Loss of habitat, from dams and pretty much all other human development activities, is the real killer of our salmon and steelhead runs. Yeah, overfishing wipes out a cycle of fish, but leave them alone and they will come back if they have something to come back to. But take away the habitat, or really even a piece of the habitat, and they will never come back.

The reason I say even a piece is because the bottleneck in the system is the limiting factor. You can have all kinds of spawning and rearing area in freshwater, and a good year in the ocean, but if the estuary is turned into a contaminated container port with 99% of the rearing habitat gone (Seattle, Tacoma, etc.), the juvenile fish have no place to adapt to life in saltwater and nothing to eat while they do, and they die. This phenomenon would be similar to, say, taking the I-5 bridge off of the Lewis River and making all commerce unload their cargos into rowboats to get across to load up on the other side and continue on. Hey, it's just a tiny piece of I-5, shouldn't hurt anything, right?

By the way, 60 bills were introduced into the state legislative session to eliminate or water down the hydraulic code so that WDFW would no longer protect fish habitat, by all your favorites like Doumit, Buck, Oke, etc. 32 are still alive and some are probably going to pass in the name of legislative reform. We are well on the way to losing what is left of fish habitat, and the fish won't be far behind