The Great Salmon Hoax Series - post # 1

The Great Salmon Hoax Series – post # 1


This begins a series of reviews of a book “THE GREAT SAL MON HOAX” researched and written some 20 years ago by a lawyer who spent 6 years on legal cases dealing with salmon of the Columbia River. James Buchal’s work stands out in providing an illuminating view of how the salmon of the Columbia River were made into a mythological “Golden Goose” for myriad special interest groups.

Understanding the salmon of the Pacific Northwest it seems can be helped by the well-known catchphrase “follow the money.” Though Buchal’s book tells all about the crisis and controversy of Columbia River Salmon this blog is mostly not about bad news as we work to demonstrate affordable immediate solutions to the crisis that Columbia Salmon and many other ocean fish face. We simply BRING BACK THE FISH.

The dams of the Columbia the first few which were constructed and put into operation in the 1930’s have long been the focus of attention regarding the salmon of the Columbia.

Buchal notes that the cost of salmon protection and enhancement efforts at the time he wrote the book had totaled more than $3 billion dollars. Today the cost has skyrocketed even higher with annual costs to feed the Golden Goose nearing $700 million.

The Bonneville Power Administration said it incurred $682.4 million in total fish and wildlife costs during fiscal year 2013, a total derived in great part by the need to buy and sell power and operate dams with the goal of improving salmon and steelhead passage up and down the federal Columbia/Snake River hydro system.

That total is about par with the previous two years, but well below totals from 2006 to 2010 when BPA estimated that “total costs of fish and wildlife actions” per year ranged from $716 million to $876 million. During those years foregone revenue costs and power purchases dominated the ledger, ranging from $383 million to $566 million.

His preface starts with the following comments.

“I will continue to root for heresy preached by the nonprofessional . . . the hardest of all games to win.” Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin

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James Buchal with some of the fish he hoped to catch.

I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1991 from New York City. I wasn’t expecting Ecotopia, but I looked for a cleaner better world for me and my family. I didn’t think much about salmon; in the back of my mind I expected to be able to take my children salmon fishing.

As soon as I arrived, I found myself involved in a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund to change operations at the dams and reservoirs comprising the Federal Columbia River Power System.

This book documents my sometimes bitter personal experience spending six years collecting the facts on dams and salmon, and seeing them consistently disregarded by every agency with authority for improving the lot of salmon.

Buchal carefully documents with extensive references, as a good lawyer must do, the story of the salmon of the Columbia River. His point of view that a great hoax has and is being promoted with regard to these salmon is well supported. One example (of many) reveals how facts have been run roughshod into myths here in the west.

Take for example the massive expansion of “native” fishing that resulted from the construction of a fishing tram built by and in support of a local cannery.

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Celilio Falls Native Fishing Supported By Overhead Tramway Built By Local Cannery

“Some historical accounts have claimed that during the heavy fishing season at Celilo Falls, the population swelled from 100 to 3,000.5 

A fishwheel operator in The Dalles, however, reported that “prior to about 1936, Celilo Falls had an Indian population in the fishing season of some 30 or 40 families that lived there permanently or came from the reservations to fish”.6 

Most of the fishing spots at the Falls were inaccessible because of swift waters, but once the fishwheel company (which also purchased salmon caught by the tribes) began to string overhead cables for access, “in less than ten years Celilo had developed from a few Indian fishermen to an estimated 1,000 Indians coming to fish there during the fall season”.7  “

Today the political debate over the dams of the dams of the Columbia River and its salmon continue unabated. However new scientific developments show that indeed the greatest threat to salmon comes to them out at sea on their ocean pastures where they put on 95% of their body weight before swimming back to rivers and streams to spawn.

The collapse of their ocean pastures closely parallels the declines some attribute to the great dams of the Columbia which has fooled many into believing the crisis of salmon is some “usual suspects”, dams, avaricious fishermen, sea lions, just about anything and anyone other than ourselves and our families. But with this years record high runs of Columbia salmon coming home following the restoration of their most critical ocean nursery pasture in the summer of 2012 we now know the problem facing the Columbia salmon and how to restore them to historic high abundance. Read more on how We Can Bring Back Fish Everywhere.

 

You can read the book “The Great Salmon Hoax” online – here’s Buchal’s Table of Contents (just reading the chapter titles is an education in itself)

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION:  THE NATURE OF THE GREAT SALMON HOAX

CHAPTER 1:  BACKGROUND FACTS ABOUT COLUMBIA BASIN SALMON

Basic Life History of Salmon

“Stream-Type” Salmon, Including Endangered Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook Salmon

“Ocean-Type” Salmon, Including Endangered Snake River Fall Chinook Salmon

Sockeye Salmon, and the Endangered Snake River Sockeye Salmon

The Ability of Salmon to Change and Survive

The Concept of a Salmon “Species”

CHAPTER 2:  OVERFISHING AND SALMON POPULATIONS

The Rise of Salmon Harvest in the Columbia Basin

Smarter, Faster, More Efficient Fishermen

The Environmentalist/Harvester Alliance

The Rise of Northwest Ocean Harvest

The Worldwide Problem of Overfishing

The Failure of Government Regulation of Salmon Harvest

The Subtle Vices of Overfishing

The Media’s Love of Fishermen

The Long-Term Future of Commercial Salmon Harvest

CHAPTER 3:  NATURAL FACTORS KILLING SALMON

A Warmer Climate Depresses Salmon Populations

Changes in Ocean Conditions

The Rise of Competing Fish

The Rise of Salmon Predators and Parasites

Marine Mammal Populations Decimate Salmon

The Overwhelming Dominance of Natural Cycles

CHAPTER 4:  THE RISE OF DAMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON SALMON

The Mainstem Dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers

Storage Dams Impassable to Salmon

Effects of Irrigation on Salmon

Other Habitat Loss

Assessing the Effect of Dams by Comparing Dammed and Undammed Rivers

The Historical Coincidences that Support Attacks on the Dams

“Across the Concrete Mortality” in Mainstem Dams

The Question of Natural Mortality

Unraveling the 95% Mortality Hoax

Government Efforts to Avoid Disclosure of the True Impacts of Dams on Salmon

Dams in the Ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest

CHAPTER 5:  THE ATTACK ON SMOLT TRANSPORTATION

Measuring the Effects of Transporting Juvenile Fish

Critiques of Transportation

Torturing the Data Until It Confesses: The Anti-Transportation Review Groups

The Legal Attack on Transportation

NEPA: Considering Alternatives in Environmental Decisionmaking

NMFS Splits the Baby

The Latest Attacks on Transportation

CHAPTER 6:  THE HATCHERY MACHINE AND ITS POTENTIAL

The Early Promise of Hatcheries

The “Soft Underbelly” of Hatchery Mismanagement: Bad Breeding Techniques

The Effectiveness and Costs of Hatcheries

The Wild v. Hatchery Choice: How Much Diversity Do We Really Need?

A Breeder’s Approach to Hatcheries

The Problem of Carrying Capacity

Improving Hatchery Management

CHAPTER 7:  THE RISE OF THE FLOW THEORISTS AND THE FALL OF SCIENCE

Biological Science, Politicized Science, and Government

The Political Science of Conservation Biology

The Impact of Dams on Natural Flows

The Birth of the Flow/Survival Hypothesis

Testing the Idea that Flow Augmentation Increases Salmon Survival

How Much Do Dams Slow Down Juvenile Salmon?

The Flow/Travel Time/Survival Hypothesis

Avoiding Reservoir Mortality By Reducing Travel Time May Not Help Salmon at All

Arrival Timing at the Estuary

Adverse Effects of Flow Augmentation on Adults

Flow Theory and the Northwest Power Planning Council

The Computer Modeling Wars

How the Church of Flow Deals with Heretics

Flow Theorists Take Over the National Marine Fisheries Service

Further Attempts to Halt Useful PIT-tag Research

CHAPTER 8:  THE PUSH FOR DAM REMOVAL OR “NATURAL RIVER DRAWDOWN”

Governor Andrus Gives Snake River Drawdown a Boost

The Northwest Power Planning Council’s First Step Towards Drawdown

Different Species of Drawdown

Benefits to Salmon from Destroying the Reservoir Ecosystems

The Northwest Power Planning Council’s Second Try, the “Normative River”

The Hanford Reach Fad, and Other Drawdown “Science”

Pros and Cons of Dam Removal

CHAPTER 9:   ENVIRONMENTAL LAW AGAINST THE DAMS

The First Shot from the Environmentalists and their Backers: the Commercial Salmon Harvesters

Our First Attempt to Get Salmon Bureaucrats to Look Beyond the Dams

How Administrative Law Destroys Justice in Suits Against the Government

Judge Marsh Gets Hoaxed

Closing the Courthouse Door to Wise Use of Natural Resources: Judge-Made Standing Doctrine

Misuse of the Mootness Doctrine

The Idaho Fish and Game Case: “One Person’s Train Wreck is Another Person’s Little Engine that Could”

The Pacific Northwest Power Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act

The Ninth Circuit Neuters the Council

The Struggle Continues: the American Rivers Case

CHAPTER 10:   LAWLESSNESS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF SALMON HARVEST

Impacts of Continuing Commercial Harvest of Endangered Columbia Basin Salmon

Ignoring the Plain Language of the Endangered Species Act to Protect Salmon Harvest

Fishing Without Permits: Mootness Strikes Again

Jim Ramsey’s Attack on the Gillnetters: the Promise of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

CHAPTER 11:  THE OROFINO COMMUNITY’S STRUGGLE OVER DWORSHAK DAM

Fish Kills in the Steelhead Capital of the World

The Orofino Community Seeks Legal Protection

The Fate of the First Orofino Lawsuit: Mootness Strikes Again

How Judge Lodge Ignored the Facts to Deny Any Relief to Orofino

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Press Machine

Judge Lodge Declares that the Corps Can Nullify the Purposes for Which Dworshak Was Constructed

CHAPTER 12:  THE FIGHT FOR MORE SPILL AT HYDROELECTRIC PROJECTS

The Superficial Appeal of Spill

Fish Passage Efficiency and Fish Survival

The 1994 Spill Attack

The 1995 Spill Program

The EQC Strikes Out

The 1996 Spill Program Gets Underway

The Future of Spill: 1997 and Beyond

CHAPTER 13:  WHY FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN SALMON REGULATION IS NECESSARY

The Fishery Agencies’ Fundamental Conflict of Interest in Salmon Preservation

Defining “Mitigation” for Hydropower Operations

Special Obligations Owed to Native Americans

Threats to the Golden Goose

The Lack of Fiscal Management in Existing Salmon Recovery Programs

The Proliferation of Useless Committees and the Death of the Federal Advisory Committee Act

Government Management of Science

CHAPTER 14:  A SENSIBLE APPROACH TO SALMON RECOVERY

Reintroducing Economic Considerations to Maximize the Benefits of Salmon Recovery Resources

Decentralizing Management of Salmon Habitat

Moving Toward River-Based Harvest Management and Sustainable Salmon Harvest

Redefining a Role for Hatcheries

What Improvements Remain for Mainstem Passage?

Reforming the Endangered Species Act

Putting Someone in Charge

CHAPTER 15:   ORGANIZING TO DEFEND COMMON SENSE IN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The Need to Educate the Urban Majority

The Need for Rural Participation and Organization

The Future of Government Decisionmaking and a Potential Role for BPA