So I've been thinking a lot about wild salmon for a couple of reasons. 1) I've been reading a lot of Derrick Jensen, a writer who writes mainly about environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest, one of the biggest is which is dams (both hydroelectric and those which where just built to control water levels, for irrigation and so that people could build houses in flood plains,) 2) the newspapers around here lately have been talking a lot about various reasons people believe salmon populations are rapidly declining 3) I had a housemate a few months ago who worked at a salmon hatchery who talked a lot about all the issues surrounding wild salmon 4) Earth Firsters! tend to talk a lot about salmon 5) I've been reading a little about Native culture in the area, which was focused on salmon at one point.
So it seems apparent, the more I read about wild salmon, or any endangered species for that matter, that so-called "experts" would like for you to believe that the issues causing this animal (in this case, salmon,) to be endangered, are complex. They say all the sea-lions are eating the salmon (the dams make it easier for sea-lions to catch more salmon then they normally would,) a fish called the Pikeminnow is eating the salmon to death (again, the dams make an ideal breeding ground for the Pikeminnow, again making them too abundant, making it more likely that they would eat more salmon then would happen naturally,) the Native fishermen eat too many of the salmon (this explanation really enrages me, since we stole their land, then dammed it up, flooding all of their old scared and village sites, and now we have the gaul to suggest that Native fishermen take too many salmon? Are you for real?) Global warming, deforestation, hatchery-based salmon being released into the wild; all of these and many more are the reasons given for the decline of the salmon. I believe it is probably a combination of these factors (except, probably, the ridiculous and racist Native overfishing explanation,) so we should look for what all of these have in common. Do you see a pattern here?
Got it? What they all have in common is this: interference by humanity. The dams play the biggest role in bringing about imbalance in the salmon populations, no doubt about it. But so does deforestation (salmon need water free of silt, which trees prevent. When trees are cut down, silt in the form of runoff enters the water, clogging the gills of the salmon. Remember the Lorax..."no more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed?" Well that is essentially what happens to salmon when areas where they live are deforested. Hatchery-based salmon released into the wild often crowd out wild salmon, so the wild salmon babies starve. Global warming has raised the temperature of the water the salmon lives in, making it difficult for them to breed and live normal lives. Dams make easy fishing areas for the sea-lions and the Pikeminnow...and the list goes on and on.
In the movie Dreamkeeper that I mentioned in another blog, a traditional story from the Pacific Northwest has a girl in it who throws herself off of a cliff as a sacrifice to the gods because all of her people are sick, including her husband who will die soon if she does not sacrifice herself. I nearly cried thinking about the bravery and selflessness it would take to throw oneself from a cliff to save others..but the girl saw what needed to be done, and did it. I also nearly cried because they showed a beautiful scene of salmon leaping up a series of waterfalls as the people of the girl's village look at the cliff and realize what the girl has done and how she saved them. I began to think "what would it take for me to sacrifice myself for the greater good like that?" What would the world be like if I, and people like me, where willing to say "fuck the government and fuck the police...I'm gonna save the salmon for the greater good..." and then, if I was able to act on my convictions and go make a dam go away? What if my convictions overpowered my fear? What then, would I, would we all, be capable of?
What happens when we know the problems and we can also clearly see the solutions to the problems, and only the law stands in the way? What then?
Love ya,
Carrot
Nice blog! It is not just the law that stands in the way. It is humanity as you said. People are the cause of this, and people are the ones that have the solution but will not implement the idea because it is not to their benefit.
Not until our forests are depleted, and many animals become extinct will people start to care about seemingly "pity" issues.
Problems will first have to become worst before anybody (politcally) is going to do something.
it is unfortunate.
At the moment, I think we are in an environmental crisis of disastrous magnitude, at the edge of a precipice from which there many be no turning back, and still, people don't care. I think this might be partially because we are used to this sort of environmental crisis; most of our lifetimes, we've heard about things like The Love Canal, nuclear disasters, government bomb test-sites, etc.
Because we are used to disaster, we do nothing about it. This does not mean we should not act, but rather, that it is imperative that we act; for if we don't, who will? Our earth is on the brink of collapse...if now is not the time, when is?
Love ya.
Carrot