Saving the Salmon

By Jeffrey Kluger

Greater Seattle may be best known around the world for Microsoft, Starbucks and rock bands like Nirvana, but residents know it for something less flashy: its rich stock of wild salmon. Last week the Federal Government, noting that that stock is running dangerously low, placed seven types of salmon and two types of trout on its list of threatened or endangered species. Never before has the regulatory machinery of the Endangered Species Act been turned on so large or heavily populated an area. Saving the fish from extinction will require sacrifices from Seattle, Portland, Ore., and the surrounding counties and could slow development in one of the fastest-growing regions of the U.S. For now, locals--who face restrictions on everything from how they generate electricity to how they wash their cars--are rallying to the cause, reacting with none of the fury that greeted measures to protect the spotted owl in 1990. There are, to be sure, some dissenting voices, and when the new policies begin to bite, there are likely to be more. The only thing that seems certain so far is that saving the salmon will be an uphill fight.

--By Jeffrey Kluger. Reported by Todd Murphy/Portland and Dick Thompson/Washington

LOGGING Increased logging means increased erosion, causing topsoil to flow into rivers, smothering salmon eggs. Logging must be limited and moved back from riverbanks.

GOLF COURSES Caring for greens requires lots of fertilizer and river water. Golf courses must recycle water and limit fertilizer.

HYDROELECTRIC DAMS Dams hurt baby fish by slowing down water, which raises its temperature and increases the time it takes the young to get to the ocean. Others are killed by hydroelectric turbines before they can even start downstream. Adult fish swimming upstream often fail to make it over the dam, as staircase-like "fish ladders" prove only partly effective. Some dams must be redesigned; others should be removed.

FARMS Cattle waste produces nitrogen runoff that poisons streams. Farmers must keep cows away from rivers, reduce cattle populations and treat waste before using it as fertilizer.

SUBURBS Homeowners must wash cars less often and limit pesticide and herbicide use, all of which produce toxic runoff. Water-saving toilets can help maintain river levels. Owners of riverfront homes must eliminate antierosion bulkheads, which keep sand and debris from replenishing kelp beds that protect baby salmon.

CITY Water running off paved surfaces carries toxins like motor oil into rivers. Inadequately treated sewage makes things worse. New sewage-treatment plants must be built and wetlands preserved to allow rainwater to filter through soil.

COMMERCIAL AND SPORT FISHING Overfishing depletes the already sparse salmon population. New catch limits must be imposed.

INDUSTRY Waste heat and industrial runoff turn rivers warm and toxic--bad news for salmon, which like their water clear and cold. New pollution controls are needed.

THE SALMON LIFE CYCLE: As salmon move through their cycle of birth, maturation, reproduction and death, they migrate through a variety of ecosystems where they are vulnerable almost every step of the way. The eggs A hatch in shallow streams, releasing larvae, or alevins B, which within a few months become juvenile fish called parr. Parr, in turn, grow into 8-in. smolts C in about two years, and it is these small, silvery fish that make the improbable migration from freshwater river to saltwater ocean. Smolts that survive the trip--and plenty don't--spend four years at sea, feeding and growing to full adult size (3 lbs. to 126 lbs.). Then they begin the long upstream journey D back to their hatching grounds, where they spawn and, a few weeks later, die. A small number of adults may survive this stage and, stubbornly, return to the ocean to repeat the cycle once more.

With reporting by Todd Murphy/Portland and Dick Thompson/Washington