Learning From History

King of Fish:

The thousand-year run of salmon

by David R. Montgomery

Reviewed by Justin Reedy

Failing to learn from the examples of history can have painful repercussions.

Take the salmon, for example. Wild salmon in many areas of the Pacific Northwest are suffering from population decline, and have nearly disappeared from some rivers entirely. Coho and Chinook salmon, the two types most dependent on rivers for habitats, are the most threatened. Like many other fixtures of the natural world, salmon in the Northwest have fallen prey to industrialization and urbanization. Their habitats have been altered and their populations have been decimated for the sake of progress, commerce, and convenience.

But this is far from the first time salmon have been faced with such adversity, author David R. Montgomery writes in King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon. In his book, Montgomery, a professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, details how these same issues have been replayed for centuries in salmon runs in Europe and North America.

Reading Montgomery's detailed historical accounts of salmon fishing in Europe and colonial North America is much like hearing the modern debate on salmon conservation. It seems like we've been here before, hearing the same arguments from both sides, and that since we haven't learned from our past we're doomed to repeat it.

Repeating the failures of the past, Montgomery warns, will lead us down that same road to a harsh conclusion: extinction of salmon.

Without reading the book, it would be easy to write Montgomery off as either a doomsayer or a mouthpiece for wildlife conservation groups, or both. But in his writing, he emphasizes his belief that mankind and salmon can live together, rather than advocating unattainable solutions to the decline of salmon populations.

Montgomery's book serves as a well-written introduction to the modern debate on salmon conservation, but it also does far more than that. He frames that debate in a historical context, with a detailed look at how salmon runs disappeared in the past.

If you'd like a rundown on the main points brought up in the debate on salmon conservation, read a newspaper article or visit the Web site of a salmon advocacy group. But if you'd like to truly grasp the issue and its historical underpinnings, read this book.

Montgomery weaves an intricate tapestry of narrative describing how political leaders and the fishing industry, against the counsel of conservationists, allowed salmon runs to become extinct in most of Europe and New England.

The laundry list of factors that wiped out wild salmon in Europe and New England reads like a primer on salmon issues in the Northwest. Deforestation and rerouted rivers? Check. Overfishing of populations? Check. Dams blocking access to spawning grounds? Check.

Much like salmon advocacy groups now warn against human actions that are continuing the decline of salmon, people in Europe and New England suggested changes to protect the wild fish.

One of the suggestions most often repeated was to reduce the number of salmon taken from runs. Fishermen started to implement new techniques, such as the use of screen traps, that increased their take to incredible levels, sometimes more than 90 percent of the fish in a particular run.

"Restraint was simply not an issue,” Montgomery writes of fishing operations on the Eagle River in Labrador, Canada in the 18th century, which consisted of nets blocking nearly the entire stream channel. "The goal was to take all one could.”

Conservationists argued that catching that much of the population wasn't sustainable, and that eventually the salmon run would be wiped out.

They likewise warned that building dams across rivers can keep salmon from swimming back up from the ocean to spawn in riverbeds farther up rivers, limiting the population of salmon runs in the future. That's not a recent revelation: a rule in England dating back to the 12th century and the reign of King Richard I, also known as Richard the Lionhearted, required that rivers be kept free of obstructions to allow salmon access to their spawning grounds.

Montgomery also notes that as early as the 1860s, people like George Perkins Marsh, a lawyer in Vermont, warned that deforestation and other human influences were drastically affecting salmon habitats.

Salmon are hurt by deforestation because it inexorably alters the landscape in and around a river, writes Montgomery. He applies his knowledge of changing landscapes in describing how fallen logs divert rivers into a complex system of main and side channels, dotted with logjams and surrounded by floodplains. Cutting down most of the trees in an area around a river, as well as straightening the channel out for better flood control and boat passage, makes a poor environment for rearing salmon.

Just as Marsh warned in his 19th century book, Man and Nature, that humans had to exercise care or they would wipe out some wild species, Montgomery reiterates those concerns in "King of Fish."

In fact, Montgomery seems to sympathize with Marsh and other early naturalists. Montgomery writes how, over and over again, people have raised a call of warning about the plight of salmon. But those voices are drowned out by political rhetoric or shortsighted economic concerns, and the salmon eventually disappear.

Like the pragmatic fishermen and conservationists before him, Montgomery offers simple solutions (many of the same ones offered by his predecessors, actually) for preserving wild salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest.

Salmon aren't like spotted owls, or some obscure plant species that can only survive in a very specific place with no human interaction. The fish are tough and hardy, Montgomery writes, and can actually overcome some adversity and live in harmony with mankind.

"Salmon need just a few basic things," Montgomery writes in his final chapter. "Given these things, salmon can thrive. Without them, they will eventually disappear."

Those things, he writes, are cool, unpolluted water; a clean gravel streambed for spawning; a flood regime in tune with the life cycle of salmon; a safe, accessible habitat; and a chance for enough fish to escape fisheries and return to their home waters to spawn. Strong central control, in the form of regulations that are actually enforced, is the best way to accomplish that, he writes.

Only time will tell if the words of Montgomery and advocates for salmon conservation are heeded, or if the author and conservationists will wind up like George Perkins Marsh, being quoted in a book on the history of the long-extinct wild salmon.

Justin Reedy is a science writer/editor for the University of Washington Health Sciences News and Community Relations office, and is pursuing graduate studies in technical communication at the UW.