The Mattole, long protected by back-to-the-land hippie activists is finally on the list of suffering rivers due to the logging practices of recent years and erosion.
There are a number of rivers to our north that still have salmon, but all are threatened. Still, outside of Alaska, Northern California is the only state left with significant salmon runs. Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia are virtually dead due to a combination punch of overfishing, logging practices, and river wide gill-netting by Indian tribes (a source of conflict within the environmental movement not anxious to blame Native Americans for environmental destruction).
The Eel River salmon are long dead, due to all sorts of pollution, logging practices, and the PG&E dam which did not adequately protect the fish, as well as the diversion to Santa Rosa.
I know it was just an anecdote, but the fish aren't gone yet.
Yours,
Eric
Michael Perelman wrote:
> Here in Northern California, many of the fish can no longer breed naturally because
> of what we have done to the rivers. The fish have to breed in hatcheries to
> survive.
>
> I think that we are moving in the same direction. The corporations spew out
> poisons, and then, as Jim Heartfield observes, they sell us medicines to undo some
> of the harm.
>
> We may have longer life expectancy, as he suggests, but, I believe that a 10 year
> old does not have a much longer life expectancy than a 10 year old before the
> industrial revolution.
>
> Of course, such matters are cyclical, depending on whether we make our comparison
> with a period of plague or famine.
>
> --
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> Chico, CA 95929
>
> Tel. 530-898-5321
> E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu