Save the salmon

A mid-term report on the dreadful state of salmon fishing in Maine confirms that the problem lies where many have long suspected — out at sea — and gives one more reason for federal agencies to accept a state conservation plan.

The Penobscot run of 1,049 is down by 42 percent from last year, the St. Croix by 94 percent to a mere eight, the Narraguagus by half to 26, the Dennys is all but dry. Similar collapses are the rule without exception from New Hampshire to Nova Scotia.

The culprits clearly are commercial fishermen in Greenland and Labrador who sweep up hundreds of thousands of salmon each year. Only they are not culprits — they are the indigenous denizens of exceedingly harsh lands where salmon fishing isn’t sport, it’s survival. And that survival is more in question than ever. Since Canada imposed quotas on the ocean harvest in 1990, Labrador fishermen have been unable to come close to hauling in their allotment.

The possible reasons for this anadromous disaster are many: overfishing, oceanic warming, predation and pollution are leading contenders. The solution may be a combination of scientific and political remedies, but the proposed listing of salmon in seven Maine rivers as threatened under the Endangered Species Act is not a rational addition to that prescription.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide in September whether the salmon, if any, in the Dennys, Machias, East Machias, Narraguagus, Pleasant , Sheepscot and Ducktrap rivers should be designated as threatened under the ESA.

Those salmon are threatened, but the ESA can’t help them. A far better result would be for the federal agencies to accept the conservation plan developed by the Maine Atlantic Salmon Task Force created two years ago by Gov. King.

The plan addresses potential threats to wild salmon from four sources — agriculture, aquaculture, forestry and recreational fishing — and recommends actions that will reduce those threats and promote salmon recovery, if recovery ever comes.

The plan makes partners of those who use Maine rivers and their watersheds. The ESA listing would make them casualties of a battle that must be fought on another front if it is to be won. The NMFS and USFW regional offices already have endorsed the plan — Washington headquarters should do the same.

To many, including many scientists, the question of how to restore wild salmon stocks has a relatively easy answer — use the aquaculture industry’s formidable hatchery capacity to swamp the ocean with young fish. Others, some scientists as well, say that would dilute the genetic purity of wild salmon. Their answer is to restrict human impact on the river habitat as much as possible and then wait for nature, and propagation, to take its course.

It will be up to science to determine if a Dennysville salmon is substantially distinct from a St. John native, or, like gray squirrels, pretty much alike whether found in Veazie or Calais. That uncertainty, however, is no reason to close seven Maine rivers to other economic activity.

The salmon problem will be solved in international waters, beyond the reach of our government agencies, through international agreements and scientific research. The danger is that NMFS and USFW will regulate what they can, seven Maine rivers, because they cannot regulate where it’s needed, the open ocean. The result would be economic devastation and still no salmon.