Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis

4. Making Salmon

4 / Making Salmon George Perkins Marsh, Spencer Baird, Livingston Stone, and Marshall McDonald gready influenced the course ofAmerican fishery management. The system that Baird envisioned placed the federal government in a supplementary role as technical advisor and supplier offish. The U.S. Fish Commission (USFC) would introduce fish and restore runs, but it would not subsidize fisheries. Baird insisted that industry bear the costs ofproduction as much as possible, and that states regulate fishing. But the history of the Oregon fisheries is more complicated than a simple tale offederal managers achieving wisdom and saving salmon. Federal administrators preferred a layered approach to fishery management, but some states preferred to rely solely on fish culture to solve their fishery woes. This difference exposed a central problem of fishery management. Although it was easy to agree in principle on regulations or fish culture, such plans were virtually impossible to implement. Regulations required enforcement , which raised taxes and alienated constituencies; hatcheries cost money and still necessitated regulation. Oregonians tried to solve this conundrum by having the USFC make salmon. That way the federal government would bear the costs of production and make enough fish to avoid restrictions. But in practice even this simplified strategy induced a number ofunavoidable spatial and fiscal struggles. The salmon fisheries contained a series of contested social and natural spaces in which fishers, fish culturists, and other groups exploited nature in competing and often inimical ways. Fishers, fish culturists, and Indians vied for the same fish; hatcheries and mills relied on the same streams. The question ofwho would fund salmon hatcheries was another source offriction and repeated conflict. Administrators resolved some tensions by suppressing politically marginal groups such as Indians, but other interests and problems proved more intractable. 99 MAKING SALMON Hatcheries supposedly solved these problems, yet we know that they did not. To understand why people continued to pour money into failure, we need to consider not only how politics shaped fishery management but how the rise of fish culture was inextricably linked to human conceptions of nature. From the habits of salmon to the influence of terrestrial and ocean climates, nature constantly shaped the fate of the fisheries. But nineteenthcentury Americans understood these forces poorly. Observers regularly misconstrued events and attributed upturns to hatcheries and downturns to overfishing or an absence of propagation. Their interpretations lent fish culture considerable credibility despite declining runs. Persistent problems with hatcheries made some federal administrators skeptical, but their doubts failed to dampen public enthusiasm. The number ofhatcheries grew rapidly, and by 1900 common wisdom deemed fish culture an unqualified success. This overweening faith in hatcheries led to a management debacle 10 1904. History hung heavy over the Oregon fisheries in the early 1870s. Federal managers, state officials, and private citizens saw the plight of Atlantic salmon as prophesying a dismal future for Pacific salmon. Their warnings and legislative efforts produced little immediate response, but they laid a foundation for the future by outlining the two competing models offishery management. Writers, editorialists, and politicians all warned Oregonians how the eastern past might become the western future. In 1870 awriter reminded readers, "Some ofthe older States ofthe Union ... have suffered serious loss ... from early neglect, which they are now endeavoring to repair at large cost." In 1874 the Portland Morning Oregonian counseled readers: "It will be the part of wisdom for our people to profit by the experience ofthose similarly situated on the Atlantic side of the continent, and avoid the misfortunes that befell them in consequence ofimprovident and reckless methods ofconducting an industry which, with proper care might have remained always productive and of incalculable benefit to the country. We may copy their errors and succeed to the misfortune entailed, or we may be at once warned and taught, and preserve our fisheries as good as they are at present for an indefinite length of time." Governor Lafayette Grover echoed these concerns in his messages to the legislature. "We have been accustomed to think that this fish product was inexhaustible. But the river fisheries of all countries, where the laws have not intervened for their preservation, have one uniform historyfirst , decimation, then destruction."! The intended point of these history lessons was to provide an abundant 100 MAKING SALMON future for the West. Knowledge became a fulcrum for creating a utopian image ofmaterial prosperity. One writer argued, 'We must somehow legislate so as not to kill the goose that lays this...