The salmon population in the Pacific of the Wester U. S. is so decimated the Pacific Fishery Management Council has enacted a complete ban on all commercial and recreational chinook fishing.

This is not something that has happened before, ever. Since humans have lived in North America there have always been massive populations of chinook salmon. Now it’s in danger of collapsing altogether.

In September 1996 I was in Forks of Salmon at the confluence of the North and South branch of the Salmon River which dumps into the Klamath 100 miles south of the Oregon boarder. The 25 foot wide river was full of spawning and dying salmon. I just did some Googling and 2005 was the lowest salmon count to date (325 salmon came up the river vs. 6,000 the year I was last there) and in 2006 salmon fishing was halted in the entire Klamath system.

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There are only a handful of non-dammed rivers on the West Coast and the inland water ways, such as the Sacramento Delta is “a sewer.” Have you ever been to Los Baños off the I-5 near Fresno? It’s a dusty dry agri-business of seeming no redemption. I recently learned the San Joaquin River, the mighty river that roars out of the Souther Sierra supported huge salmon fishing operations all the down in Los Baños, now you wouldn’t even want to swim in the San Joaquin, it’s full of fertilizer/chemical runoff. Below is why the population of salmon on the San Joaquin is zero:

Today, the journey for that same fish is an impossibility. To reach its native spawning grounds, it must navigate a gauntlet of dams and reservoirs, pass by 11 power plants and circumvent 500 miles of canals. In two sections of the river that account for approximately 60 miles between Fresno and the San Joaquin River Delta, there is no water at all.

Here’s the state of the water quality as it approached Stockton, CA

A trip to Stockton, 40 miles east of San Francisco, reveals the seriousness of the San Joaquin’s “secondary” problems. The river here is a brew of fertilizer, algae, pesticides and sewage. In late October, the water is the color of chocolate milk.

It’s estimated it would take years years of major state works to clean up the river.

It should come as no surprise to any person that we have harvested fish like they were buffalo while we concurrently pollute, dilute and reduce their habitats. We all know we’re changing our world to benefit our lives in other ways. It’s just very important that we know the real cost/benefit equation and not delude ourselves to the real expense our existence is almost certainly costing the fragile little lifesource that is the planet earth.