Sol: In a word – Yes.

I have not completed my interviews with climatlogists and fisheries biologists, but I have enough information to be genuinely concerned.

While no one can accurately model future weather, it is clear that we are warming and doing so very rapidly – in geological terms. If the trend continues will have problems related to low flows at spawning times, lethal water temperatures and other issues that could dramatically effect out salmon. Not in thousands of years but in dozens of years.

One of my concerns is that, in many instances, we are managing endangered runs to just barely maintain their numbers. Add in variables like extraordinary fall floods, high summer temperatures and low water during spawning periods and many of those endangered stock will be in real trouble. We can do a number of things including managing endangered stock to provide recrutiment levels that will have a bit more of a buffer to help when adverse conditions come.

While salmon have apparently managed to withstand major long-term weather fluctuations what we are seeing now is much more rapid change. And, I suspect that during past climate shifts the range of salmon may have dramatically contracted

There is much we do not know about all this, but we do know for certain that we are in a period of rapid warming. Only time will tell what the effects will be.