September 25, 1995
Web posted at: 3:30 p.m. EDT
From Environmental Correspondent Jack Hamann
Animals and plants in danger of dying out forever -- how do we save them? Do we even need to? The topic is one of the most contentious ones on Capitol Hill. With a landmark endangered species bill now up for debate in the House, CNN begins a three-part series on the issue.
THE SALMON RIVER, Idaho (CNN) -- Charlie Ray, an environmentalist with a group called Idaho Rivers United, is steering through a political current as powerful as the one that buffets his beloved wild salmon and steelhead trout each year.
"I think that if the truth's known, if accounting's done in a fair and reasonable way, we'll see that the federal government is spending more today to drive these fish to extinction than it would cost to restore," Ray said. "We're spending more to kill them than it would cost to save them. "
Why are salmon in trouble? And why can't we seem to help them?
The Columbia is the second largest river system in the United States, trailing only the Mississippi. But the Columbia and its tributaries no longer run free. Instead, a concrete necklace of more than three dozen large dams stretches everywhere the river used to rumble.
When they get about as big as a person's little finger, salmon, then known as smolt, let the river push them downstream to the sea. This was a fast, unfettered journey back when water poured toward the ocean without any barriers. But dams turn roaring rivers into broad, warm reservoirs. (1.5M QuickTime movie)
"And there's no current to drift here. So they become disoriented and lost," said conservationist Gail Ater. "And what don't become lost get sucked through those turbines (in the dam's power generators) and turned into mishmash. So 95 percent of the smolts headed to the ocean get killed here and at the next three dams. That's what's killing them. This is the killing zone."
By some estimates, Americans have spent more than a billion dollars trying to save salmon in just the past few years, with almost nothing to show for it. In fact, so much money has been spent on programs with so little effect that powerful members of Congress, led by Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, want to cap the amount spent, even if it means allowing some species of salmon in Idaho to become extinct -- as long as other salmon runs in places like Alaska are still healthy.
"We need to make the river act more like a river; we need to figure out some way to get them past the dams, which we've done," Ray said in response to Gorton's effort. "We know we can spill fish over the dams with water."
"Spilling" fish means turning off the power turbines while young fish are migrating, and flushing them down the river. But power companies store water because they can't store electricity. So spilling water over the dams means higher power bills.
According to Charlie Ray, the problem will not be solved until there is a basic change to government's approach. "The problem with salmon, and the problem with the Endangered Species Act, is not the fish, and it's not the act," he said. "The problem with salmon's not private property rights. The problem with salmon's not water rights. The problem with salmon is big government and the inability of big government to look at the biological facts, and to fashion a plan to restore these fish based on biology, rather than based on politics and rhetoric."
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