Endangered Salmon

Endangered Salmon

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Recently retired from the US Fish and Wildlife Service where he spent 30 years as an endangered species biologist, Ted Kuch made an observation that bull trout was a species he had been trying to save by working with state and federal agencies to preserve cold water. So, while on the topic…What's going on with the water system and climate change? What's going to happen to these species? I believe that it's a great question.

You know, so salmon and steelhead require relatively cold water as well. Trout and salmon, the family all require that to varying degrees. Climate change clearly is going to be working in the wrong direction for species like that. But that's really a long term thing. What's going on with poor salmon and steelhead returns and what has been happening, particularly in the Columbia River Basin, is dams. I was actually president of the Idaho chapter of the American Fisheries Society 20 years ago when we all agreed and made a statement that unless we address the eight dams between Idaho's salmon and the ocean, that we will not be able to recover wild salmon and steelhead runs. And here we are 20 years later. And that reality continues to manifest itself. Recently, Governor Brad Little in Idaho and Representative Mike Simpson have convened a forum to have conversations about what are we going to do to try to save these runs from becoming extinct. Many are extinct. Dams and Hells Canyon wiped out salmon runs into parts of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada. And about it used to have salmon in the salmon. We have laughter doing incredibly poorly. In fact, fishing game is closed seasons this year already. I didn't even open up in the first place. That's how bad runs are right now.

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