The wild ones

To argue that Maine rivers support a truly wild Atlantic salmon population is to be misleading; to say that a vigorously applied Endangered Species Act will restore that population is whimsical. But in threatening to sue federal agencies over Maine’s Atlantic salmon restoration plan, environmental and fishing organizations, no matter how sincere, are pursuing a course based on these assumptions that may leave no one but the regulation-happy satisfied.

Maine could easily lose a court fight over the plan it created to ward off an endangered-species listing on seven rivers Down East. Indeed, there is precedent from numerous places around the nation to suggest that these voluntary programs are considered too weak by the courts to meet the standards of the act. But there remains a broad gulf between imposing the act and an increase in the number of returning wild Atlantic salmon to these rivers.

That is because Atlantic salmon is wild only in the sense that one would refer to a cow as a wild species. It exists in nature; it has an identifiable genetic code. That’s about all one can say about them. Since 1871, when the Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery in East Orland opened, the salmon’s genes have been as much in the hands of Maine hatchery scientists as in the Almighty’s. Generation after generation of salmon have been hatched in captivity, released to mix with erstwhile wild salmon and hatched in captivity again to the point where wildness is nominal at best.

Scientists will argue that the hatchery fish in the rivers in question are somehow different from fish produced infinitely in hatcheries elsewhere, but scientists will argue about anything. More to the point, the scintilla of genetic difference they have forced from these fish was neither anticipated by the drafters of the Endangered Species Act nor would it have been considered significant if it had, given the lack of evidence for biological or ecological importance among the genetic distinctions.

The Black Box in the declining number of salmon is the ocean itself. Hatchery raised fry have been released by the millions to mature and enter the Atlantic, where the vast majority disappear. Only approximately one-half of 1 percent of released salmon return to the Maine rivers. As a comparison, the wild salmon of the Miramichi River in New Brunswick and other rivers north of there have return rates four to eight times the Maine rate, strongly suggesting that those salmon have higher survivability in the ocean, the key to restoring salmon runs.

Why the Maine salmon fail to return, however, remains a question. Unfortunately, it is not a question that pertains in this debate because the Endangered Species Act is not about looking for solutions to ecological puzzles; it is about requiring states to take certain environmental precautions ITAL as if UNITAL they were protecting a species, regardless of whether they actually are.

This, naturally, has produced an abundance of animosity, cost and divisiveness as well as occasionally saving a species, which the act does almost as an afterthought. Is it any wonder states treat the ESA as a penalty rather than a useful process to achieve the desirable goal of restoring a species?

Maine leaders’ near convulsive reaction to the possibility of an ESA listing has not been particularly helpful in this debate. It makes their interest in salmon restoration look as if it begins and ends with avoiding a listing. In some cases that may be true, unfortunately. With such an attitiude, Maine hatcheries might produce a solid put-and-(sometimes)-take stocking program, but won’t be supported in an all-out restoration of the wild species.

The groups threatening to bring suit have a point in protesting this attitude. Trout Unlimited, for instance, wants to change the burden-of-proof provision in the plan from requiring salmon advocates to demonstrate that any proposed activity would harm fish to requiring users of a watershed to demonstrate that they are not harming the salmon. Maine should be willing to discuss this proposal.

But when it comes to restoring wildness, the task is more complicated. The logical conclusion to bringing back a fish that hasn’t had more science applied to it that your average pre-med student is to close the hatcheries, keep the rivers in shape and wait 100 years. Eventually, a truly distinct species will emerge. Fair to say that’s an idea whose time has yet to come in Maine.

At any rate, the state surrendered its ability to contend that the wild-salmon debate was ludicrous when it decided to write a restoration plan. All it has now is the arguments that have failed elsewhere. Worse, a loss in court could both hurt Down East economically without solving the problem of the missing wild Atlantic salmon.