Clear cuts and insufficient stream buffers are the primary factors for poor water quality in the PNW, but your correct urbanization has had a negative effect as well. It's not an either or situation, we can protect anchor fish habitat and harvest timber, we just need the will to make it happen.

That is a interesting statement which is valid some places, others not. The area of a clear cut has little to do with water quality and the RMZ's have been expanded and much of the mass wasting has been drastically reduced. Now accumulative logging units on the same stream can really screw things up with surging and low summer flows. When I started in the woods the average section had 2 miles of road after harvest, it was over 6 miles when I retired. While direct delivery has been drastically reduced it still happens but the fact that tree farms use 40 year rotations and the activities of growing such a crop are accumulative is the baseline to work from.

Timber has a history to be sure but the fundamental change in the stream environment is the " Tree Farm " in my life time. I have said it many times but I will say it again. In 38 years working in the woods I was in a forest only twice. The rest of my time was in a tree farm which is long term, high intensity agriculture that is not intended and never will be a forest. That is the rock bottom issue as too many still try to call a tree farm a forest and not recognize that it is not a forest.

Just so it is out, so to speak, urbanization and the human activities that come with it are the most destructive thing that fish face. Cement, bricks, and asphalt are permanent.