At a recent community meeting about restoring salmon to Puget Sound streams, a homeowner got up to complain. "They re talking about taking away lawns to save salmon," he said. "My kids need someplace to throw around a football."
In March, when the National Marine Fisheries Service listed nine runs of salmon and steelhead trout as "endangered," people living in cities and suburbs were forced to contemplate--some for the first time--their complicity in extinction. The listing area--huge portions of Oregon and Washington--includes Portland, Salem, and the fast-growing Seattle region, home to the Puget Sound chinook.
"This species is different; it lives where we live," says Curt Smitch, salmon advisor to Washington Governor Gary Locke (D). "We're going to try to accommodate rapid population growth, maintain a vital economy, and protect a natural resource. That's unprecedented."
Not much of the natural resource is left. At the turn of the century, hundreds of thouSands of chinook salmon returned to Puget Sound and swam up dozens of streams, where they spawned and died. Today, even with the addition of hatchery fish, the run is only a quarter of historic levels. The condition of other listed runs is as dire or worse.
The salmon listing means that residents of the Seattle area are going to have to cope with the sometimes major economic and lifestyle changes formerly borne by rural people called upon to save creatures such as the spotted owl. To restore salmon habitat, urban areas will have to rethink how homes and offices are built, how wastewater is handled, and yes, what herbicides and pesticides can be used on lawns. "Millions of people are going to have to change the way they live if salmon are going to be saved," says Susan Bolton, director of the University of Washington's Center for Streamside Studies.
And that is a tough sell. Governor Locke's initial, relatively mild salmon-restoration proposal--which included improved water management, logging guidelines on state lands, and stream-restoration projects--was rejected by the state legislature. And now that urban areas are affected, some new players are at the table. "With all due respect to the grazing and timber interests," Bolton notes dryly, "when it comes to lobbying, they're bush-league compared to the real-estate industry."
Despite such resistance, Jim Baker of the Sierra Club's office in Pullman, Washington, believes that the Northwest's salmon runs can be pulled back from the brink. Many important steps--like preventing runoff by keeping parking lots and roads away from streams--just require intelligent planning. "Salmon are remarkable for their resilience," Baker says. "What they need is clean, cold water and clean gravel for spawning beds. Then, just get out of their way."
Even though the cost of restoring salmon is sure to be high--$200 million from Washington State and another $200 million from the feds in just the next two years alone--some far-sighted politicians see salmon restoration as an opportunity to restore clean water and stem surburban sprawl. "By saving the salmon," says Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, "we may very well be saving ourselves."
And as high as the cost of restoration may be, the alternative may cost more. In 1990, the Northwest salmon fishery employed some 66,000 people, and contributed $1 billion to the regional economy. If the salmon go extinct because government failed to protect them, major lawsuits against federal, state, and. local entities are sure to follow from the fishing industry, Indian tribes, and others whose livelihoods have been destroyed.
The challenge facing the urban Pacific Northwest is one that many more regions are likely to face in coming years. Are we willing to alter our way of life to accommodate wild creatures? It may come down to whether we look on these necessary changes as Impositions that rob us of our bug-free lawns, or opportunities to improve our communities while keeping our natural heritage intact.
