Obsessed

Let's talk about what you have said. Believe me, no one hates dams more then I do, nor do they understand more then I do what they have done as far as blockage of both up and down stream fish passage! Saying that, one has to look at my first harvest chart and think about this; the Grand Coulee Dam went into operation on July 16, 1933 when you look at the chart, you can see a huge peak (about 1882) in harvest and shortly afterwards there was a huge drop somewhere around 1888.

There were no dams on the Columbia then, and they netted all year long. So what made those run's drop that much in that time period? There was no rapid population growth to degrade the habitat at that time, so what do you think happen? Was it harvest, was it lack of escapement… what was it?

I know this is only one specie (chinook), but this same specie is also the same specie that science is now using on the Columbia as a diagnosis species, which is also now being used in the Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment Method (EDT) process on the Columbia River.

So a person should be able to feel comfortable by using "Chinook" as an example on my chart. Remember, it is only being used as an example here. Since there were no dams between 1882 and 1888, what do you think was the reason for such a huge decline in harvest? If you look at time periods from 1888 to 1933, when the first dam went in, harvest rates were already heading downward rapidly. There was no "great lost" of habitat that was caused by "the mother of all dams" at the time, nor where there any other dams, but yet fish runs were going downwards fairly fast.

If you look at the harvest rate of fish after those "21" other dams went in, the runs had already in my mind, started downward drastically! There is no question that each additional dam has "helped" turned production downward, but the major trend was already headed that way. What is your opinion why it was so?

Around 1986 we had another spike that brought the run size back up again, and I am sure when the next graph comes out, you are going to see a huge spike from 2000-2005. So what does all this mean? Are our salmon and Steelhead runs on the curve to come back? Or is it to late to change the curve?

I am not really sold on that one yet! To me, it looks like commercial harvest had a huge roll in deciding the declines on the Columbia! It appears that blame could be divided up to about 50% commercial, and 50% to the dams. It looks like the two are the true culprits to me!


Cowlitzfisherman