The Great Salmon Hoax

Fishery agency mismanagement, coupled with natural trends working against salmon, has brought Northwest salmon runs to historic lows. Charged by law to protect salmon, yet promote salmon harvest, fishery agencies do not even count how many Columbia Basin salmon are caught and killed for consumption, or measure the cost-effectiveness of salmon hatcheries.

The most basic biological facts about salmon are politicized, as fishery officials misrepresent the effects of dams on salmon to extract federal funding from the Bonneville Power Administration. The result? A $3 billion program focused on fine-tuning fish passage at mainstem Columbia and Snake River dams that fails to recover salmon, because there is no evidence that those dams are a limiting factor in salmon recovery. Packed with hundreds of specific citations to the most recent scientific papers and reports, The Great Salmon Hoax is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to understand how salmon recovery efforts have gone awry, and how we can craft a rational, scientific program for salmon recovery that will bring significant numbers of salmon back to the Pacific Northwest.