Geoduck,

A trend? Heck, what is a trend? 5 years? 10? 20? 100? 500? Hey, compared to the period immediately following the recession of glaciation, there are lots of wild salmon and steelhead around here right now. As the scientist you are, you know just as well as I that a trend period comes down to a matter of opinion. You don't think the data exhibit a trend. OK, fine. WSC thinks it does exhibit a trend, and that's fine, too. Technical disagreements occur because opinion does matter.

BTW, what little technical data there are suggests that there were a lot more wild steelhead 20, 30, and 40 years ago than there are today. Is that a trend? I think so. But a DSI aluminum company executive doesn't. He believes salmon and steelhead have recovered, based on recently available data and observations. Is he correct?

This harping about data, trends, and junk science would be humorously entertaining if I wasn't observing people I care about, "brothers of the angle," ***** about who's got the real straight skinny on killing the last of what once was. I expected this. But not until the day after the wild steelhead apocolypse.

You want to think about a trend? Try this one. No one asked me, but I've got opinions too. Here's my opinion. I think we're damn lucky to have WSR with CNR. This is symptomatic of a declining trend, but we're still a ways from the bottom. The trend is that before long we'll have WSR, but not CNR, due to too many wild steelhead populations consistently falling below the threshold of at least 80% of the escapement goal. The trend then leads to not only no CNR, but no WSR either, as rivers are permanently closed as populations hit critically low levels, and extinctions become common on one river system after another as the human population in the Pacific NW continues to grow and grow, smothering the preponderance of the native flora and fauna. And while this happens, what we will have done about it is post away on internet BBs about how there was no clear trend, and killing a few wild steelhead for the table wasn't the problem, and WSR doesn't recover populations, and killing steelhead with low CNR incidental mortality rates was just as harmful to the populations as CNK. And while this happens, most of us won't see ourselves as part of the problem, disregarding the many impacts we level against native fish populations every day be just living in this wonderful region. And while this happens, we'll disavow that our inactions, wrong actions, and all the rest of our actions contributed directly and indirectly to the very outcome people appear to be denying in these pitiful threads.

Whew! Was that Salmo with a rant? And it hasn't been a bad day, at that.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.