The purpose in its most simplest context...

To gain control over natural abundance/God provided food supply... To manufacture scarcity via "management" as to deny food availability so the people cannot feed themselves outside of the system of governance...

The tools used are purposeful over harvest to create scarcity via commercial exploitation under the guise of global demand vs maintaining natural abundance via responsible subsistence harvest models... Responsible subsistence harvest,, without limits,, "only take what you need for food" without regulation would not even impact stock abundance and allow carrying capacity to rebuild to natural levels...

Take away the mindset of competition to get the most,, just be responsible and honest about it...

In no way has the corporate government displayed that they have the intention or knowledge to manage Natural Resource in a capacity to dictate to the people how it should be done in a honest or responsible way with good intentions for the environment or the people...

In no way has the corporate government shown that it is responsible,, honest or acting in Good Faith to do the right thing...

I'm up for a good conspiracy but I'm not sure this one jives. I feel that there are too many user groups, environmental issues and political issues that complicates the whole mess. There are plenty of people wanting more fish in the rivers. What that looks like and what may get implemented is often not agreed to by the many different groups that advocate for fish(see lawsuits).

I agree. There are too many people who want their share whether it be fishermen, folks who want to drink water, dam operators, and a whole long list of societal uses that tug.

Unfortunately, in my experience, the folks on the front lines can't truthfully and fully share the orders they march under. They get blamed, but they don't drive the bus.

Pretty sure many of them know what needs to be done, but can't even say it.

We need to be thinking outside the box for a real solution where everybody has an opportunity without an advantage and the fish and environment win also...

Commercial interests especially in the terminal areas and in the feeding grounds is contrary to natural abundance and not sustainable over the long or short term... Money is the problem,,, the fish are viewed as property for profit above national security and overall health and welfare of all sectors... We just have to stop nearly all commercial fishing for the purpose of profit... Anything do do with Salmon or Steelhead outside of gear/boats needs to be non profit and necessarily tax free... Participation in the resource,, from harvest to management must happened on a volunteer basis and Hatcheries production/wild production, overall maximum abundance must be the goal with maximum harvest opportunity/participation for the purpose of substance and recreation...

The people need to realize that the opportunity belongs to them at their discretion...

Not bad RG

RichG,

I doubt you realize it, but you do have a point as regards salmon. By WA state law, salmon are food fish, and the WDFW has organized itself around commercial fisheries intended to make salmon as food available to the people at large. Hence the nickname of the "Washington Department of Salmon." Overharvest began before the state had the mechanism to regulate salmon harvest. Then came poorly developed escapement goals to attempt to reign in overharvest. Then in 1984 the state and Boldt treaty tribes set in stone the management principle of Maximum Sustained Harvest (MSH), a slight variant of maximum sustained yield, a concept embraced by fishery managers nearly world wide. With one significant failing, because MSY and MSH are not actually sustainable. In every case I am aware of, they inevitably lead to a declining fish population trend that ends with the population no longer being abundant enough to make commercial pursuit worthwhile. In a nutshell, that's salmon management for you.

Steelhead are another matter. To the state steelhead are gamefish, to be managed to provide recreational fishing. To the treaty tribes steelhead are food fish, same as salmon. And whether they knew what they were doing or not, the state agreed with the tribes in 1984 to also manage steelhead under MSH. Except the state hasn't exactly done that, and most tribes haven't either, with some exceptions. The result is that steelhead have spawning escapement goals, and although far from perfect, are ecologically based and have the prospect of sustaining steelhead populations indefinitely. The steelhead problem is one of a changing environment, both in freshwater and especially in the marine and ocean environments.

Between reduced steelhead harvests through wild steelhead release regulations in the recreational sector and extremely reduced harvest in the treaty fishing sector, harvest is nearly out of the equation affecting wild steelhead abundance as a practical matter. Well, then, if steelhead are not being over harvested, then why aren't there more of them? Excellent question Poindexter. It's the environment that provides critical space and forage that is limiting their abundance. Climate change, you know, the one that's a hoax, is changing stream hydrographs, causing both winter flooding and summer drought to be both more frequent and more severe than they were during the decades of peak steelhead abundance. And the ocean, where steelhead attain most of their growth is out of whack as well. We get changes in spring coastal upwelling that produces critical forage for juvenile salmon and steelhead, increases in surface sea temperature in the far western Pacific where most steelhead forage, increases in competition in the far western Pacific Ocean from hatchery pink and chum salmon released in Japan and Alaska, and increased avian and marine mammal predation as their former prey species also decline in abundance. The take home message: the aquatic environment that is critically necessary to abundant steelhead populations is a mess.

Oh, and the WA state population of humans has increased from 2.6 million, when wild steelhead were last doing quite well to 7.8 million today, when they aren't.

And that, RichG, is why you can't fish without regulation and harvest steelhead for subsistence whenever you feel like it. This is how the world has evolved, along with the not so helping hand of mankind. Life's a bitch, and then you die.

Ewww.

And then we die, I guess that’s it then, and slammed the door on that thread.

Come on Rich, give us something to work with here.

To piggyback on Salmo's comment on MSH I find it to wholly an economic analysis. What is the absolute minimum investment I am forced to make (escapement) in order to maximize return (dead fish in the boat)? I even have a management plan that says this...

MSH/Y also only looks at one species and not at inter-species interactions. Alaska showed that as you increased pink escapement you significantly increased coho catch. Problem for them was that it was different groups of fishermen (trollers versus seiners) and neither wanted to cut back to help the other.

Here in WA, how many guys who fish the Big Blue, Puget Sound, or Bouy Zooey are willing to let those fish pass upstream for escapement and the local in-river fishermen? Management would be much more exact that way...

The way we continue to think about things and do things has gotten us in worse shape all the way around...

"User groups" being concerned about all these user groups who have an interest regarding "profits"... This is not the peoples interest regarding fish management,, we could give a [Bleeeeep!] about who is making money off the fish at the expense of the fish, the environment not to mention the peoples well being...

The fish belong to no one,, they are a privilege to everyone,, not a human right to have access,, you have to be responsible,, selfless and humble regarding this privilege... God created man to have dominion over the land, waters and the beasts,, this includes Salmon and Steelhead... Not to control but to responsibly maintain/look after...

God did not create money or give money to man so that he could [Bleeeeep!] up the world and all the beasts and fish because of greed for the fake money...

Salmo,,,

The environment has nothing to do with any of this,, there is nothing wrong with the environment regarding Steelhead survival or production... its likely slightly out of balance for the purpose of gaining control over it but not damaged or broken in any significant way...

The reason why there are not more steelhead is because of purposeful over harvest which continues in the terminal areas/feeding grounds on an already decimated stock that was over harvested even more in the past so that control over abundance could be gained...

The Indians did not do it initially,, they lived for thousands of years by the rule of subsistence,, "take only what you need",, it was a successful management model... Now the Indians are on the take/government/bank payroll so they are used as a tool of "management",, getting abundance under control by targeting stocks in terminal areas to manage the abundance into manufactured scarcity... The Indians are being used via giving them Greed for wealth and the unfair advantage of overharvest opportunity...

The recreation people do not have the opportunity to over harvest,, it is denied because they are under control as is the abundance of the resource...


You see,, the fish resource is in a position of scarcity because of management,, over harvest being used as a tool of control,, in the past and continuously to this day...


Once you decimate the wild production which is not human controlled yet human impacted you establish hatcheries to initially supplement the wild production loss,, then you ration the hatchery production to cause scarcity and blame it on the environment/human impact so you can impose restrictions and more control over the people,, also to deny them FOOD or the ability to feed themselves outside the banking cartel/centralized system of control...

The Dollar/Money is the tool of control/self destruction...

None of this is complicated,, all very simple... We complicate it to somewhat deflect the blame and to prevent having to undergo a change in perspective and actions...

The truth is the people like being under control/without responsibility,, able to cast blame "point fingers" so that there is no actual accountability,, no change to their existence...

If the people have to be responsible and accountable life becomes REAL,, that is what people are avoiding...

RichG posted: "The environment has nothing to do with any of this,, there is nothing wrong with the environment regarding Steelhead survival or production... its likely slightly out of balance for the purpose of gaining control over it but not damaged or broken in any significant way... "

It doesn't surprise me or any sane individual that you are detached from reality. To believe what you posted requires ignoring all the credible evidence that exists and corroborates what I posted. Your simplistic reality is a made up narrative that is not supported by any rational evidence. It may be comforting to you, but that doesn't make it real.

If you are around some place for a long time you miss the changes.

Worked with a Habitat Manager who insisted that the habitat in a rapidly urbanizing county had not degraded over his decades there. Yeah.

I moved away from Sacramento in '72, returning only for visits and holidays. In the early 00s my Dad and his wife drove to Folsom for dinner. On the way we passed a field that was packed with 10-20' tall oaks. It dawned on me that when I left, that was a grassy field. Yes had I driven past it daily for those 30 years I likely would not have detected the change.

Moved to Olympia in '80 and commted from Lacey to downtown daily. Those Doug-firs along I-5 haven't grown a bit in the 45 years I've been here.

You see something every day and don't notice the change.

Thought this site was defunked, being down for so long? Something I sure notice driving on back woods logging roads, is when an area is logged. Makes it difficult to identify where your'e located. Same after a logged area is replanted after 5-10 yrs.

Rich G.
Some very interesting comments from you the past few days. In many ways government is the problem. Either too much regulation, or none.
Looking back about a hundred years as our northwest population began to grow and we pursued development. Some leaders realized that development like dams, logging, building, etc., would affect our fish populations. So, they built hatcheries to compensate for the natural losses. It worked for awhile. Now we have extreme habitat loss (an Oregon State professor says we have less than five percent of original), but good ability to produce hatchery salmon, but are prohibited to taking an abundance due to the complexities of ESA. The government's promises are broken. Think about our restrictions to reducing seals and sea lions. Same with over populated predatory birds (government built ideal habitat for them on the Columbia). There's a permit to eliminate a substantial number of sea lions just downstream of Bonneville, but only a small portion of the quota has been taken. And last, but certainly not the least, think of the plight of the treaty tribes. Pretty much we're all in the same boat now.

I remember deer hunting with a guy who said one of his mentors "hunted deer all year and bucks in the fall". Pretty sure, like Tiug said, that have been and probably still are rather subsistence consuming. probably worked on very small scale but now, with all the people, the resource loses.

Yes the Treaty Tribes got phucked but remember they are a conquered peoples...

Now the Treaty tribes are being used by the banking cartel to maintain a system of manufactured scarcity in order to maintain control over Gods created abundance so that the people remain in a controlled state where their food supply is rationed and controlled for the interests of commercial entitlements...

What better way to control individual stocks for the purpose of controlling regional food supply and being able to use other tools of control such as the ESA than to commercial harvest with gill nets in terminal areas,, to purposefully over harvest in order to control natural abundance so ultimately the people remain in a controlled state of being,, under a system dictated to them rather than a reality controlled by them...

If the people have abundant food/energy free and or cheap,, live in harmony with and not against God and Nature,, reality is positive,, easy,, and results in a high standard of living that is sustainable based on a model of subsistence rather than production/consumption model based on profits...

Plain and simple,, this garbage we do now,, how government and the corporate structure manage and divide resources does not work and is not inclusive to all the peoples... Production/consumption,, always expansion in order to measure success is contrary to how the earth works,, how life and abundance is sustained naturally...

The Banking Cartels have gained control over the environment,, over Gods abundance and resources to a level of managed production,,, manufactured scarcity in order to maintain control over all life... As a result everything sucks and is getting into an even worse position of sucking...

We need to shift to a system of abundance and only taking what we need to live a good life,, treat each other how we would like to be treated... Greed fuels and results in self destruction of the collective,, controlling what cant be controlled results in self destruction... Living in harmony with and not against,, seeking not to control but instead letting God Provide and graciously accepting the gifts...

Hey RichG, what drugs are you taking? I think I might like to try some.

Borax and Ivermectin...


The Borax will open your mind up as it supports Cerebral communications within the brain itself and is also oxidative so it cleans out the plaque and Calcification within the Pineal Gland which happens to be the gateway/doorway to expanded thinking...

No individual user group has the right or power to claim Salmon/Steelhead or any natural resource as an entitlement,, not via treaty or by a court order ...

These resources belong to the people because they are essential to life as we know it collectively...

Having naturally/supplemented abundant salmon/steelhead runs freely accessible for the purpose subsistence is the most positive possible circumstance for all the peoples of the Pacific Northwest and is vital to food and environmental security...

The key is to classify Salmon/Steelhead as a vital resource as food/energy/fertilizer/economic stability with all groups having equal access and opportunity...

We do not manage wild land animals as an entitlement resource for the purpose of commercial sale for profit why then should we manage wild fish any different? Managing wild fish populations for a global consumption market when the stocks are regional makes no sense... This is not sustainable as the Salmon are part of regional environmental systems and are much more valuable to food security and environmental health than for commercial exploitation/sale...

On second thought I'll pass on the borax and ivermectin. I guess I was sorta' hoping you'd say mushrooms and LSD.

If wild natural resources belong to the people and not commercial enterprize, does that also apply to fish resources in the ocean as well? Like sardines and tuna? I don't fish in the ocean for those fish species. Should they not be available to me via commercial enterprize? How would all groups have equal access and opportunity since most people don't have the gear or time to harvest subsistence amounts of ocean fish species?

It looks like you're saying that regional stocks of fish, like salmon and steelhead should be available for subsistence use by the people who live in that region. I see a problem with that. The natural abundance of wild steelhead could support subsistence fishing when the population of people in WA was 2.6 million. The population is now 7.8 million, and even restored populations of steelhead could not meet the subsistence fishing needs of that number. And in a few years, when the population reaches 15 million, any notion that subsistence fishing is practical melts away. And then when the human population increases to 30 million, subsistence fishing for both salmon and steelhead evaporates because the natural environment will necessarily be compromised by the sheer presence of so many humans.

Your subsistence fishing concept needs some serious homework.

Salmo raises an interesting point that has bothered me from an ecological perspective. In times of great resource abundance we certainly had fewer people but we also had many resources we did not harvest. All the benthic species, except, for example, halibut on landlines. But the high seas species were essentially unharvested as were the benthic species.

Take for example clams. What would be the water quality status vis-a-vis algae blooms in PS if no subtidal shellfish were harvested? A lot cleaner, I'll bet. We really don't know how, for example, albacore affected salmon but does the current extensive harvest of them depress salmon somehow? I don't know.

But I am confident that the ecosystem, when harvest removals were essentially limited to land-based, was a whole lot different and our removals of these previously unaccessible resources has to have had an impact.

We are in a manufactured situation all the way around.. Powers above the common people set it up this way,, tried to tame the land and gain control over all creation,, forced people to live under a system...

Its up to the people,, whats important to them,, how they want to live,, but that power the people have to determine the reality they desire to live in has gone unused for a very long time,, several hundred years if not longer... The people have been enslaved in a system of debt,, under a system of governance where permission must be granted by a title of nobility in order for the people to take action...

Back in the 70s, in a collection of paper put out by Small Tribes of Western WA (somewhere in my library), Ernie Brannon had an article where he proposed that all salmon management be terminal and controlled by residents of the terminal area (watershed most likely).

If that management scheme controlled all fisheries on that stock, plus fisheries on the food base and predators, then it might work well for the fish. I say might because I suspect that logging interests in some watersheds, urban interests in others, would win out as they would have the most votes on any scheme.

The management of our resources is much more complex than just who gets to kill how many. I was gonna say that think we are past that time, or population level, where one can move off the grid and live by what they can catch/grow/produce independent of Rich's controlling groups. Maybe one or a few people can do it but not a society with the current number of people.

In some respects I think that the endaangered Species Act is the worst thng that has happened to salmon management and salmon fishers. Before anyone dies of apoplexy let me give one example, but there are many many more. Back in '74 the Toutle was in my patrol area. In the fall it was stuffed full of chinook from the mouth all the way u into the Green and beyond. Lots of spawning activity. This was common for many, many years prior. The hatchery produced healthy fish. Ocean seasons were from April to October for both chinook and coho. Wild salmon spawned and crossed with hatchery in the river. Survival of the fittest (fish) prevailed and it seemed obvious that evolution worked. I think the same conditions worked on many rivers with strong hatchery programs. Admittedly ocean conditions were different.
Taking a step farther back in time, another fifty years or so, we, the government, decided to expand our population with associated construction and of course, dams. As we gradually lost our good fish habitat, the government said "don't worry, we'll build hatcheries to make up for the loss of salmon." Now where are we? Raising fish that we can't fish for because of ESA. Think about this from the tribal pespective.

The ESA was not passed into law in order to protect anything... It is a justification to manipulate and control,, a tool of control... The ESA is a way to let you know that there is no free market or freedom of choice...
Likewise the EPA is not an organization formed to protect anything its all about control over the collective peoples... Administrative law is a method of policy enforcement in a multi pronged approach at curtailing "Free Will"...

Just remember that the corporate system,, Government System is the mechanism that depleted abundance under expanded markets and persuaded/coerced effort/participation of the people via the promise of reward [money] and then after the depletion resulted in critical levels of abundance the control measures over the lands and peoples began... The peoples were blamed for not being good stewards of the resource and punished as a result...

The truth is the people are not to blame,, but instead policy is to blame... Currently we are under the exact same policy that got us into this mess and keeps us here...

Those who live on or use water wells know that when water is pumped out that there is a cone pf dep[ression around the WellPoint. Water is removed, the surface around the well declines. at some point, if you are removing water faster than it moves through the aquifer you may dry out the well, regardless of whether or not the aquifer is recharged. Stop pumping and the water returns .

While I doubt that petroleum is being created as fast as we are pulling it out I can see that, until you drain the whole pool, that individual wells will see "refilling".

Somebody who isn more chemically astute than I will need to explain how the earth's inorganic rock gets converted into organic petroleum in a manner other than conversion of fossil life forms.