Don’t know if this has been shared here before or not. One of the best reads on the current state of steelhead available on the net.
http://wildsteelheadcoalition.org/Repository/WSC_State_of_SH_layout_1pp_.pdf
What a shame…
that is terrible.
I’m not the only one who has been fighting the same battle on the state of our salmon, I’m a newcomer to the battle, I just started 20 years ago. Folks, it is the same battle. If we can make the changes required to ‘save the salmon’ we will save the steelhead at the same time. But you can’t do anything unless you know the problems. Encourage everyone to read the article above. Part of the fix/cure is education.
It is sad and shameful; and we know better!
Interesting timing of this post as tonight I am meeting with a representative of the Western Rivers Conservancy over one of their projects. Although I thought they were doing the right thing by their mission statement , I am concerned about their partnership on this particular partnership-- and that is with one of the tribes that allows and practices commercial gill netting. I don’t like gill netting in rivers and would place it high on the list of current barriers to the runs beeing restored. IFallowed at all, I don’t think gill netting should be practiced on a quota system— perhaps after the escapement is first reached but not before – but more importantly, does it make sense for WRC and alledged conservancy - to partner with and transfer land to a sovereign nation that can do anything they want relative to fish and game laws?
If we truly want to see a return in our rivers, I think we need to really look at all the problems and not give any group or cause a pass.
We almost had a war here on FAOL a few years ago over this. Perhaps it could have been said in a better way, but the truth then was as it is now. Gill nets kill.
There is no catch and release, and there is NO excuse for allowing them in rivers anywhere, any time.
Don’t want to start a war but would like to see some real and rational science presented --and some honest discussion that doesn’t pussy foot around the issues. A recent post on usafishing.com regarding the Trinity River would help explain my outrage and recent move towards activitism regarding these issues.
To me, the paucity of responses to this post sums up the lack of interest that people have concerning the real issues regarding the decline in the salmon and steelhead fishery.
I’ll give you my couple of cents on steelhead recovery. It won’t happen. I will talk about my home river, the Skagit. At one point as many as 40,000 winter steelhead swam the Skagit. This year we might get lucky if 5 or 6 thousand fish return. I have my doubts that even that many will come back. Why? What happened? We have cut down every tree that ever grew along the length of the river. We have taken the lower sections and cut off all the sloughs, side channels and ox bows that were used as a nursery by juvenile steelhead and salmon. We then took what was left after that and diked into a single, narrow channel taking away its ability to spread out and give the fish a chance at survival during high water. Plowed up the land that it once flowed over and pour fertilizers and pesticides on it. We have dammed its upper reaches and major tributaries cutting off pristine spawning waters, habitat, and forever changing the flow and chemical makeup of the river. Then we built shopping centers, parking lots, apartment building, and housing complexes where she once flowed and now the people wonder why when the rains come they get flooded. And they want the floods to stop never thinking that they are destroying the very thing that they live there for in the first place. On top of all of this we have fished the steelhead and salmon almost to extinction.
Recovery will never happen. No one is willing to give up what it would take. The dams will not come down as long as there is cheap power for the cities. The dikes will not come down because the farmers are not going to stop farming and the houses will remain for no one wants to give their homes. The loggers will keep logging as long as there is a tree to cut down and the fishermen will keep fishing as long as they can catch a fish. Nothing will change and the steelhead will disappear. The cost to save them is too high and no one is willing to pay that price.
Wouldn’t argue with that. I may be naive but I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel.
In my favorite river system, I think they could have a good chance but we need to let them have that chance.
Everything you said is somewhat true here also but they have to start by getting through the nets – and the nets get everything above a certain size.
Simply put there is NO SINGLE MEASURE that by itself can make an immediate and huge impact in every drainage.
However, some reasonable changes in regulations could have small but cumulatively significant impacts. I agree that a no-kill reg is desperately needed for wild fish and that gill netting should also be tossed aside in favor of long-term recovery. Look at the Deer Creek fish of the Stilly - an entire run extirpated largely by over-fishing/over-harvest.
We need to get some teeth on the WSC. I am joining today and will write and donate frequently, as a start.
Marty
The Deer Creek steelhead of the Stillaguamish River suffered mostly from a destruction of habitat. Extreme logging and poor road building for that logging effort in the Deer Creek watershed virtually destroyed the spawning habitat of Deer Creek. In the mid-nineties a couple of major floods actually scrubbed out the sediment and exposed some of the traditional spawning grounds for these fish and there was a minor recovery for a few years. The creek has since silted back in and the Deer Creek steelhead populations continue to fall. What has happened to the Deer Creek steelhead has nothing to do with over fishing. That river was the first catch and release river in the country starting sometime in the early forties. I can’t remember exactly when. There is almost no commercial fishing on the river. The destruction of habitat began in the sixties with mechanized logging which really went into full production in the seventies and eighties. The destruction of Deer Creek by highly mechanize logging coupled with increased development along the river and what has been termed poor ocean conditions; the fish have all but disappeared.
er ah oops, wrong story, right fish.
point is we’re doing something wrong and better go about fixing it.