If you enjoy eating fish, enjoy them while you can. Overfishing and man-made changes to the environment are rapidly killing off the world's supply of fish.
This is a long and excellent article about the salmon vs dams debate in the Pacific Northwest. The dam issue was mentioned repeatedly in the recent election with both parties supporting hydro-power over wildlife.
Like New Orleans, this salmon issue is another example of how we make changes to the environment and then take decades to figure out the impact of our actions (which are almost always negative). Natural processes are a lot more complex than most of our economically-driven projects consider or take into account.
Inside the Failure Of $8 Billion Effort To Save Prized Fish
Salmon Get Tracking Devices Yet Few Survive Long Trip Through Bonneville's Dams Protected Sea Lions Abound
Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2006
The Bonneville Power Administration, responding to concern about dwindling fish populations, has spent more than $8 billion helping salmon travel from the mountain streams of their birth to the Pacific Ocean and back again, where they lay eggs for the next generation. Impeding their journey are several hydroelectric dams.
The agency has little to show for its efforts. In any given year, only 1% to 3.5% of the fish complete the 1,800-mile round-trip fish trek, which begins 20 miles northeast of Lewiston, Idaho, and continues down the Snake and Columbia rivers. Fish scientists say the success rate should be at least double that.
The population of salmon and other fish has been declining here for more than a hundred years, caused initially by overfishing in the early 20th century. Critics say the dams accelerated the trend. The annual catch of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River has dropped to less than five million today from a high of 50 million pounds in 1911. Meanwhile, this year's count of salmon running through the dams is below the 10-year average.
