The Science of Salmon Recovery in the Columbia River Basin

A Critique of Fish Hatcheries, Barging and Predator Control as Solutions to the Problem of Salmon Decline.

By Matthew Campbell

Introduction

Most of the general public as well as the scientific community agree that salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest are in serious trouble. Currently, only 2.5 million salmon return to the Columbia River system, of which an estimated 2 million are hatchery-raised fish (Cone 1995). This amounts to an eightfold decrease from the estimated 16 million wild salmon that returned to the Columbia River system during the mid-1870s. A recent review of native, naturally-spawning Pacific salmon and steelhead stocks in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho listed 214 stocks at "high or moderate risk of extinction", or "of special concern" (Nehlsen et al. 1991). In Idaho alone, of the four species of salmon that spawn in the Snake River and its tributaries, chinook are listed as threatened, steelhead and sockeye are listed as endangered (only 48 adult sockeye salmon have returned to Redfish lake since 1989), and coho are extinct (Cone 1995; NMFS 1998).

While the problem of salmon decline has received much publicity over the past ten years, therefore increasing public awareness, concern over declining salmon populations dates back to the late 1870s. Fish decline led to the establishment of the first of many salmon hatcheries in the Columbia Basin, located on the Clackamas River in Oregon (Netboy 1958). Since this earliest effort to remedy the problem, research and management programs focusing on increasing salmon runs have proliferated. Salmon recovery programs on the Columbia River system alone currently employ hundreds of scientists and have spent billions of dollars.

With early recognition of the problem, over 100 years to respond, and the expenditure of billions of dollars on research by fishery scientists and managers, it might reasonably be expected that the problem of declining salmon populations would have been solved by now. In fact, however, most fish advocates agree that the problem has become progressively worse.

Why has fishery science been unable to solve the problem of salmon decline? Are the constituent problems so complex that scientists have an impossibly difficult task, preventing them from achieving a body of scientific knowledge concerning the causes for decline and their remediation? Unquestionably, factors contributing to the decline of salmon populations in the Northwest are highly complex. Solutions, if and when they’re found, will likely be similarly complex. However, complexity does not appear to be the primary reason for the general failure of science to mitigate salmon decline.

In fact, many scientists working on salmon recovery now argue that the problems are well-understood and substantive solutions are available and agreed upon by the majority of the scientists working on the problem (AFS 1993). The real explanation for the failure to recover Pacific Northwest salmon populations is that scientists have been diverted from their appropriate concerns, preoccupied with pseudo-solutions, and prevented from implementing their sound recommendations. In short, much of the scientific work done on salmon recovery has been done poorly. However, the problem has been one not of methodology but rather because of the intrusive demand that conflicting interests be served. Research has been diverted to serve special-interest goals other than the one of salmon recovery, openly stated. In this paper I will discuss two important influences that have diverted the science of salmon recovery from dealing with the real reasons for salmon declines and from developing adequate solutions to the problem.

Many industries, bureaucratic agencies, and special interest groups have directly contributed to the decline in salmon populations in the Northwest. These include commercial fishing and canning industries responsible for overharvest; mining and timber industries that have destroyed spawning and rearing habitat; the Corps of Engineers and hydroelectric companies whose dams blocked and destroyed spawning and rearing habitat and disrupted fish migration up and down the rivers. In addition, all of the heavy industry, irrigation, and barge transportation groups, contributed to the rivers becoming hostile to salmon. Each group imposed its own special interests on the salmon recovery efforts of scientists, in conflict with salmon. How have these interests combined to conflict with the interests of the salmon? First, to varying degrees, each group has attempted to define or perhaps mis-define the problems associated with salmon decline. Each group has assumed that salmon recovery should be achieved without seriously interfering with its own ongoing operations or curbing the destructive impacts that each has on salmon runs. Through their political power and, often, their funding authority over the kind of research projects and programs that are pursued, they have controlled the way that fishery scientists specify problems and pursue solutions. In some cases control by these groups resulted in direct suppression of scientific findings, but in the majority of cases the control has been more subtle. Scientists do not want to criticize the agencies funding their research and are hesitant to recommend changes that run counter to the political and economic concerns of these vested interests. However, their silence has sometimes prevented them from advocating the very changes that might, in fact, have contributed to solving salmon decline.

These groups, especially the Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), have followed three strategies that disempower fishery scientists. First, they have implemented their own preferred "quick fix" solutions on a trial basis prior to their being researched. Second, they have shelved fishery scientist findings and recommendations if these are in conflict with agency interests. Usually, they say that the research is inconclusive and further research is needed. Third, they have often relegated fishery scientists to the role of technologists, limited to implementing the "quick fix" solutions chosen by various vested special interests.

The second distorting influence on the science of salmon recovery is attributable to the scientists themselves. Fishery scientists have directly contributed to the lack of adequate response to salmon decline and in some cases directly contributed to further declines by becoming overly invested in "quick fix" solutions, especially, fish hatcheries. Many fisheries scientists have uncritically accepted the role of technologists, championing technological solutions. Then, they repeatedly assured the public and the special interests that science can control nature and provide large numbers of fish. Thus, the real problems posed by dam passage, over-fishing, and habitat loss and destruction are minimized and not addressed. Gary K Meffe refers to this as the "techno-arrogance" of fishery scientists, which he describes in detail in his article "Techno-Arrogance and Halfway Technologies: Salmon Hatcheries on the Pacific Coast of North America" (1991).

Along with Northwest salmon populations, the science of salmon recovery has also reached a crisis point. Many fishery scientists now clearly understand that blame for salmon decline and lack of action may increasingly focus on fishery science and scientists, rather than dams, logging, or fisherman. Accordingly, scientists working on salmon recovery are becoming more self-critical (Meffe 1991). Fisheries scientists want to implement the real body of knowledge they have developed (Why Isn’t Science Saving Salmon, AFS, Fisheries 1994).

Fishery science may be ready to break from these two influences to demonstrate its real capacity for solving the problem of declining fish runs. However, this will not be easy since it will require, as a starting point, major alterations in the operation of the dams on the lower Snake and Columbia Rivers, if not the complete elimination of some of them. All such changes have been, and will continue to be, strongly resisted by the various interests served by the dams. But, if salmon are to remain in Northwest rivers, stronger political support for making these changes to dam structure and operation will have to be developed. Additionally, salmon recovery efforts will require renewed focus on restoring wild spawning and rearing habitats, reducing river pollution, and controlling overharvest of the fishery. Finally, fisheries science itself must revise its conception of the role to be played in salmon recovery by fish hatchery technology. The revised role is likely to be both more specialized and more limited. Some fishery scientists are currently resisting these changes because their jobs and scientific reputations depend on the further refinement of this technology. Without changes in the social and political structure within which fishery science is practiced, successful remediation of fish runs appears unlikely.