Managed extinction: The decline and loss of wild salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Managed extinction is a synthesis of a 30-year collaboration between Rick Williams and the late Jim Lichatowich (April 28, 2024). I first collaborated with them in researching and writing Upstream, Salmon and Society in the Pacific Northwest (National Research Council, 1996), so I can attest that they are fully qualified to author this book. The book is an historical perspective of how salmon management contributed to the present state of Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. and steelhead O. mykiss in the Pacific Northwest. In their words, This book is a story. It is a story about how salmon management agencies, thinking they were performing as expected, have wreaked havoc on wild Pacific salmon and steelhead. It is a story of how a management paradigm built on a myth and implemented by complacent institutions achieved results diametrically opposed to their missions. The myth referred to in salmon management is the reliance on salmon hatcheries to sustain abundance and harvests since the late1800s. The argument presented is that untested faith in hatchery production provided salmon management with a trade-off for development impacts (for the other Hs or their combined impacts). This belief was so pervasive that hatcheries producing a salmon commodity (juvenile salmon) were the conceptual framework for salmon management through the 1990s. But, we have 150 years of experience demonstrating that sustaining salmon production is not that simple, so why has this myth persisted? The authors argue that attitudes in salmon management agencies, the slow acceptance of scientific results, information limits due to insufficient monitoring and learning, and a lack of accountability in governance have allowed this myth to persist with the accumulation of impacts on wild salmon populations. However, the authors do provide a more positive alternative for the future, based on a new paradigm that is science-based, more “place-based” or “fine grained” habitat-based that provides resilience in the future, and places the conservation and restoration of wild salmon populations as the primary management goal. The bottom line is this: We must change the importance of wild salmon and management of them … we must stop those management practices that we know are detrimental to wild salmon (page 441). The authors support their conclusion through recent examples of salmon restoration (Salmon and Elwha river dam removals) and published literature. And they call for salmon management to favor wild salmon habitats, population resilience and diversity in a new conceptual framework (a Habitat-Resilience framework). Williams and Lichatowich conclude that we have sufficient knowledge through Indigenous and western ecological knowledge and by listening to what the salmon are telling us; but their more sober concluding thought remains whether our leaders will make decisions that will protect and restore the remaining wild Pacific salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest? This book is regional and species specific, but there are few other species with an in-depth account of management and trends over 150 years. Pacific salmon in the northwestern United States involves some of the most altered ecosystems, and changes in abundance from a wealth of salmon to scarcity and listings under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. An obvious value of this book is the learned experience told by knowledgeable authors, but if we consider their messages more broadly, there are lessons for managing other species (live, learn, … and adapt). In the management processes involved, the authors note issues with: Inadequate monitoring and analyses, which limit learning; The slow acceptance and integration of science in management application; and Attitudes by decision makers that favored human developments over wild salmon management. I have certainly experienced these through my career. But, if there is an element in salmon management that is missing from their discussion, it is changes in the marine environment and climate. We have certainly been aware of these changes for decades (e.g., Beamish & Bouillon, 1993; Nickelson, 1986; Pearcy & Schoener, 1987). These large-scale factors have affected the rate of decline of salmon abundance but do not diminish the problems discussed in this book. This book is an important synthesis of factors contributing to the state of Pacific salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest today; it presents an alternative paradigm for the future and is well footnoted and referenced. The authors expressly hope that a paradigm based on “place-based” populations, diversity among populations, and resilience through habitat restoration, will restore a legacy of Pacific salmon and steelhead, but they also note the need for strong public support to influence decision makers. A second printing of this book is planned to correct production errors, but none of the errors in this printing diminish the importance of its discussions.
Source: Fisheries
Author: Brian Riddell
Institution: Pacific Salmon Foundation
Language: English
Subfield: Nature and Landscape Conservation
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4409381856