Losing it at a rate faster than restoration projects could ever hope to keep pace with... a sobering report on the sad reality of modern society's legacy in the PNW. Read it and weep.

http://www.heraldnet.com/news/report-loss-of-salmon-habitat-continues-to-grow/

There is SO MUCH we could do together with the tribes... And I think we could be super effective if united. Alas when NOF continues to be a bloodsport, this seems unlikely.

Similar article ran in Skagit Valley Herald up here in the North Sound on Saturday. Sad indeed but IMHO the North Sound is in a little better shape if that means anything. On a recent visit to Seattle with my wife's cousin we did the "tourist thing" of a trip to the Space needle and that's where this really hits home! When viewing the wide expanse of the Seattle Metro area I wondered to myself how any salmon ever make it home.......

When I took my fish management class in university it was taught by Alex Calhoun, who was head of Inland Fisheries for CFG (now CFW). One of his comments (this was '72) was that the other western states were looking at California so they could learn what worked and, more importantly, what didn't. I don't think the other states learned anything.

Eastern USA was going to do it differently than Europe...and if they did it differently at all, it was worse.

Out west they were going to do it far better than back east...fail.

Humans have a long and storied history of leaving one place because it got fukked up, and then fukking up wherever they go just as bad, or worse, with zero self reflection, zero accountability, and plenty of blame for most everyone else who probably had little to do with it.

The only reason northern Canada and Alaska aren't completely fukked is that we haven't put enough people there yet. We will, however, and will ruin them just as fast and easy as we did the rest of the world.

Fish on...

Todd

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Quil+Ceda+Village/@48.0826175,-122.1922777,3758m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x5485540abaf56c1f:0x12db3b3aa9a32ff7!8m2!3d48.0763656!4d-122.1952638!6m1!1e1

I have a number of my birding friends just how much better off we would be, conservation-wise, if we had managed swans, cranes (esp whoopers), and shorebirds such as curlew and plover with the intent to hunt them once they recovered. Like Wood Ducks. Most authorities thought woodies were on the fast lane to extinction at the turn of the 20th Century.

IF we had the intent to hunt the above mentioned birds, at a sustainable level, how much more habitat would there be for all resources? Instead, we have museum populations and a lot less habitat.

Early on in ESA at least some of the Inland Cutthroat were listed as Endangered which meant little could be done with them. Many were successfully argued down to Threatened and the resource agencies continued to have some fisheries while restoring and enhancing the subspecies. Heck, the Wyoming CuttSlam includes at least one subspecies thought to be extinct in the 70s; now you can catch them.

I always look very cynical at reports that are issued by a group who has a vested interest in the outcome. While habitat is probably still being compromised, I can pull out an aerial and immediately see where the state forest land has limited harvest. In the past these would have been clear cut all the way up to the river. The home I grew up in was recently removed, along with the entire neighborhood, and is slowly being turned back into wetlands. Just a short distance away a large field that had been farm land was just converted back to an estuary wetland. I used to fish the creek that runs through it for trout. It is now closed as spawning sanctuary. In the same small estuary, several other ponds and wetlands now exist that were not there when I grew up. This is just a small area, but I see it in many areas.
I think of more concern is what may be still present from past pollution sites.

Strange that I can fish an urban stream in Oregon and hook multiple fish, hear of 30 fish days, and see fish in every hole, and then stop at multiple rivers in Washington and see one fish for several days of fishing, and hear only dismal reports. Something is going on, but I do not think that habitat is the main issue

SERIALLY?

Serially. How are the kings doing in your area, which I would guess has better habitat protection then in the past. Interception and over fishing seem to be a lot more of the issue.
In the south sound the issue appears to be something happening in the salt, rather than the water shed, as can be seen by the lack of returns in net pen fish as well as river fish.

Result of a society who's core value is digits on a bank ledger.

People love to blame others. As a small time developer, I see the hoops we have to go through with limited value. I have asked and been told directly that no cost-benifit analysis is done. We can spend millions, but if over harvest is not addressed, then nothing will help. Lots of examples of good habitat with declining runs can be found. The Doc's favorite river, the Kenia, is a good example of where habitat is not the over riding factor. I really believe it is much easier for the tribes to look for money for habitat work then to look at their own impacts. They can demand millions and still rape the resources.

It is not much of a secret of what the root cause of salmon habitat loss has been and without dramatic changes will continue to be.

When Puget Sound Chinook were ESA listed in 1999 the Washington State human population was estimated to be 5.79 million; today it is estimated to be 7.17 million. That represents a nearly 20% in our total population; much of which occurred in the Puget Sound region. That is a significant increase in man induced pressure on the habitat. Without a concerted effort to both increase the pace of habitat restoration and at the same time reducing new impacts the habitat so critical to the long term survival of our wild anadromous stocks the future of the resource is indeed bleak.

The only real question on the current population trends (both human and fish) is how soon will the Status such as Puget Sound Chinook upgraded to from threatened to endanged or more wild coho populations be ESA listed.

Curt

The loss of habitat will continue to grow if the Republicans have their way. The GOPs 2016 platform is is to sell off public lands and open up more logging, ranching, mining, etc.

2016 GOP Platform Sell Off Public Lands

I was a volunteer 1988- 90 on a local cities Planning Commission during the development of the Growth Management Act. Growth was exponential then and out of control. Many times we voted to stop developments, only to have the City Council say we legally can't, "Growth is inevitable". As Todd stated no where to go but down hill, as long as people keep moving here, and the population in P.S. is slated to increase by another million the next 25 yrs. The developers make there millions and leave, fish and wildlife suffer, and those that live here are left with the mess. It's about time for the Tribes to spend more of that casino $$ to aid and assist.

Habitat is more than just the freshwater stream. It is the whole watershed, top to bottom, ridge to ridge. It is the water, both surface and ground. It is the runoff. Then, habitat is the estuaries and following that the ocean. Habitat is also, as Jeff Cederholm said, the salmon.

Your little stream section may look pretty good, and may be in reasonable condition, but if there is no food in the ocean, if the estuary is converted to ports and marinas, then the fish still get screwed.

I believe that there is no one big magic silver bullet that, if implemented, fixes everything. Banning all fishing everywhere will still not restore the Columbia due to the dams. Taking every dam out of the Columbia will not restore it due to the fisheries and watershed development. But, since we can show how bad gill nets are or how bad dams are or how bad dairies are we can deflect blame from our favorite activity.

Death by a 1000 cuts, and virtually no one willing to forgo the specific (small but NOT insignificant) wound they inflict.

We're ALL guilty.

Absolutely. That is a real problem with natural resources in that what we as individuals do, or even modest-sized groups, is probably not detectable. So, we do no harm; it's them.

That's true, Doc. Ultimately, our standards of living are not sustainable, and there's absolutely zero chance people will be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to meaningfully restore salmon (or any other) habitat. Too many people make too much money and enjoy too much convenience from continuing development for that to be a realistic notion.

The big problem I have with pointing at habitat as the be all, end all is that the hopelessness of the situation is used as moral justification to continue the management practices that are expediting the extinction process, one irresponsible allocation at a time.

Cedarholm said salmon themselves are habitat, and I believe he was right. How about we quit killing everything that does survive to adulthood, to get the maximum survival benefit from the habitat that remains? Nah! Killing salmon means money, which supports more unsustainable lifestyles. Let's roll with that instead.

Development MAKES billions and still rapes the resource...

What's your point? Or, are you just pointing fingers?

Carcassman:

Which one of the four subspecies that are required for the WY Cuttslam are you referring to in your statement?

ClearCreek

Bonneville

Just because-- Where in the Northwest, are developers making Billions with new development? There is a lot going on in King County, but the majority of big money is in the redevelopment of the Seattle area. I would guess that a lot of this is going to improve the environment by concentrating growth and increased building requirements. There are a few warehouses in the valley that I question, but I do not have a perfect answer to that as there is so little room left. Part of the problem is that development is being pushed into smaller areas, resulting in less desirable land being developed, when in the past developers would have skipped over this land for better and easier development. I talked to planners about this years ago, but they pushed for less sprawl and more intense development. The fact that this pushed growth into areas that were less than ideal was ignored. I think a more balanced approach would have worked, but the environmental and liberal thinking was to push all growth into smaller areas, while the developer side was often pushing for unbridled growth.

Several years ago we did a small develpoment in a rural setting. A logger was selling off a bunch of large parcels. We bought one of about eight 30 to 40 acre sites that had been clear cut. We then split it into 8 one acre sites with shared driveways on to the county road. The remaining 20+ acres were replanted and left in current open space. A salmon stream and associated wetland ran along one side, so we pushed all development over to the other side of the parcel. Of the remaining parcels, most were bought by individuals who then cleared as much of the lots as possible and stuck on mini-mansions. The treed lots are now big open pastures with livestock, barns and such. The same stream runs through them with bare minimum setbacks.

Shortly after we finished the county put new restrictions on cluster housing. Seems people don't like the small lots. So now, it is easier to split it into single lots, fence it and turn it into pasture, and put one house on the lot rather than eight.
The conclusion is that 30 acres with one house and 20 cows is better than 20 acres of forest and 8 one acre lots with smaller driveways and limited livestock. Who cares if you develop the land 8 times faster and leave no open space. It just feels better!!!!

Painful to hear, but oh so true.

first thing I thought of. ouch!