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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Joseph E. Taylor III. Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis. Foreword by William Cronon. (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books.) Seattle: University of Washington Press. 1999. Pp. xv, 421. $34.95.
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This book by Joseph E. Taylor III describes the forces leading and responding to salmon decline in the Pacific Northwest. At the heart of the book is the century-long effort to replace dwindling runs through salmon propagation, overseen by hatchery managers and federal and state fishery officials. Efforts to "make salmon" failed miserably and actually exacerbated salmon decline. Neither fish making nor taking was entirely within the control of fishers or fishery officials. The biology of salmon, the particularities of rivers, and the periodic influence of El Niño, natural forces not well known or even identified in the early years of salmon propagation, confounded people's understanding of salmon decline and efforts to restore salmon runs. The social side of the story is complex as well. Development in general, not just fishing, destroyed salmon, and fishing was not a uniform activity but one shaped by equipment, race, ethnicity, and spatial distribution. Taylor complicates the story of salmon decline, telling us we need to abandon "simple stories" that identify scapegoats but fail to protect salmon. Readers may wish to consult Jim Lichatowich's Salmon Without Rivers: A History of the Pacific Salmon Crisis (1999), which makes many of the same arguments but from the point of view of a career fisheries biologist. |
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