Customer Reviews

The Great Salmon Hoax

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I started this book with an open mind, but quickly found it to be wanting in credibility. As the book developed, the author systematically went about attacking every imaginable player in the salmon crisis save for the one that just happens to have been his client in the courts for the past six years (the hydroelectric interest). I do think the author reveals some good points and I must agree that the salmon crisis is due to a myriad of factors. I truly wish I could have used the book to obtain some unbiased insights into which of the many challenges facing Pacific salmon are really the most damaging. Sadly, the author's biased coverage of these topics made it impossible to sort fact from pro-dam propaganda.

The book has given me a lot to think about. Perhaps the salmon runs of the Columbia really never were as historically robust as we think. Perhaps, most of the salmon are indeed captured at sea before they ever get a chance to migrate to fresh water. Maybe it is the Indians; maybe the predators; maybe global warming; maybe disease; maybe degradation of genetic fitness by poor hatchery practices; maybe land-use. I, for one, do not know. How the author can be so unflaggingly certain that it is NOT the dams even after reading the book remains a mystery to me. As one reads the author's version of events, one cannot help but sense a sort of desperation. The plight of the salmon simply cannot be the fault of the dams. It must be someone else's fault: anyone else's fault, everyone else's fault.

In this treatment, no one but the dam interests have a lick of common sense or integrity. The scientists cannot interpret their own data. The National Marine Fisheries Board is politically motivated. The courts are either incompetent or in bed with the media who, in turn are in bed with the commercial fisheries who are in bed with the environmentalists. In short, the author presents a scenario where one massive conspiracy is afoot that has the whole of American Society conspiring to propagate a campaign of misinformation about the dams.

Still, of all the changes that have occurred during the period of declining salmon runs, none are on par with the installation of these massive dams of the mainstem Columbia and Snake Rivers. Can it be possible to deny that the dams have vastly altered the very character of these rivers? Fast flowing rivers were converted to a series of slackwater reservoirs. How the salmon have done as well as they have is miraculous given the alien environment they now face. The fact that the last healthy wild salmon runs just happen to exactly correspond to the last undammed segment of the Columbia (known as the Hanford Reach) is hard to attribute to mere coincidence as the author seems to. Salmon spawn in rivers. The Hanford Reach has salmon because the Hanford Reach is still a river.

If we as a society are truly serious about saving the wild salmon, the first option to be considered must be the restoration of their rivers. It may well be that we are willing to sacrifice the salmon runs for the benefits these dams provide humanity. Obviously, this was the case when they were constructed. This I can understand, but please then tell it like it is. To promote dams and then blame the inevitable decline of anadromous fisheries on everyone and everything else is nothing but a shell game. I remain unconvinced.

The author is close enough to the story - and judging by his credentials, one would think he's intelligent enough - to illuminate the story of the salmon crash. Perhaps he's simply TOO close. Alternately shrill, arrogant, and whiny, the book supposes ridiculous motives behind his opponents' actions, and offers his own clients as selfless angels. There's no doubt that the issue is complex. That, alone, would seem to be a reason to recognize that there could be different perspectives without nefarious or purely self-interested motivations.
Lots of heat, no light. Not worth the time.

A great read for anyone interested in issues related to andronomous fish in the Columbia and Snake river system. The author (who is up front about his participation in the conflict) makes a very persuasive case that hatchery management and, to a greater extent, the harvest of adult salmon are the largest manageble factors decreasing salmon returns in the system. The author does a good job of analyzing and explaining scientific data, but the graphs included in the book are of low quality and difficult to interpret.
I found Mr. Buchal's arguments persuasive. The whole story of how junk science was used to justify the agenda of an interest group at great expense to both the taxpayers and the salmon is not unlike the story of the great acid rain scare in the northeast. There, forest pathologists have consistently found that acid rain was not causing observed mortality and that other explinations were more persuasive. Among plant pathologists the issue is long dead, but the myth of a massive acid precipitation-caused dieoff of high elevation trees persists in the media and among many politicians as well as (predictably) environmental advocacy organizations.

The author is a lawyer who represented major industry in lawsuits against government agencies trying to keep salmon from going extinct. If you want industry's view of how ecosystems should be managed, read this book. It dismisses the best science available and promulgates the view that decent habitat is not necessary for salmon or other endangered species. For example, the author says that dams and reservoirs are good for fish because they don't have to work as hard to get upstream. He ignores the the scientifically proven fact that reservoirs increase water temperatures, and salmon cannot survive in warm water. He agrees with GWB's notion that all we need is "fish friendly turbines" in dams. This book might as well have been written by the aluminum and farming industries - not the sources I would turn to for unbiased, scientific information. It suggests that healthy ecosystems are unnecessary and that hatchery fish are the same as wild fish. If you want real facts about the salmon crisis, get "A Common Fate: Salmon and the people of the Pacific Northwest" by Joseph Cone. A MUCH better book.

I bought this book to give me the other side of the issue. At the time I was working for an agency directly involved in the issue, and the overwhelming consensus among the staff there is that removing the dams solves the whole issue.

As the engineer son of a dam building engineer, I tend in the other direction.

This book gave me the other side of the argument. It points out that there are a lot of other issues involved, and it wasn't just the construction of the dams that contributed to the decline in anadroumous fish in the Colubia Basin.

And, a lot of the problem can be traced to bad management decisions by those charged with the management of the fisheries resource. From the introduction of highly predatory nonnative game fish which predate the smolt headed down river, to the almost total dewatering of natal streams for irrigation, there are a lot of issues, that a lot of people don't want to talk about for very political reasons.

The reviews on the book appear to be a reading of the 'for or against' comments that are appearing all over the country on the very serious matter of 'dam breaching'.

This is NOT a 'dam breaching' issue. This is a save our salmon issue.

To save Northwest salmon, four large obstacles must be removed...and they aren't dams.

Read all of the reviews on this book. Purchase this book and also purchase 'Undue Influence" by Ron Arnold to put everything in perspective.

This book is something every person concerned with the plight of salmon should read. Not only is it very correct in finding the fault with our political system but it backs up every quote, statement or fact with an extensive list of references. Its amazing to me how not one person has seemed to point the reason for salmon's decreasing population on overfishing. Even when salmon was placed on the endangered species list, the total fishing harvest of salmon went up. BY ALL MEANS, READ THIS BOOK!

For those old enough to remember the beginnings of the environmental movement, can remember when the movement was relatively honest. No more. It has been fatally corrupted by the political left, and has the aquisition of power as its agenda, not a cleaner better environment. The Northwest Salmon issue is but the latest scandal of the movement and Buchal catches them redhanded in the courts, the media, and government agencies promoting yet again another round of junkscience to attain their goal. This book complements nicely Peter Huber's book Galileo's Revenge---Junkscience in the Courtroom. Further the politics of the Left can be studied in David Horowitz' book The Politics of Bad Faith. Book Review The Great Salmon Hoax An Eyewitness Account of the Collapse of Science and Law And the Triumph of Politics in Salmon Recovery By James L. Buchal Published by Iconoclast Publishing Company Copyright 1997 P.O. Box 677 Aurora, OR 97002-0677 Reviewed by Michael R. Fox Ph.D.

If you have the slightest interest in salmon or salmon fishing and how these are being threatened in the Northwest, run, don `t walk, to the nearest bookstore, buy (or order), and read this book. If you never knew before about bureaucratic junkscience and how it is practiced, study this book, it is the perfect place to start. Author Jim Buchal has produced a monumental contribution to the understanding of the myriad bureaucracies, bad science, bad law, bad media analyses and reporting of these of these issues. His book is heavily referenced, an appealing feature to those wishing to verify his findings.

Further Jim Buchal is not only a good environmental lawyer, but has a degree in physics as well. More than most advocates this has instilled in him a keen sense of scientific cause and effect, of differences between good and bad science, between good and bad statistics. He knows how to ask the hard questions, which has not endeared him to the bureaucracies nor to the federal judiciaries. The general public has no inkling of these salmon problems, even though they pay for the billion-dollar waste. After nearly two decades the salmon have not benefited.

Certainly the salmon issues are complex. But, there is a mindless aspect to the salmon mitigation activities, which seem to call for the spending of more than $450 million per year without much hope for benefiting salmon. Instead, little has been produced except for larger bureaucracies, very questionable science, and threatened salmon runs.

Given all of the complexities and often inconsequential side issues, it is difficult to keep in mind that the goal of the salmon activity is, or should be, to restore increased returns of adult salmon, even to the upper reaches of the Columbia/Snake River Basins.

The overwhelming biases of the fisheries agencies are that the dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers are the sole cause of the declines of adult salmon returns. It needs saying that these fish bureaucracies have never produced the defining document establishing this simple hypothesis. Instead, they continue to assert, without any scientific support, that the dams kill 80% of the salmon. This is measurably untrue.

Why? Because there are much larger threats than dams to salmon both for young smolts and returning adults. These larger threats are invariably downplayed, or excluded from meaningful scientific discourse. To exclude these salmon threats from scientific discourse or for public scrutiny is one aspect of junkscience, and junkscience will never save the salmon.

The unmentioned major threats to salmon include overfishing in the ocean, overfishing in the river systems, and a major explosion in predator populations. None of these are given adequate consideration in salmon life cycle problems. Without considering these sources of salmon killing, the dams by default are blamed for these losses. And talk about limiting the debate, it is downplayed in fisheries reports and in the media, but there are many salmon runs in the NW, and nearly all of them are in trouble. Only a small fraction of these go over ANY dam.

No one seems interested in the problems of these other salmon runs. In fact the National Marine Fisheries Service opposed the study of salmon runs downstream from Bonneville Dam, the last dam on the Columbia River. More information about the non-dam threats these runs could be very instructive, but distracts from the argument that the dams cause all of the salmon problems. They don't, and the fisheries agencies are not interested.

The predator increases include squaw fish, walleye, young steelhead, mackerel, Caspian terns, cormorants, seals, Northern sea lions, California sea lions, to name a few. The Caspian terns on one island (man-made by the way) in the Columbia River were estimated to consume between 6 million to 20 million salmon smolt annually.

The seals and sea lion populations protected since the 1972 by the Marine Mammals Protection Act have increased 30-fold from 6,000 to 170,000. Each taking 15 to 25 lbs of fish per day, they are efficient salmon killers. Further, in 1994 40% of the salmon going through Bonneville Dam had sea lion/seal bites or scars on them. Fish bitten by sea lions do not survive very well going hundreds of miles upstream.

Shad, whose population has increase substantially throughout this time, apparently are not salmon predators, but do compete seriously with salmon for food. Interestingly, the shad population has increased even though they must traverse the dams as well.

Activist judiciaries routinely authorize violation of federal laws such as the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and water pollution standards. This is in stark contrast to judicial protection of say, the Spotted Owl or the Snail Darter. The endangered salmon is the only known animal which has been authorized for killing by the federal judiciaries and fishing agencies.

Nearly every page of Buchal's 384 page book is an indictment of current salmon policy, because of the wide practice of junkscience and junk law, and the arrogance of power in the fisheries organizations. Unless good science is employed, and fisheries managers required to conform to their their legal mandates, government cannot protect, let alone increase the return of memorable salmon runs to the Northwest streams. The book's price of $15.95 is well worth the monumental effort of research it represents.

I too began this book with an open mind, but the author's blantant antagonism toward all agencies, parties, and conservationists in the salmon restoration debate quickly became too much to stomach. Saving Pacific Northwest salmon, especially on the Columbia & Snake Rivers, will take working together and understanding all sides of the issue, which this book does not take the time to do. It is single minded in its condemnation of everyone who attempts to make true progress on the issue, instead focusing on and glorifying those who advocate delay and denial. It's not worth your time--instead I would recommend Keith Peterson's "River of Life, Channel of Death-Fish and Dams on the Lower Snake River" and Blaine Hardin's "A River Lost-The Life and Death of the Columbia" for two much more balanced and well-thought out perspectives on restoring salmon to the Northwest's greatest rivers.

Buchal's book is one long, totally unconvincing, shrill pile of excuses for continued decimation of the Northwest's native salmon runs by dams. Buchal is not wrong to say that fishing has an impact on the wild stocks. However, his argument that the dams have no significant impact is supported only by studies mostly carried out by scientists on the hydro and aluminum industry's payroll. Buchal doesn't bother to cite or fairly discuss the vastly more studies that make the case that the dams clearly have had a very severe adverse impact on the wild salmon runs. The book is really an effort to try to convince people that we should continue the scandalously low subsidies given to the aluminum industry in the form of very low power rates, and an irrational attack on courts, agencies, scientists, journalists, and conservationists. If you really want to learn why the salmon are imperiled, read Jim Lichatowich's book, "Salmon Without Rivers" (Island Press, 1999) or the classic, "Mountain in the Clouds" (1982).