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Glen Spain – Blaming Everyone and Anything for Declining Salmon

Today I read an interesting article at Jefferson Public Radio.

www.ijpr.org

Will the restoration of Klamath River runs help restore California’s struggling salmon fishing industry?

Glenn Spain cites lots of opinion for declining salon but furnishes no published science, onlyย politicizedย opinion.

Spain targets massive west coast economics and the jobs related to; farms and food production, ranching and livestock based products, timber and the wood industry, mining and green hydro-electric energy.

The worlds leading expert on pacific salmon research and their decline wasย William ‘Bill’ Peterson.

Dr. Peterson saidย ‘ocean conditions‘ย by farย had the greatest impact on the decline of salmon, period.

All other factors paled in comparison.

Adding theย uninhabitable reach of the Klamath River above Copco 1 damย for salmon will not help salmon. In fact, just the opposite, the loss of the dams will further adversely impact the Klamath River, its fishery and tribes who have bought into politicizedย pseudo-science.

Without the cold deep water below the thermocline in Iron Gate Dam to mitigate and moderate the warm water coming down from Klamath Lake (average depth of 15 feet – a solar heat sink), which is heavily laden with nitrates (bird poop) and naturally occurring phosphates, the Lower Klamath River will be even less healthy that prior to dam removal. That of course does not withstand the immediate devastation caused by the release of previously sequestered bio-accumulative toxins in the lake bottom sediments, which exist according to the detailed study of those sediments byย CDM Smith-Stillwater.

More to read here:ย 

www.siskiyou.news

cover image courtesy Bieke Lieckens – KRRC contractors dumping hundreds of tons of polluting sediments into Jenny Creek, which empties into the Klamath River. The Klamath River Renewal Corporation (‘KRRC’)…

The lakes also usedย nature’s method to sequester nitrates and phosphates via the algae.

Klamath River dam removal activists, who are merely minority-consensus fishing-zealots, fail in their understanding of the value proposition of the naturally-occurring blue-green algae (Microcystis aeruginosa).ย 

If the people who want more salmon keep following at the heels of a politically driven agenda, instead of a purely scientifically led agenda, they will have no fish, no trees and no wildlife.  You can take that to the bank!


One Comment

  • William, nobody talks about the massive Chinese Fishing Trawler’s that are off the West Coast to Alaska decimating the salmon runs either!!! Nothing to see here move along everyone so goes the old saying!!!

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