Wild Salmon and a region's wild soul

This Rocky  Barker op-ed from today's Idaho Statesman is a good read. But more than that, it's a solid argument for returning "wild" to a state's creeks and rivers. Removing the four dams that shackle it all on the Snake River would be a grand way to begin the process of rewilding a system.

Surprise: We all live downstream

I’ve lived and worked in many watersheds in my 60-plus years.

There’s the Rio Grande in New Mexico; the Platte River in Nebraska; Lake Champlain (once at Plattsburgh Air Force Base on its west side, in New York State, and now on the east side, in Vermont); Lake Thunderbird and the Canadian River in Oklahoma; the Snake River in Idaho; and the Lower Ocmulgee in central Georgia.

They all have lots in common, much of it on the negative side of the graph, unfortunately: The loss of natural land to sprawl and the gougers, diggers, bulldozers, chainsawers, polluters, dam builders, graders and asphalters of urban America.

My home in Vermont is – like yours in Pennsylvania – actually in several watersheds. First is the Winooski River (I live a half-mile from it). Second, and much larger, is the Lake Champlain watershed, which is international and multi-state in scope.

“We all live in a watershed,” reads the election campaign-style lapel button I got from the Puget Sound Partnership in Washington State some years ago.

That conservation outfit is correct. We do.

The EPA gives us this definition: “A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is: ‘that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community’."

Many residents of metro Hazleton (oftentimes called “Greater Hazleton”) live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, but neighbors in Carbon County reside in the Lehigh River watershed, part of the Delaware River’s watershed.

Roads, homes and other human activities have altered the composition of forests across the Chesapeake Bay watershed (and all the others, too), reducing tree cover and fragmenting those forests that still exist.

Fragmented forests are less resilient to disturbances and more prone to negative influences like wildfires and invasive species. The ongoing loss of trees and entire forests, with financial profit the true motive, toughens and heightens cost and the cleanup and restoration.

But just because some thousands of acres are (thankfully) owned by a public agency, the Hazleton City Authority, as watershed land, does not mean Pennsylvanians need not worry about the ecological health of that land or, even more so, the diminishing naturalness of other land, private or public, elsewhere in the same watershed.

The logging of hardwood trees relates poorly to the goal of healthy watershed land and the replenishment of groundwater.

The Chesapeake Bay Program: “Forests are critical to the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Large stands of trees can protect clean water and air, provide habitat to wildlife and support the region’s economy.

“But human activities have altered the watershed’s forests, reducing tree cover and fragmenting forests that still exist. Conserving and expanding forest cover is a critical, cost-effective way to reduce pollution and restore the Bay.”

Streams across the United States are suffering a decline in health, as human development alters stream flow and pushes pollutants into the water. It’s a sad commentary on our times when one can stand on the shore of a major Chesapeake tributary (like the York River at Yorktown) and watch as rainwater polluted with the blue sheen of automobile engine oil dribbles into the current and out into the Bay. I’ve watched that process, a bunch of times.

The Bay Program (www.chesapeakebay.net/issues): “There are two broad categories of chemical contaminants that can be found in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries: metals and organics.

Mercury is the most common metal found in the Bay watershed.

Common organic chemical contaminants include:

-        - Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which act as a flame retardant in electrical equipment. Though their production has been banned since 1977, PCBs still pose a risk to humans and wildlife because they persist in the environment.

-        Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which form when gas, coal and oil are burned. PAHs are common in areas with high rates of development and motor vehicle traffic.

-        Organophosphate pesticides (OPs), which are mostly herbicides and insecticides used in agriculture. OPs can affect functioning of the nervous system.

-        Storm runoff from cities, towns and suburbs picks up oil, pesticides and other chemicals as it flows across lawns, roads, and parking lots and into nearby streams and storm drains. This type of pollution is significant and difficult to control.

Protecting the sources of our clean drinking water does not fit well with the selling of saw timber or the building of a road to get the truck in and the cut out. Every municipal water agency in Pennsylvania could preclude all sorts of problems, some of which I’ve discussed, by buying and protecting natural lands.
I call it Wild Nature and it’s where good water and a lot more come from.

The drought, not of the past century, but in a thousand-plus years

Lots of choice quotes in this feature-length, in-depth piece on the West's ongoing drought. The NY Times coverage is tight and focused. Good. But, even with this type of knowledge before the public, the legislators in Washington, D.C., remained gridlocked on doing anything - pro or con - regarding climate change. I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt would say and demand be done. Or Aldo Leopold. Or William O. Douglas. Or Rachel Carson. Or any of the other giants of American conservation.

EPA: Proposed Alaska mine would be big trouble for salmon

You'd think this was rocket science or something akin. When one digs a hole, there is an impact. The bigger the hole, the bigger the impact. The proposed Pebble mine at Bristol Bay, Alaska, is a cold sore waiting to happen: A few might get rich, but many would be hurt, and the salmon would be harmed. Isn't it enough to see what happened to salmon in the Columbia River's watershed after dams were built? Read coverage here.

Elwha advdvocacy update

My longtime friend Mark Gretch is on the staff of the Wild Fish Conservancy. Wild Fish Conservancy, the Conservation Angler, the Federation of Fly Fishers Steelhead Committee, and the Wild Steelhead Coalition filed suit on February 9, 2012, against the Olympic National Park, NOAA Fisheries Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and representatives of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT) for ignoring best available science and violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  The suit alleges that by permitting, funding, and operating the Elwha Hatchery, the defendants threaten the recovery of Chinook salmon, native steelhead, and killer whales.  State and federal agency scientists, along with the independent Hatchery Scientific Review Group (HSRG), pointed out that the current plan gives no measurable goals for wild fish recovery, provides no timetable for ceasing the hatchery production, and that wild fish recovery is going to be hampered by the implementation of the Elwha hatchery plan.
You can read the entire release from the Conservancy right here.

Bill introduced to protect water quality and salmon in Ore.

In 20-plus years living in Pa., I never saw something like this from a Keystone State legislator. And there is no question that many, many, many waters in that state would benefit from the kind of thinking evident in this Oregon legislation.