Livingston Stone was kind of a big deal in the U.S. Fish Commission in the 19th Century. I don't revere much about the man, but he did have a good idea in 1892 when he realized salmon stocks were disappearing and his belief in the idea that artificial propagation would make fishing regulations unnecessary by creating a panacea of fish began to wane. He promoted the idea of a national park for salmon. His idea was simple save a river and its habitat for salmon before it was too late for salmon to recover.

Of course, this idea fell on deaf ears, unlike his ideas for hatcheries and his practice of planting non-native fish all across the U.S. I have worked to help descendants of Livingston Stone's rainbow trout from his hatchery on the McCloud River in California to have better habitat on a tiny stream in Missouri where descendants of his fish still carry on today. To put it mildly, his influence still persists today, if only his idea of national salmon parks would have caught the same fire as his hatcheries push.

Idaho's many salmon and steelhead streams still hold the potential for Stone's 1892 dream. The habitat for salmon and steelhead in the Middle Fork of the Salmon River and its tributaries and many other streams that have been protected by wilderness designations or by the rugged terrain in which they travel through still hold the promise as salmon and steelhead refugia or as Stone would say national salmon parks, much like national parks such as Yellowstone and Yosemite.

But just like any national park, our salmon park would need a highway for its main attraction and Idaho's salmon and steelhead have one overriding obstacle to their own recovery and that is primarily their migratory habitat. And the greatest threat to our salmon and steelhead recovery remains the four lower Snake River dams that would have to be breached for our salmon and steelhead to recover.

Very little would need to be done to designate such parks after the four lower Snake River dams are breached. I would argue that the thus far unsuccessful effort for a Secesh/Needles Wilderness designation would definitely be one way we could further strengthen our salmon parks. This proposal is hardly known in the mainstream, but it would further protect a lot of tributary habitat and some mainstem habitat along the South Fork of the Salmon River, which too could be its own national salmon park, should the four lower Snake River dams be breached.

Imagine salmon runs in Idaho as they were when we first arrived to settle this frontier. Imagine salmon and steelhead runs that rival runs in Alaskan streams. All of this is possible if we restore the migratory habitat and do a few other things to protect the great rearing and spawning habitat we already, or should I say, still have in Idaho today.

I want to caution everyone about reports of better return numbers due to the Nez Perce supplementation program for Snake River fall Chinook that you can read about here. Now I want you to read this here from the summer newsletter by the Native Fish Society because it digs out a lot of useful quotes and points you to various studies that look into supplementation programs and the damage they cause to wild fish.

I know very few people who haven't seen or heard of a story about some animal that was taken in by humans to be cared for then released to the wild only to die or at least heard a story where they said they couldn't release the animal back into the wild because it would die. Stop me if I am telling tales out of school here.

It would be fantastic if we could simply allow hatchery fish to go off and spawn with wild fish and watch as our salmon stocks rebounded to numbers not seen since Lewis and my old uncle Clark came floating down the Clearwater. Truly if we could have our salmon and our dams, I wouldn't have to write this stuff and our interest in Pacific salmon would rarely go beyond, "wow, that fish swam this far," and "damn, that's tasty!" We wouldn't have to take a daily census of the fish as they traverse each dam either. Truly, the world would be a better place, if only a supplementation program could deliver on its promise and if you read that first article up there, it certainly looks promising.

But it isn't. Every supplementation program in place is weakening the wild genetics and replacing truly special fish, fish that evolved especially for the stretch of water they are born and later die in, and we are replacing them with pets. Pets don't fare as well as the street savvy wild fish, especially when they come into contact with orca or any other danger for that matter.

What you see in these supplementation program studies are fairly consistent and alarming findings. But, you say, the article clearly points out that Snake River fall Chinook, both wild and hatchery are coming back in larger numbers. Yes, that is true, but that is also to be expected. Stay with me on this because I want the Nez Perce to have figured this thing out as much as anyone, but the problem is at least two-fold as I see it.

It's too early to call this a success as the first article seems to be leaning toward doing. Studies generally show the amount of eggs that return with each successive supplemented generation are much lower than the eggs from wild returners. Something like 40 percent less, which is alarming. There are a few things that are rarely focused on in this salmon debate that are critical, they are fecundity, sex ratios and most importantly the fact that we are trying to save WILD FISH, not hatchery fish, not hatchery/wild fish offspring, but WILD FISH. Imagine for a second, instead of releasing wolves into Yellowstone and the wilderness of Idaho, we just released a bunch of Cocker Spaniels and called it good. OK, perhaps a blog being generated in the state of Idaho shouldn't ever use the wolf reintroduction as an analogy.

Let's say you have a wild female coming back with 5,000 eggs. If she spawns with other wild fish, her offspring will likely have similar fecundity rates. If she spawns with hatchery fish allowed to stay in the stream to spawn, studies have shown a couple of things, the returning offspring will have fewer eggs and there are likely to be fewer offspring returning. Now, you are probably disagreeing with me as that story clearly states there are more returning fish. Well, yes, when you allow more fish to spawn, you will generally get back more and more fish, but those numbers you see, if those were all wild fish spawning and not three parts hatchery and one part wild, the returning numbers would blow you away.

Of course there are more fish returning now, but they are weaker and the females will have less eggs, and I don't know the reason why, this is just something studies have found. Tame fish spawning with wild fish produce less wild and therefore less strong offspring. When you have this situation there are a myriad of other factors that can eventually lead to a complete collapse of the population. But I would argue once you start mixing the genetics of hatchery and wild fish, you've already killed off the wild fish (yes, they say they have been able to keep 90 percent of the genetics alive from the 16 wild sockeye of Redfish Lake that returned in the 1990s in the offspring of that program but no fish born in a plastic bag is wild and mice are about 99 percent the genetic twin of humans, so take that with a grain of salt). Remember hybridization is one of the enemies of salmon recovery and supplementation is human-championed hybridization.

I don't know how to explain it to you why our fattened hatchery fish are weaker than our wild fish, though I am sure you can think of many relative examples that sort of explain it to you. And I don't really have a good way of explaining how or why the genetics of the weaker version seem to come to influence greatly the offspring of a hatchery/wild fish. Except to say there are some learned traits and some instinctual traits and somehow, someway mixing hatchery fish with wild, evolved for that water, fish isn't passing on all the evolved traits and instead are passing on some traits of the hatchery fish that serve no purpose to the offspring in a wild situation.

While we are clearly doing supplementation programs, may I ask everyone involved that they leave alone all stocks of Pacific salmon and steelhead that come back to the Middle Fork of the Salmon River and its tributaries. Please allow all remaining wild stocks of Pacific salmon and steelhead to remain that way as you determine whether or not your supplementation program is working or not in what I consider to be far too large a laboratory already.

I had mentioned in the previous note about sea lions and salmon something about mitigating for salmon recovery. Yes, that's an odd way of looking at it. You shouldn't have to mitigate for returning to the natural condition. Mitigation is, after all, the terminology of the engineer, the terminology of the extractive industrialist who is about to wreak havoc on a special place.

Have you ever read the plans for various projects and noticed the cavalier attitude toward mitigation. If something is there and it is worth money, we will move heaven and earth to get at it. I was reading about a gold mine located near a steam with salmon and steelhead present. The report was pretty quick to say how the mining company would deal with this inconvenience of a stream with salmon and steelhead being located near the gold they wanted to dig out of ground owned by the American people. It simply said relocate the stream. Here's an activity that will crush scores of tons of rock to get at one ounce of gold because that is economically feasible and will make the owners rich. Think about that for a minute, we willingly crush literally millions of tons of rock to get at an ounce of gold per 50 or 70 tons or whatever the claim can do and that makes sense to us. It makes so much sense that gold mines are going back into production all over the west. At this mine, salmon and steelhead are inconveniently located in the stream. They've inconveniently been located in that stream for tens of thousands of years at the minimum, but we'll just mitigate and relocate the stream.

Maybe those interested in salmon recovery should (even though you shouldn't have to mitigate to return something to its natural state) think about mitigation practices for salmon recovery.

I see that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission slapped the Bonneville Power Administration over their decision to order wind power producers to shutdown this spring during runoff. I also see that wind power generation in the Pacific Northwest has grown from 500 megawatts in 2006 to 6,000 megawatts today. If that is integrated with the hydropower generated by other dams (not the lower 4 Snake River dams) and gas plants it is more than twice the power generated by the lower Snake River dams. Well, it seems someone has already done the mitigating for me on the power side.

Dam supporters, if this were a chess board, you just lost your queen.

I have also noted that shipping on the lower Snake River has taken a drastic turn for the worse over the past 20 years. It's down almost 50 percent since the early 1990s. About all you've got to cling to these days are those megaloads. Perpetuating the extinction of Snake River salmon so Canada can suck its rocks dry of oil, that's not a strong or popular position to be in.

What about irrigation? Exactly, what about irrigation? There's hardly any irrigation going on from these dams and their reservoirs and the irrigation that is happening can be replaced with a longer pipe stretched into a free flowing lower Snake River when the light finally switches on in the heads of everyone that "hey, we've replaced the power of these dams, we aren't using the shipping lanes like we did in the past and irrigation is a moot point." Maybe, just maybe, in the deep, dark reaches of the minds of normal people they will finally see that we are on the precipice of salmon recovery and all we need now is the critical mass to breach the dams that stand in the way of Snake River salmon recovery.

The critical mass comes from regular people all over the Pacific Northwest. When regular people begin to reject the perpetuated lies of the Bonneville Power Administration, et. al. and understand 86 percent of the fisheries biologist community isn't somehow in cahoots with Al Gore and wolf reintroduction, maybe, just maybe, we can breach the dams and the salmon can recover on their own.

As I have said before, the "fixes" that are allowed to go forward in the ongoing semi-serious effort to save the salmon of the Columbia and Snake River basins by the federal government and three state governments are akin to the patient in cardiac arrest with doctors and nurses surrounding him placing bandages on small cuts while the heart remains in arrest.

If we applied the logic we are applying to the relatively new problem of the 75 or so California sea lions that swim up the Columbia River to feed on salmon that get bunched up at the fish ladder awaiting their first turn at traversing our speed bumps, we would be passing laws that allow us to kill people legally in the name of salmon recovery. Why? Because we are the primary reason for salmon decline, but sea lions ate something like 5,000 returning adult salmon or some round about number like that and by golly we are going to fix every problem we run into other than the actual problem and these cute sea lions are on the radar screen.

To take a cynical approach to this, it's like we want to be the only species on the planet allowed to exterminate salmon. It reminds me of how conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh used to pick NFL games by determining which team's mascot would have the most environmental support.

This salmon versus sea lions is exactly that, and my question is (since we already have determined the only good northern pikeminnow is a dead one and now we want that to be the same for any sea lion found swimming up the Columbia River) when do we turn on killer whales? When do we turn on ourselves? When do we place the Wanted Dead poster on aquaculture? Because you see, I know we will never turn it on the dams. We would never consider doing something that would actually make a difference for salmon recovery, well, at least not our precious giant federal dams that we've located on the most important migratory habitat for our salmon. Sure, we'll knock down these other dams, but nothing on the mainstem of the Snake River or Columbia for that matter.

We are moving colonies of birds because they eat salmon and the only reason we have to move them is because we created the perfect place for them to live by our incessant need to "improve nature." We harass, move and kill sea lions and we have bounties on northern pikeminnow and we do all of this in the name of saving the salmon. All the while we know what the primary culprits in the ongoing salmon slaughter are; dams. And we will literally move heaven and earth to keep our dams and pretend we mean to recover salmon.

Heaven help the next nonhuman we identify as a killer of salmon. The second we do, your days are numbered.

This is literally like the doctor who focuses on a few paper cuts while the patient is lying there on the gurney impaled by a flag pole. "Eh, the flag looks nice, but get me a small bandage stat because this man has a paper cut!"

This whole sea lion vs. salmon is just another convenient distraction to true salmon recovery and you have noted that those who fake they are working toward salmon recovery have jumped on this with glee. Anything to distract you from the real issue (dams killing salmon) and you can bet the federal agencies, the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho are going to be right there getting you to rationalize something that truly proves we have gone completely insane.

There are two sane approaches we can have here, one is a thoughtful, concerted effort to mitigate for salmon recovery (in other words we figure out better ways to generate power and provide cheap transport) and remove the dams or the other sane approach is we abandon salmon recovery, we admit we want our dams and the salmon be damned. This approach we have gets more and more foolish with every passing moment.

I have always said it wouldn't surprise me if someone at NOAA or BPA or elsewhere suggested we place leashes on all salmon and walk them to and from the ocean as our latest effort to save them. That suggestion doesn't surprise me in light of all the crazy things we have done to date.

Boil this issue down, dams are killing salmon (that's the main problem for the past 35-70 years). Can we live without the dams? Can we live without the salmon? I can live without the dams, I cannot live without the salmon. You have a choice to make, I want that choice made sooner rather than later. Do we secure food for the species or for our machines? It's not a hard choice when you frame it correctly.

It looks like those fish eating double-breasted cormorants are again the main culprit in the juvenile salmon killing field that is the Columbia River estuary around East Sand Island. Estimates for smolt consumption in 2011 were placed at about 27 million smolts, which was said to be 15-20 percent of the smolt population. Extrapolating from that we have 135-180 million hatchery and wild salmon smolts that survived to the estuary.

Caspian terns who are scheduled to be relocated from the dredge material augmented island to locations in southern Oregon and northern California ate about 5 million salmon and steelhead smolts this year compared some 22 million eaten by double-breasted cormorants.

The research was done by Dan Roby of the U.S. Geologic Survey’s Oregon Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Oregon State University and Ken Collis of Real Time Research, Inc. The research that has been done since the 1990s is funded by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration.

While it is quite natural for terns and cormorants and other birds to eat salmon and steelhead smolts, the presence of these birds in the numbers they are today present on East Sand Island is totally the responsibility of dredging activity in the lower Columbia River and deposition of dredging materials that augmented an island that was not formerly the nesting ground of these terns and cormorants. The tern colony first arrived in the 1980s, after we started depositing dredging material on East Sand Island. The birds left when vegetation grew up within the first year and they relocated on Rice Island farther upstream. The Corps and wildlife manager decided to move the tern colony back to East Sand Island because they believed the predation was too great at Rice Island on salmon and steelhead smolts. Cormorants started nesting on the island in 1989 and have grown in numbers ever since.

Clearly, this is one of the many ways mankind has manipulated nature with devastating unintended consequences and this needs to be corrected immediately. Trouble is, once several populations of wild birds find a great source of food and good nesting habitat it will be difficult to

Four of the 13 Endangered Species Act listed salmon and steelhead stocks in the Columbia River Basin are in the Snake River Basin and the primary culprit to their survival today are the lower four Snake River dams. The Western Division of the American Fisheries Society is in super majority agreement that those four dams are the obstacle that prevents the Snake River salmon and steelhead stocks from recovering.

Other studies have shown various enemies to salmon and their recovery. Habitat loss and degradation contribute in 91 percent of all cases of salmon mortality. Those dams degrade and destroy Snake River salmon migration habitat. Hybridization, competition, predation and interactions with hatchery produced fish contribute to salmon loss in 53 percent of the cases. Overfishing contributed to salmon loss in 50 percent of the cases.

The listed enemies of salmon and salmon recovery include: mining, logging, agricultural practices, urban development, dams, estuary modification, fishing and artificial propagation of fish from hatcheries and salmon farms bring in disease, weaken genetics and perhaps most importantly mask the decline of wild stocks of fish.

In 1991, Willa Nehlsen, Jack Williams and James Lichatowich (author of Salmon Without Rivers) took perhaps the most important look into the salmon issue in the Columbia River Basin. They found 107 extinct populations and 214 populations in jeopardy.

Man has made 31 percent of formerly available salmon habitat inaccessible through the construction of dams that do not allow fish passage in the Columbia and Snake river basins. Prior to 1850, 14,666 miles of streams in the Columbia/Snake were connected and available for salmon populations. Today, only 10,073 miles remain accessible to our salmon. Within those 10,073 miles of accessible stream, our salmon have to negotiate man-made reservoirs behind eight dams in regards to Snake River salmon and steelhead. Habitat is also degraded by various human activities and also degraded by natural activities influenced greatly by our mistakes in regards to the numerous megafires that have occurred throughout the landscape. Our forests became overgrown tinder boxes and in some cases lightning sparked catastrophic forest fires that have played a role in degrading habitat for salmon and steelhead.

An example of this is along the South Fork of the Salmon River. About 1 million acres of forest burned up in 2007 primarily along the South Fork of the Salmon River. In the summer of 2008, large landslides occurred that sent huge amounts of sediment into the East Fork of the South Fork and the South Fork river. Eventually, this sediment will be washed away and salmon habitat will be restored such as it has been throughout time, but because we were very good at snuffing out forest fires in the 20th century, we inadvertently created overgrown forests ripe for cleansing fires.

Beyond the sediment loads that make the stream shallow, those fires also erased a great deal of the canopy shading the South Fork and many of its tributaries making the overall temperature of the streams higher, which will have a negative effect on salmon and steelhead that return to west central Idaho.

There isn't a lot we can do about that situation now and eventually as the new forest rises it will solve itself.

There are five areas where we can do better for our salmon today. Those areas are 1) breaching the four lower Snake River dams (the most important thing we can do and the only thing that will ensure recovery), 2) limit mining operations within salmon and steelhead watersheds or create ironclad fines that affect a company's bottom line severely if they degrade a salmon or steelhead stream, 3) stop or severely limit the modification of the Columbia River estuary, which is primarily a problem of the US Army Corps of Engineers dredging practices and various manipulations of wildlife populations, 4) pass stricter regulations on various agricultural practices and wastewater treatment that allow various chemical agents into our salmon and steelhead streams that can alter gender to create virtually all male generations of salmon due to these chemicals entering spawning areas and interacting with developing salmon and 5) we need to cut back on our artificial propagation of fish. On that fifth and final point, I would like to see more studies on the fecundity of returning salmon from egg box releases. We know returning hatchery fish when allowed to supplement the natural population have incredibly lower fecundity rates, is this also the case for eyed-egg box plantations? I don't know, but if it is then obviously we shouldn't plant so many egg boxes, but if by planting eggs rather than the more successful survival to smolt rates hatcheries get create adults with similar fecundity rates as our wild fish, I still see a limited future in artificial propagation of salmon and steelhead.

Regardless of the other challenges mentioned above, without breaching the lower four Snake River dams our wild salmon and steelhead will be extinct within my lifetime in the Snake River basin. It begins there, but know there are other things we need to do as well

I have won multiple awards in my journalism career and there are times when I see something my "peers" do, write, or say that quite frankly embarrasses me as a journalist. There are even times, like now, when I am embarrassed as a literate man when I read something that was written without a second of thought or research. Quickly, a disclaimer, this is a blog site and I am not practicing my profession of journalism here. I am opining about a subject  (Snake River Salmon recovery) of which I have largely made up my mind what needs to be done and what can be discarded to the din of babble. The Walla Walla Union Bulletin's recent editorial discussing Judge James Redden's stepping down from the Columbia River basin salmon case belongs in the trash. It is written from such an ignorant standpoint I wouldn't even relegate it to the din of babble out of fear someone might actually think it relevant and fact-based. I don't know who at that newspaper wrote the editorial, I don't know who approved it. What I do know is they have absolutely no knowledge of the four hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River that aren't that far away from where they work.

You can't fix stupid, so you don't try, but ignorance is another dangerous animal altogether. Clearly, the person or persons who wrote and approved this... (read the editorial below, or you can go here) are grossly ignorant of the entire issue and they are terribly ignorant of the lower four Snake River dams. If the people who wrote that included below are reading this continue reading beyond this woefully ignorant editorial you wrote and approved because this is a teaching moment and clearly you need an education. I've highlighted the utterly false statements in red, but seriously there were more, many more. I don't have the time to provide for you the education you sorely missed.

_
Judge Redden's decision to step down is right call US District Judge James Redden was fixated on dam breaching as he three times rejected salmon recovery plans.

To this point, U.S. District Judge James Redden has consistently made lousy decisions as he rendered judgments regarding the federal government's effort to balance wild salmon survival with generating power from the dams on the Columbia River. Redden has rejected three different federal plans largely because taking down the dams was not a viable option.

But last week the judge finally made a good call -- he asked this case be reassigned to another judge.

Redden should have stepped aside years ago. It's been clear Redden has been fixated on dam breaching at the expense of common sense.

While the federal government's plans have not been perfect, they all seemed to be reasonable as they considered science, economics and reality. The fact is breaching the dams would be a disaster for humans without ensuring salmon survival.

A decade ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a study on breaching the Snake River dams. The Corps considered a variety of factors and ultimately concluded that dam breaching would do more harm than good. The Corps said dam breaching would increase the chances of salmon restoration only slightly --  if at all -- while taking a huge toll on the economy of the region.

Power rates would increase and so would pollution as hydropower -- a clean, renewable energy source -- would have to be replaced with power plants, many of them fueled by coal or natural gas.

Eastern Washington would be hit particularly hard as the loss of dams would cause flooding, put more trucks on the road as grain and other commodities could not be barged to market, and eliminate irrigation to many farms.

And given the current situation in this country -- and the world -- Congress is not going to allow this to occur. Dam breaching, even if salmon survival could be guaranteed, is an option that is off the table.

Redden should have been focusing on reasonable, realistic solutions rather than pushing his fringe views.   

It was announced this week that the salmon case has been assigned to District Judge Michael Simon, who was confirmed to the bench in June by the U.S. Senate.

We hope Simon takes a more pragmatic view than Redden so a reasonable and effective salmon recovery plan can move forward.

*********************************************************************************
Again, as a person who has won several awards in journalism and who holds an advanced degree in journalism, it brings me great pain when I see something written where the writer clearly did not do even the slightest bit of research before spouting off. To the writer of that, type in "power benefits of the lower Snake River dams" in the search engine of your choice.  Here is the link. Now read along with me, the last line in the second paragraph. It says...

"These dams were not built to control floods."

Which begs the question why did you write, "Eastern Washington would be hit particularly hard as the loss of dams would cause flooding..."? You just assumed all dams are for flood control, didn't you? Pay attention next time.

Now, quickly, are wild Snake River salmon more valuable to you than 13 farms in eastern Washington. This is important because you wrote that eastern Washington would be hit particularly hard if we breached the dams because in your words and I quote,

"Eastern Washington would be hit particularly hard as the loss of dams would cause flooding, put more trucks on the road as grain and other commodities could not be barged to market, and eliminate irrigation to many farms."

First of all, only one of your four salmon killing reservoirs is providing irrigation and it only provides irrigation for 13 farms. Secondly, there are a lot of places that sell pipe. And those 13 farmers can probably fund the pipe extension needed to continue irrigating from a free flowing river.

Moving on, because you've said so much here that is completely false and I would hate to miss correcting you on this gem of yours...

"The fact is breaching the dams would be a disaster for humans without ensuring salmon survival."

Would you care to support that with facts because you didn't support it with facts in your editorial, as I have pointed out above?

The dams are a subsidy for agriculture in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. They are a virtually unaccountable subsidy for farmers who already receive numerous other subsidies so they can sell their crops competitively overseas primarily. Let's take a more holistic approach to this whole issue as you tried to with this statement born out of fear...

"And given the current situation in this country -- and the world -- Congress is not going to allow this to occur. Dam breaching, even if salmon survival could be guaranteed, is an option that is off the table."

Your federal government and mine is in debt $15 trillion today and that number is growing every second. You are supporting a hidden subsidy for farmers who receive various other subsidies so they can sell grain in other countries for the most part. You support keeping four dams that cost a lot to maintain, don't generate a lot of power unless it is during spring runoff when the Pacific Northwest power grid is overloaded with electricity to the point they force wind power to shut down. You support four dams that are a part of the extraction economy of the United States, the economy we've been suffering from that allows businesses from other countries to extract our wealth in natural resources and capital while we all sit around experiencing the wonders of boom/bust cycles in various "what's hot now sectors of the economy."

Lower Granite Dam, the fourth of the lower Snake dams when you go upstream, is trapping sediment that is filling the reservoir behind it and threatening to make downtown Lewiston the Ninth Ward of the West. This means we have to spend hundreds of millions on levee raising and dredging for the next 63 years all so a few farmers who are already receiving subsidies in the millions in some cases at a time we are broke can get a good transportation rate for a lousy 107 miles.

You are defending dams that cost ratepayers and taxpayers $500 million annually in mitigation costs for all the damage they do to salmon and I might add those mitigation practices have done nothing for salmon recovery. At a time when this country can't pay its way, you stand hand in hand with the forces that will ensure our continued poverty.

I almost hate to mention that 86 percent of the Western Division of American Fisheries Society voted that breaching the four lower Snake River dams is the only way to ensure wild salmon and steelhead and other anadromous fish recover in the Snake River basin. I almost hate to mention it, because it was a vote taken by scientists and these days in the United States it is hard to find reasonable people who don't automatically discount science and opt for hocus pocus solutions devised in minds of people that never dug out a single fact in their life. Kind of like the thoughts I had about the editorial board at the Walla Walla Union Bulletin when reading your editorial.

Some people think that if a salmon can make it over one dam going out to sea and coming back from sea, then the number of dams is irrelevant. A lot of people don't understand the push to remove the four lower Snake River dams while salmon advocates don't push for the removal of the four lower Columbia River dams. I've heard arguments that salmon advocates are working some incremental route to getting rid of all the dams and sending all Pacific Northwest residents back to the days when you heated with a wood stove or fire place and you read your books by candle light.

No, there is a very good reason why there is a push for the removal of the four lower Snake River dams and it can easily be explained with a comparison of smolt to adult return rates for fish above all eight dams and for fish in the Yakima River, which is above the four Columbia River dams (Bonneville, The Dalles, John Day and McNary dams).

Smolt to adult return rates are a simple calculation and since we incessantly count anadromous fish in the Snake and Columbia rivers the data is relatively easy to come by. To explain it in the simplest terms, we count the number of smolts going out at a specific location and then we count the returning adults a few years later and then we calculate the percentage of adults that returned from the number of smolts we counted going out. You will see it in salmon literature as a SAR (no, that's not a search and rescue operation, though writing about salmon recovery sometimes seems that way).

We have SAR data for Snake River salmon back into the 1960s and SAR data for Yakima River salmon back to the mid-1980s, thus comparing the two can give you a pretty good hunch that talk of removing four lower Snake River dams isn't some grand conspiracy of some nefarious group hellbent on destroying America, but rather the conclusion of reasonable people who have looked at the science and the data and the reality of salmon decline in the Snake River basin.

You can look at the chart at the end of this blog post. Bert Bowler sent it to me. He knows his stuff, you can learn a lot from his website as well and I encourage you to go here to do just that.

The likely window for true Snake River salmon and steelhead recovery is a smolt to adult return rate of 2-6 percent in eight consecutive years. The Yakima salmon have been in the 2-6 percent window some in the 1980s, in the early 1990s and pretty much every year since 1998, even exceeding the preferred range of smolt to adult returns.

What about the Snake River salmon? From 1964 to 1970, the Snake River salmon and steelhead were able to stay in the preferred range. Ice Harbor Dam was constructed in 1962, Lower Monumental Dam in 1969, and Little Goose in 1970. And you have to see the drop in the smolt to adult returns in that graph as those dams are coming online. The bottom fell out, then there was a one year return to the preferred window of SAR, and then with the completion of Lower Granite Dam in 1975 the smolt to adult return rates for Snake River salmon dropped below the 2 percent threshold and stayed there for some quarter century before the great return year of 2001 saw the SAR rise above 2 percent to about 4 percent. Then note that it dropped back below the range again.

It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. It's a decision you have to make. Do you want those dams? If yes, you also accept the extinction of Idaho's salmon and steelhead. Or do you want Idaho's and eastern Oregon's salmon and steelhead to recover? If so, you must accept that those four dams have to be removed. I choose the latter, how about you?