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Reviews
King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon
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By David R. Montgomery
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Westview Press, Boulder, Colo., 2003. Illustrations, photographs, maps, index. 303 pages. $26.00 cloth, $16.00 paper.
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Reviewed by Jim Lichatowich
Columbia City, Oregon
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| Recently, the Oregonian ran a story under the headline "Bush Officials Laud Salmon Successes on Northwest Trip." James Connaughton, chair of the president's Council on Environmental Quality, attributed recent increases in hatchery-reared salmon returns to the Columbia River to the success of federal salmon recovery efforts. The article also refered to other experts who said that natural changes in ocean conditions are contributing to the recent increases in salmon. Connaughton's remarks reminded me of similar claims of success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when ocean conditions were in transition. At that time, the unfounded belief that improved hatchery technology had solved the problem of diminishing salmon runs set the stage for the collapse of Oregon's coastal coho salmon in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The article also reminded me of George Santayana's warning that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." If James Connaughton had read David Montogmery's new book King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon, his assessment of current salmon recovery efforts might have been very different. |
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Montgomery is a geologist by training and a professor at the University of Washington. His work on the geomorphology of Pacific Northwest rivers naturally led to his interest in the salmon. The geologist's domain is broad; time is measured in millions of years over vast landscapes, so it is not surprising that Montgomery's book covers a broader geographic area and a longer time span than other recent books on the salmon. King of Fish covers a range of Atlantic and Pacific salmon from the British Isles to eastern North America to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. It begins in the thirteenth century and moves at a lively, highly readable pace to the present. |
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As the Industrial Revolution moved west from England to New England and eventually to the Pacific Northwest, the salmon (Atlantic and Pacific) were subjected to a repeating sequence of devastating events. First came the shift from subsistence harvest to market-driven commercial fisheries that fed a growing number of factory workers. Industrialization and the growth of cities rapidly degraded rivers and salmon habitat. Early factories used waterpower provided by dams, which blocked salmon runs. Factories and cities produced waste, which was conveniently routed to the rivers for disposal. The combined effects of overharvest and habitat degradation reduced or eliminated the salmon runs in river after river. |
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Overharvest, degradation of rivers, and the loss of salmon were not the consequences of a public policy intended to sacrifice the salmon for industrialization. Officials knew what was causing the decline of salmon and tried to take steps to prevent it. Governments generally enacted laws to protect the salmon; but enforcement, left to local authorities, was half-hearted at best. After 1840, politicians, paralyzed by the failure of their protective statutes and the rapid decline of salmon, turned to hatcheries. Hatcheries offered a glimmer of hope that salmon and industrial economies could coexist, but in the end they could maintain only a small fraction of the salmon's previous abundance. Montgomery's story is especially sad because he shows us that each region ignored the lessons of the past by repeating the same mistakes, and the salmon faced the same fate. |
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The story does not end in the Pacific Northwest. There are still healthy salmon runs in Alaska, parts of British Columbia, and Kamchatka, Russia. I believe here in the Pacific Northwest is where the fate of the salmon will be determined, however. If government and citizens cannot find a way to ensure the salmon's survival here — where public support for salmon recovery is high, where our understanding of past mistakes and of the salmon's biology is unprecedented, and where there is a willingness to expend a significant part of our region's wealth on salmon recovery — then it is unlikely that survival can be assured anywhere. |
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Montgomery believes salmon and our industrial economy can coexist. He gives us a road map for recovery that is somewhat at odds with current approaches. The region should give high priority to enforcing existing laws that protect the remaining high-quality habitat; stream restoration should be guided by the historical conditions that once produced salmon; our use of hatcheries as fish factories needs to change; and commercial salmon fishing should be temporarily banned. Ultimately, Montgomery believes that neither our scientific knowledge nor the size of the recovery budgets will determine the success of salmon recovery. The salmon's story that Montgomery so skillfully tells can have a happy ending if we recognize that the "key to restoring the salmon is not our knowledge of the fish or streams but our ability to manage ourselves" (p. 242). |
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Everyone concerned about the fate of the salmon should read this book. |
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