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West coast salmon recovery

I'm not so sure. They (PacifiCorp) removed the dam on the White Salmon, and haven't seen much improvement above the dam sight, though it did greatly improve the spawning habitat below (fresh bedload, the silt is purged pretty quick;<-- @Big Slick ). Then they removed the Elwha dams, without a ton of improvement above the upper dam (pretty noticeable increase between the dams). From what I've seen of salmon restoration work here in WA, it's not really driven by results-based science. I think the lower snake dams are done, even if the Klamath removal isn't that successful.

Salmon are just kinda #@)(*%* and we still don't know why.
Yes, it's hard to stay excited about these restoration projects when there isn't a big response by the fishery to what's been done.

On a short term note there's a big run of steelhead headed to the Clearwater. First trip this season is in a week. Caught the fish in my avatar in Oct last year :). Then it's back to elk hunting.
 
Yes, it's hard to stay excited about these restoration projects when there isn't a big response by the fishery to what's been done.

On a short term note there's a big run of steelhead headed to the Clearwater. First trip this season is in a week. Caught the fish in my avatar in Oct last year :). Then it's back to elk hunting.

And we'll have a bunch more river to float.

@Irrelevant no pulling permits required down here.
 
When ever a biologist offers the wild card in understanding salmon is Ocean conditions what he/she is saying is nets. American, Canadian, Chinese, Japanese, any Southeast Asia country you can think of and of course Russia. Hell there are European crews fishing in Bristol bay ever summer.
 
I'm not so sure. They (PacifiCorp) removed the dam on the White Salmon, and haven't seen much improvement above the dam sight, though it did greatly improve the spawning habitat below (fresh bedload, the silt is purged pretty quick;<-- @Big Slick ). Then they removed the Elwha dams, without a ton of improvement above the upper dam (pretty noticeable increase between the dams). From what I've seen of salmon restoration work here in WA, it's not really driven by results-based science. I think the lower snake dams are done, even if the Klamath removal isn't that successful.

Salmon are just kinda #@)(*%* and we still don't know why.
It’s trawling. That’s the entire story of disappearing salmon. Fish that don’t spend time exposed to trawler fleets don’t end up as bycatch. It wrecked European fisheries and got banned. It wrecked the George’s bank and got banned. Now it’s Alaska’s turn.

And remember- one dead orca is a felony for you, but business as usual for them. One wasted chinook is a wanton waste ticket for you, but 20,000 is just normal to them.
 
It’s trawling. That’s the entire story of disappearing salmon. Fish that don’t spend time exposed to trawler fleets don’t end up as bycatch. It wrecked European fisheries and got banned. It wrecked the George’s bank and got banned. Now it’s Alaska’s turn.

And remember- one dead orca is a felony for you, but business as usual for them. One wasted chinook is a wanton waste ticket for you, but 20,000 is just normal to them.
That certainly seems to be the main culprit, but I'm not willing to conceed "entire". We have smolts that test positive for cocaine and caffeine, we have tire particulates that are 99% lethal to coho, we likely have a plethora of pharma that are impacting both smolt and adult survival. But what I do know is that it ain't a lack of woody debris, it ain't freshwater habitat that's the limiting factor or places like the OR coast and the WA Olympic peninsula would still have great runs.
 
Yes, it's hard to stay excited about these restoration projects when there isn't a big response by the fishery to what's been done.

On a short term note there's a big run of steelhead headed to the Clearwater. First trip this season is in a week. Caught the fish in my avatar in Oct last year :). Then it's back to elk hunting.
It’s busy this year. Drove from Lewiston to orofino yesterday, lots of people on the water. River is super low also
 
Really incredible they made it up that far so soon. I don't know if any of you guys are part of the crazy Klamath dam removal facebook group. The amount denial is nuts.
 
Meanwhile in the other parallel universe NPMFC s proposing to triple the bycatch of snow crabs to 12 million! Follow the money.
Some day they will wake up in Alaska with no fish and blame ADFG for letting them fish.
 
I will have a hard time accepting that habitat loss isn't part of the problem.

A goal of mine in retirement is to get back to OR where I spent 1/2 year working for BLM fisheries in my early college years. At that time timber clearcut harvesting along streams was high...not good on USFS land and even worse on BLM. Cutting right to the stream in places, then on top of that they'd burn after cutting (to help control fungal problems that impacted regenerating trees, if I recall correctly). On STEEP banks.

Lots of damage to high spawning habitat as a result. Which was created and shifted over time by the falling of large trees into the water which helped create pools. We spent a fair amount of time compensating for some of that loss by shoving large trees into the stream or placing rock filled gabions to create future spawning pools.

Good work but as green as I was then I could see our work was a drop in the bucket and the damage would last for decades.
 
I will have a hard time accepting that habitat loss isn't part of the problem.

A goal of mine in retirement is to get back to OR where I spent 1/2 year working for BLM fisheries in my early college years. At that time timber clearcut harvesting along streams was high...not good on USFS land and even worse on BLM. Cutting right to the stream in places, then on top of that they'd burn after cutting (to help control fungal problems that impacted regenerating trees, if I recall correctly). On STEEP banks.

Lots of damage to high spawning habitat as a result. Which was created and shifted over time by the falling of large trees into the water which helped create pools. We spent a fair amount of time compensating for some of that loss by shoving large trees into the stream or placing rock filled gabions to create future spawning pools.

Good work but as green as I was then I could see our work was a drop in the bucket and the damage would last for decades.

Oregon has a super weak stream protection buffer for timber harvest. The streams look terrible in the coast range, particularly on the private timber property. We also have a weaksauce stumpage tax and a defacto "independent" lobbying arm funded by state dollars which leads to some remarkable sloughing off of hillsides.
 
Certainly habitat degradation impacts fish. One of the first areas addressed, building full bench roads instead of side casting, stream buffers, not logging thru streams that kind of thing. I would guess the almost non existent timber harvest of National Forest ground has had a greater impact than any of the other items. Simply conjecture on my part. Private timber ground has to adhere to the Forrest Practices act but an awful lot of their ground looks like a moonscape when they are done logging. Pretty simple, mud covered gravel in streams, no salmon.
 
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