Policy Conundrum: Restoring Wild Salmon to the Pacific Northwest
By Robert T. LackeyABSTRACT
Much of the public discourse about salmon restoration revolves, at least superficially, around scientific issues. Even with complete scientific knowledge -- and scientific knowledge will never be complete or certain -- restoring wild salmon runs would be a challenging. Further, the salmon-decline issue is often defined simplistically as a "habitat improvement" or "dam removal" problem, in part because changes in land or water use are highly visible, commonly occur on public or corporate lands, and are often financed or at least subsidized by taxpayers.
Because human activity affects salmon throughout their lives, any credible wild salmon restoration strategy would affect all segments of society: rural enterprises (especially farming and logging); manufacturing (both enterprise construction and operation); electricity generation (including hydro, fossil fuel, nuclear, wind, and solar); urban development (especially housing costs); transportation (including road, rail, air, and water). Beyond the economic debate, dissension involves competing and divisive visions of individual and communal rights and freedoms, the prerogatives and roles of local, state, federal, and Indian governments, and the future of fishing (commercial, recreational, and Indian), and, increasingly, explicit and de facto policies on human population numbers (emigration and immigration regulations and the degree of freedom of individuals to reproduce).
The salmon policy conundrum is characterized by competing societal priorities being adjudicated in a political environment where few are willing to acknowledge publically the yet-to-be-realized consequences of the de facto policy choices previously made by society. Decisions already made have greatly circumscribed the status of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest through at least the next several decades. Barring a near wholesale reversal of many of society=s previous decisions (and apparent priorities), and allowing for considerable year-to-year and decade-to-decade variation in run size due to oscillations in climate and oceanic conditions, I conclude that through the twenty-first century, many, perhaps most, stocks of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest likely will remain at their current low levels or continue to decline in spite of current protection and restoration efforts.
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