Species Collapse, Salmon

2003 CEPacific Northwest

“If salmon are resilient enough to withstand extreme events like massive landslides, volcanic mudflows, and glaciations, then why are they going extinct across much of their range today? Recent changes in the landscape must be rendering rivers unable to sustain them. The fossil salmon of the Skokomish River are ghost icons, reminders that in just over a century, humans managed to do what repeated onslaughts of ice, in places half a mile high, could not accomplish.”

Montgomery, David R. King of Fish: the Thousand-year Run of Salmon. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003. 38.

Image: NMFS/Southwest Fisheries Science Center via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 DEED Attribution 2.0 Generic