Actually, I’d say the main reason for the demise of the Skagit stocks is (not surprisingly) the history of land use in the watershed. The beginning of the end probably came when the delta was diked to “reclaim” agricultural lands that grow all those pretty tulips. With that went most of the estuarine rearing habitat for summer and fall chinook. Clearing the massive logjams above Mount Vernon to facilitate river traffic most likely changed the middle river floodplain reaches enough to damage a hell of a lot of amazing coho rearing habitat. Logging throughout the entire watershed changed the sediment budgets of all the tributaries, changes that were felt all the way to the mainstem. There goes all those pool-riffle sequences that spring chinook need to stage and mature in. And steelhead, with their amazing diversity, use every inch of everything at some point in their life history, so they took all those hits, too. And then came the pavement…

This entire discussion feels to me like somebody squabbling over the change in his pocket while somebody quietly slips a $100 bill out of his wallet. The real question is when we as a society are going to decide that the enormous lifestyle changes that fixing these problems would take are worth it. Unfortunately, I’m going to guess never.

But I’d love to see ‘em prove me wrong.