Pacific Salmon Their Ecosystems

This text examines the ecology of the Pacific salmon

The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout explains the patterns of mate choice, the competition for nest sites, and the fate of the salmon after their death. It describes the lives of offspring during the months they spend incubating in gravel, growing in fresh water, and migrating out to sea to mature. This thorough, up-to-date survey should be on the shelf of everyone with a professional or personal interest in Pacific salmon and trout. Written in a technically accurate but engaging style, it will appeal to a wide range of readers, including students, anglers, biologists, conservationists, legislators, and armchair naturalists.

The symposium "Pacific Salmon and Their Ecosystems: Status and Future Options',' and this book resulted from initial efforts in 1992 by Robert J. Naiman and Deanna J. Stouder to examine the problem of declining Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.). Our primary goal was to determine informational gaps. As we explored different scientific sources, state, provincial, and federal agencies, as well as non-profit and fishing organizations, we found that the information existed but was not being communicated across institutional and organizational boundaries. At this juncture, we decided to create a steering committee and plan a symposium to bring together researchers, managers, and resource users. The steering committee consisted of members from state and federal agencies, non-profit organizations, and private industry (see Acknowledgments for names and affiliations). In February 1993, we met at the University of Washington in Seattle to begin planning the symposium. The steering committee spent the next four months developing the conceptual framework for the symposium and the subsequent book. Our objectives were to accomplish the following: (1) assess changes in anadromous Pacific Northwest salmonid populations, (2) examine factors responsible for those changes, and (3) identify options available to society to restore Pacific salmon in the Northwest. The symposium on Pacific Salmon was held in Seattle, Washington, January 10-12, 1994. Four hundred and thirty-five people listened to oral presentations and examined more than forty posters over two and a half days. We made a deliberate attempt to draw in speakers and attendees from outside the Pacific Northwest.

Explores the complex web of interactions between the salmon of the Pacific Northwest and the surrounding ecosystem, including its relationship with streambeds, treetops, sea urchins, bears, orcas, rain forests, kelp forests and so much more, in a book with 70 full-color photos.

Canada's Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) was released in June 2005 with a goal to restore and maintain healthy and diverse salmon populations and their habitats. Strategy 3, Action Step 3.1 aims to include ecosystem values in decision-making by proposing "ecosystem indicators" to monitor the status of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The scientific basis for proposing ecosystem indicators within the WSP recognizes that Pacific salmon play an important role in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, including streams, lakes, riparian forest and wildlife food webs. Managers influence these ecosystems by considering changes in fisheries regulations (i.e., harvest levels) and artifical enhancement (e.g., hatcheries). This work serves three functions: (1) provide a first attempt at developing ecosystem indicators for Strategy 3 of the Wild Salmon Policy; (2) recommend further development and refinement of ecosystem indicators; and (3) suggest next steps.

Though life on earth is the history of dynamic interactions between living things and their surroundings, certain powerful groups would have us believe that nature exists only for our convenience. One consequence of such thinking is the apparent fate of the Pacific salmon--a key resource and preeminent symbol of America's wildlife--which is today threatened with extinction. Drawing on abundant data from natural science, Pacific coast culture, and a long association with key individuals on all sides of the issue, Joseph Cone's A Common Fate employs a clear narrative voice to tell the human and natural history of an environmental crisis in its final chapter. As inevitable as the November rains, countless millions of wild salmon returned from the ocean to spawn in the streams of their birth. In the wake of an orgy of dam building and habitat destruction, the salmon's majestic abundance has been reduced to a fleeting shadow. Neglect is the word the author uses to describe more recent losses, "by exactly the ones--state and federal fish managers--who should have acted." To signal a new awareness that action is needed, scientists charged with restocking the Columbia River Basin are receiving significant support, while ordinary citizens are beginning to recognize the relationship between cheap power and the absences of chinook, coho, sockeye, and other species from the coasts of Oregon and Washington and from Idaho's Snake River. As desperate as the salmon's future appears, the book is not an elegy for a lost resource. Instead, it bears witness to hope. In addition to concrete plans for the wild salmon's renewal, the reader will hear a growing chorus of informed individuals of differing values and beliefs who recognize that our fate is inextricably bound to the salmon's; for many it is a new understanding.

Canada's Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) was released in June 2005 with a goal to restore and maintain healthy and diverse salmon populations and their habitats. Strategy 3, Action Step 3.1 aims to include ecosystem values in decision-making by proposing "ecosystem indicators" to monitor the status of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. The scientific basis for proposing ecosystem indicators within the WSP recognizes that Pacific salmon play an important role in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, including streams, lakes, riparian forests and wildlife food webs. Managers influence these ecosystems by considering changes in fisheries regulations (i.e., harvest levels) and artificial enhancement (e.g., hatcheries). Thus, the role of ecosystem indicators is to provide a measure of ecosystem responses to changes in spawner abundance, thereby helping managers understand how changes in their actions affect freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. This work serves three functions: (1) provide a first attempt at developing ecosystem indicators for Strategy 3 of the Wild Salmon Policy; (2) recommend further development and refinement of ecosystem indicators; and (3) suggest next steps. To serve these functions, we reviewed the literature to develop a better understanding of the linkages among the five Pacific salmon species and freshwater / terrestrial ecosystems, and used our resulting summary on the "state of the science" to provide a scientific rationale for recommending ecosystem indicators and next steps.