Seattle Times On California’s Salmon Issues

Sacramento River winter chinook, unique in the world, are nearly extinct in the southern residents’ southernmost range. These salmon live in a gene bank called a captive brood.https://t.co/sY2fezAcT7 pic.twitter.com/27rqSPzVHg

— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) September 29, 2019

I would definitely recommend this Seattle Times piece on the plight of California’s salmon, orcas and a concerned future for Chinook along the West Coast, part of a series of stories that chronicle the salmon crisis.

Here’s more from author Lynda V. Mapes:

Many people here have forgotten all about salmon, Ambrose said. They don’t know the Sacramento is a salmon river. That California is a salmon state. That orcas still come here, searching for salmon.

“People don’t even know what we used to have,” Ambrose said.

The decline of this river, once second in salmon production in the U.S. only to the Columbia River, is a cautionary tale, a time machine, depicting a possible future. What has happened to the Sacramento and its winter chinook could happen here, in the Northwest. …

…The region is on a path to repeat the history of decline seen everywhere that salmon have ever thrived. First in the rivers of Europe. Then the East Coast of North America. Then California.

‘They don’t know the Sacramento is a salmon river. That California is a salmon state. That orcas still come here, searching for salmon.’ https://t.co/Ch5q9e1PSx

— Ian Wren (@Ian__Wren) September 30, 2019