What the Salmon Know About Progress
This is part of the series Rivers As Relatives: Reimagining Our Relationship With Water. [Read Part 1] [Read Part 3] [Read Part 4]
Wild salmon once coursed through rivers across all of northern Europe. They surged up American rivers throughout New England and the Pacific Northwest. Atlantic, coho, king, steelhead, sockeye, pink, chum—they migrated in numbers so immense we can barely fathom them today.
But the Industrial Revolution turned the tide, and people chose development over salmon. They cleared dense forests, trampled vital riverbanks, drained essential wetlands, and irrigated the land. They overfished the streams, built concrete dams, and dumped a toxic mix of chemicals, sewage, and sawdust into the rivers.
All the while, the wild salmon returns grew steadily smaller and smaller.
In his book, Salmon: A Fish, the Earth, and the History of Their Common Fate, Mark Kurlansky discusses the global history of salmon and how saving them is the same as saving the planet. He writes about the beginnings of North American settlement and makes an interesting point.
When the Europeans came to North America, they had already decimated their own salmon rivers. They then followed the same pattern with the rivers along the East Coast. And when those rivers died, they moved on to the West Coast and did the exact same thing.
The question, in the author’s words, is this:
“Today, Native Americans ask, as do others, why the Europeans, having failed in Europe and failed again on the East Coast of North America, would come to the West intent on making the same mistakes.”
The answer: They never meant to save the rivers, or the salmon, or any other fish. In their minds, they weren’t doing anything wrong.
To the European settlers, North America was for commerce—a warehouse of wealth waiting to be taken. They saw the fish, trees, animals, and land not as kin but as commodities. Not as living beings, but as things to buy and sell. Most wanted to get rich off of timber, furs, gold, or salmon and were blind to the rivers dying in their wake.
They thought this was progress.
The salmon, quite reasonably, disagree.
Two hundred or so years later, we know their shortsightedness was a mistake. The wild salmon are showing us by disappearing. Today, they mainly return in abundance to Alaska and the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.
Dam removals in Maine and the Pacific Northwest have successfully restored wild salmon populations. Most recently, four dams were taken down along the Klamath River in Oregon and California and showed almost immediate results. They saw the silvery flashes of wild salmon return only 10 days after the dams came down.
As I wrote in The Dam Issue(s), we’ve removed over 2,000 dams in the last century. Each one is a step toward remembering our relationship with rivers.
But removing large concrete blockades is slow and politically fraught. The Tribes along the Klamath River campaigned for decades to take those dams down.
Maybe this will give us enough time to refine our inherited ideas about progress.
Perhaps we can finally learn what the salmon have always known: that true progress is about what we give, not what we take. That growth and wisdom are not found on the easy path. That kinship, not commerce, is the measure of a thriving world.
Chief Seattle said rivers are our brothers: the salmon are wondering when we’ll start treating them that way.
In 2022, they gave up waiting and decided to fight for their rights in court.
Continue the series: When Salmon Become Plaintiffs