You may have seen the news that last Thursday that the Biden administration pledged $200M for salmon restoration to tribes around the Upper Columbia River. These funds are to help with new hatcheries and a trap and haul operation around Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams. Both of these dams are well upriver from where the Snake River meets the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. I’m all for reintroducing anadromous fish into their ancestral waters, but this announcement is puzzling to me. There is no way that $200M is enough to “fully fund” reintroduction into the Upper Columbia and the approach being taken has a low probability of success.

It is perilous to write critically about this development. Tribal rights, environmental justice, social justice, and similar concepts have become sacred cows in the conservation community. Environmental groups prominently display a commitment to these concepts as core, guiding principles in their marketing materials. Clearly, there is reason for this. There is no denying the suffering some groups have endured from environmental policies while others benefitted.

That being said, there is also a “woke” element that must be acknowledged. “Woke” is a charged term, and vaguely defined at best, but one element is the elevation of groups or viewpoints over scientific merit. There are many current examples of academic and scientific inquiry and knowledge being shouted down or ignored because it did not fit into someone’s social justice framework. I understand the need to right past wrongs, but the subjugation of merit and science is simply wrong, and dangerous.

The scientific fact is that hatcheries and trap and haul operations are not the way to solve the anadromous fish crisis in the Columbia River system. Locally, we should all be aware of this via the ongoing dismal returns of anadromous fish into the Upper Deschutes Basin, where hatchery fish combined with trap and haul have been employed. There are other examples in Oregon of tribes demanding continued and increased hatchery releases in response to declining anadromous runs, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence that these practices are far more likely to harm than help runs.

It is unlikely you will read this sort of commentary elsewhere. I don’t need to worry about raising money to keep this blog going. I am certain, however, that many others wish they could say what I just did.