"If mighty species such as these cannot be saved, it is hard to know what can." These words come from The Washington Post and refer to salmon. Not the Atlantic salmon we know, but a number of various Pacific salmon - sockeye, coho, chinook, pink and chum, among them. It is a telling leading article, and sets out the huge task which faces the US Interior Department which has decided to act under the Endangered Species legislation, one of the broadest invocations of the Act on record, writes the newspaper, for "an entire region will have to alter its lifestyle to comply." There will later come some resistance as the implications unfold, for they are far-reaching, but so far opinion has been remarkably supportive and benign. The salmon is not here just another fish, it is "a symbol of the natural heritage of the region that has helped to draw the very people who now threaten the fish". Polls suggest that, in the abstract, anyway, opinion is with the legislators; also most of the species are threatened and not all endangered, but there is a hard road ahead.
For how will the people undo work that is necessary for the saving of the fish? The streams that are the spawning grounds have been "silted up by logging, blocked by development, contaminated by the run-off of cities and farms" alike. And they are blocked by dams which produce lowcost hydroelectric power, on which large parts of the economy depend. So how can you undo the damage to the fish and still keep the economy going? One argument is that, in carrying out the necessary measures the region will be saved from the sprawl and careless exploitation of natural resources that threaten not only the fish but the general lifestyle. It may be harder than the legislators think, once such action starts, once the machines move in, once the full implications are seen in river and field work. So far, it is only a bold proposal, and the quiet reception, the apparent understanding, the patience will, as the newspaper writes, be a major test of the laws on endangered species legislation.
Saving the wild salmon, the paper admits, will be hard, but a real test. The Boyne drainage was not in the interest of saving the salmon, but to keep land from flooding. The salmon survived. Since then such drainage is not, apparently popular. But farm run-off still seems to go on. Other contamination, too. Y