary potential depends. Conservation of these genetic resources should help to ensure that the dynamic process of evolution will not be unduly constrained in the future.

Wild, self-sustaining populations that go through their entire life cycles in natural settings — like their home rivers and the Pacific Ocean — as they have for millions of years, are what we are trying to preserve in this legal regulatory effort.

The next issue to address is how does artificial propagation fit into the picture? Are artificial (hatchery raised) salmon equal to wild ones? By definition, they aren’t. They’re a Band-Aid for fisherman who buy licenses.

“Biologists say that including hatchery salmon in the calculation for when a fish can be listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act is akin to counting animals in a zoo.” Timothy Eagan reported in the New York Times last May. “By this reasoning, river or forest habitats of a rare species will never be protected, so long as the animal can be reproduced by artificial means.”

Since the purpose of the ESA is to recover the species so that it can survive in the natural environment on its own, counting artificial salmon that are genetically inferior and have no hope of ever doing this is an invalid course of action that does not address the crux of the problem.

Robert Paine, an ecologist at the University of Washington, said in a statement in late March, “The science is clear and unambiguous — as they are currently operated, hatcheries and hatchery fish cannot protect wild stocks.”

As the Environmental Media Services notes, salmon are a sign of healthy rivers. A river where salmon flourish provides us with clean water to drink and healthy fish to eat. If the salmon suffer, eventually we will too.