The Great Salmon Hoax: An Eyewitness Account of the Collapse of Science and Law and the Triumph of Politics in Salmon Recovery
By James L. Buchal, Published by Iconoclast Publishing Company, P.O. Box 677, Aurora, OR 97002-0677If you have the slightest interest in salmon or salmon fishing and how these are being threatened in the Northwest, run, don 't walk, to the nearest bookstore, buy (or order), and read this book. If you never knew before about bureaucratic junk science and how it is practiced, study this book, it is the perfect place to start. Author Jim Buchal has produced a monumental contribution to the understanding of the myriad bureaucracies, bad science, bad law, bad media analyses and reporting of these of these issues. His book is heavily referenced, an appealing feature to those wishing to verify his findings.
Further Jim Buchal is not only a good environmental lawyer, but has a degree in physics as well. More than most advocates this has instilled in him a keen sense of scientific cause and effect, of differences between good and bad science, between good and bad statistics. He knows how to ask the hard questions, which has not endeared him to the bureaucracies nor to the federal judiciaries. The general public has no inkling of these salmon problems, even though they pay for the billion-dollar waste. After nearly two decades the salmon have not benefited.
Certainly the salmon issues are complex. But, there is a mindless aspect to the salmon mitigation activities, which seem to call for the spending of more than $450 million per without much hope for benefiting salmon. Instead, little has been produced except for larger bureaucracies, very questionable science, and threatened salmon runs.
Given all of the complexities and often inconsequential side issues, it is difficult to keep in mind that the goal of the salmon activity is, or should be, to restore increased returns of adult salmon, even to the upper reaches of the Columbia/Snake River Basins.
The overwhelming biases of the fisheries agencies are that the dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers are the sole cause of the declines of adult salmon returns. It needs saying that these fish bureaucracies have never produced the defining document establishing this simple hypothesis. Instead, they continue to say without any scientific support that the dams kill 80% of the salmon. This is measurably untrue.
Why? Because there are much larger threats than dams to salmon both for young smolts and returning adults. These larger threats are invariably downplayed, or excluded from meaningful scientific discourse. To exclude these salmon threats from scientific discourse or for public scrutiny is
one aspect of junk science, and junk science will never save the salmon.
The unmentioned major threats to salmon include overfishing in the ocean, overfishing in the river systems, and a major explosion in predator populations. None of these are given adequate consideration in salmon life cycle problems. Without considering these sources of salmon killing, the dams by default are blamed for these losses. And talk about limiting the debate, it is downplayed in fisheries reports and in the media, but there are many salmon runs in the NW, and nearly all of them are in trouble. Only a small fraction of these go over ANY dam.
No one seems interested in the problems of these other salmon runs. In fact the National Marine Fisheries Service opposed the study of salmon runs downstream from Bonneville Dam, the last dam on the Columbia River. More information about the non-dam threats to these runs could be very instructive, but distracts from the argument that the dams cause all of the salmon problems. They don't, and the fisheries agencies are not interested.
The predator increases include squaw fish, walleye, young steelhead, mackerel, Caspian terns, cormorants, seals, Northern sea lions, California sea lions, to name a few. The Caspian terns on one island (man-made by the way) in the Columbia River were estimated to consume between 6 million to 20 million salmon smolt annually.
The seals and sea lion populations protected since the 1972 by the Marine Mammals Protection Act have increased 30-fold from 6,000 to 170,000. Each taking 15 to 25 lbs of fish per day, they are efficient salmon killers. Further, in 1994 40% of the salmon going through Bonneville Dam had salmon bites or scars on them. Fish bitten by sea lions do not survive very well going hundreds of miles upstream.
Shad, whose population has increase substantially throughout this time, apparently are not salmon predators, but do compete seriously with salmon for food. Interestingly, the shad population has increased even though they must traverse the dams as well.
Activist judiciaries routinely authorize violation of federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and water pollution standards. This is in stark contrast to judicial protection of say, the Spotted Owl or the Snail Darter. The endangered salmon is the only known animal which has been authorized for killing by the federal judiciaries and fishing agencies.
Nearly every page of Buchal's 384-page book is an indictment of current salmon policy, because of the wide practice of junk science and junk law, and the arrogance of power in the fisheries organizations. Unless good science is employed, and fisheries managers required to conform their conduct to law, government cannot protect, let alone increase the return of memorable salmon runs to the Northwest streams. The book's price of $15.95 is well worth the monumental effort of research it represents.
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