Originally Posted By: Carcassman
While you may be right that simply not fishing here does not address the manifold problems the fish face the attitude that "they" do more damage than "we" do is why we will never restore the ecosystems.

No one action, except probably dams, can be pointed to as causing the destruction of our fish runs. Look at the myriad of threads here. Nobody here hurts ESA fish; it is somebody else such as nets, Indians, Alaskans, Canadians, the high seas pirate netters, and so on.

I believe the problem is that there are so many issues, most of which one of "death by 1,000 cuts" that most folks can say, with a straight face, "You need to control some body else because it isn't me. If you control me, nothing will improve because my impact is so small."


I agree that the current state of salmon and steelhead is a result of a thousand cuts, but I disagree that only one specific action directly is or was responsible in a quantifiable way.

Diking and river channelization for flood control and the creation of lower basin farmland is one of the most significant actions that resulted in a loss of anadromous populations. The effects from diking, dewatering, and the subsequent expansion of agricultural lands and development is especially notable in major Puget Sound rivers.

The result of river modifications is directly responsible for the drastic decrease of fish production, perhaps more significantly than dams in some cases.

While flood control and dewatering of the lowlands may not have affected spawning areas for some species or stocks, the massive decrease in lower basin habitat complexity has directly affected the productivity of chinook (and other species) due to their reliance on the transitional complex between fresh water and the estuary. In just about every situation in Puget Sound, this area has vanished and so have our chinook.

The WRIA documents for Puget Sound usually contain a large amount of reading about habitat loss and the resulting anadromous population declines and are readily available with a quick search.