The following contribution came to us from the March issue of The Catch & Release,
the newsletter of the Northwest Steelhead & Salmon Council of Trout Unlimited, Bremerton Washington. While the local and species of fish may be different than yours, the problems are international. We hope you enjoy Terry's article as much as we did. Our thanks for use permission.
I joined the Bremerton chapter of Trout Unlimited in the fall of
1985 only because of the nets strung across Sinclair Inlet. You know, those
disgusting Indian contraptions designed to capture and kill all life form attempting
to cross it's line. I wanted to join forces with some organization and fight to
save our salmon from being wiped out by the tribal fisheries. Two years later,
November 1987 to be exact, a salmon rearing pond was being constructed on the east
bank of Clear Creek on the Sonnabend property.
In January 1988 the first batch of Chinook salmon were
delivered to that pond by the Suquamish tribal fisheries. Yes, those net pulling
Indians were putting 50,000 Chinook in my pond. Now I have the eleventh batch of
50,000 Chinook; not that big an impact on the fish population, but every little bit
helps.
In addition to the rearing of Chinook, releases of Coho and
Chum have been made directly into the creek over the same period of time. A small
wild run of Coho still exists on the stream; along with the trout and an occasional
steelhead.
While all of this was going on the club was working on habitat
restoration projects, trout rearing and trying to inform the stupid public on
matters of fish, clean waters, habitat and other fishy stuff.
During that fifteen years the salmon populations continued to
decline, streams have been polluted, stream canopy has been lost, siltation from
development and logging has increased at an explosive rate.
Now the Federal Government has given this state one
year to develop and submit a plan as how they are going to save the threatened
Chinook run of Puget Sound. Maybe the governor can call upon the three wise men,
Blum, Schmidt and Turner, to fix things up. I don't see how any one director or a
team can devise any plan other than complete closure to undo the mess those three
created.
Billy Frank Jr. put his two cents in again during the February
26 meeting by pounding out his old song on the tom-tom, "Habitat, habitat, habitat."
Billy, I can name you many rivers and creeks with little or no siltation or loss of
habitat and they don't have any fish in them either. Just look at the streams that
flow out of the Olympic National Park with no logging or development in their water
sheds.
I do see many causes for the loss of salmon populations; loss of
habitat in stream, loss of canopy, siltation, pollutions, dams, loss of flow due to
irrigation, warm water returning into streams, but most of all over-fishing. One
problem this state can do nothing about is piracy on the high seas. But the
problems in the home waters are so great that it will take years, and a lot of work,
restrictions, along with some failures to get the salmon runs even started to return
to their numbers of even fifteen years ago and that is a long way from what they
should be.
In the meantime I will continue to rear and release salmon
smolts if the tribe is allowed to take and spawn salmon; if not maybe I will raise
trout. But I will always define closure to mean, "closed to all; sport, Indian and
commerical." Terry Sonnabend
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