For the last 35 years I’ve been covering what we call the “salmon wars” in the Pacific Northwest, writing so many stories about salmon heading toward extinction that I’ve lost count.
The decline occurred year by year while we spent $18 billion on what’s politely called “mitigation.” That meant building fish passages around dams without fish ladders or snatching fish from warming rivers and trucking them around dams before they died. Nothing has ever worked.
The truth is that some dams must be removed if salmon are to have a prayer of leaving the ocean and swimming up rivers to spawn.
Now, finally, there is a sign of hope for the fish even as Snake River salmon in the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington remain close to extinction.
There’s hope because the Biden administration has been in settlement talks with legal plaintiffs, including the state of Oregon, the Nez Perce tribe and sporting, fishing and environmental groups. They have sued the federal government five times over its failed attempts to save salmon under the Endangered Species Act, and each time the government has lost. Meanwhile, spring chinook, sockeye and steelhead trended toward extinction in the Snake River watershed, which includes their best remaining habitat in the lower 48 states.