I don't really care. Environmentalists will never happy until the world's population is so low that they feel like 'nature' is unaffected by humans. In reality that means they want the world to themselves and anyone with any other interests to be plant fertilizer. There haven't been a specific kind of fish there for _eighty_ years and it hasn't impacted human life so why do we need to spend tax dollars to have them there now? It is complete lunacy based on a fetish for a 'natural' state that isn't real. News flash, humans are natural and I don't loathe them like some environmentalists do. People are starving and dying of viruses (both 'natural' states I'll add) but we need to spend our time and money building a fucking ladder for a fish? I speak truth even though I will be downvoted into oblivion. Worth it.
Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
41–50 of 72 posts
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You realize in 600ad the temp was a 1 hotter than today. There is no maybe we reintroduce at a later time because whatever you think needs to happen with climate change never will. Interesting. Do you have a source for this?
https://www.history.org.uk/primary/resource/3865/anglo-saxon...
Got it. They may have gotten their figures wrong - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#43I don't really care. Environmentalists will never happy until the world's population is so low that they feel like 'nature' is unaffected by humans. In reality that means they want the world to themselves and anyone with any other interests to be plant fertilizer. There haven't been a specific kind of fish there for _eighty_ years and it hasn't impacted human life so why do we need to spend tax dollars to have them t…
We are biological creatures, and part of the biome.
All of the artificial things we've created do nothing to sustain our existence, only to facilitate our connection with the biome.
If, in the process of facilitating this connection, we eliminate the biome's ability to sustain itself, most of us will be dead very quickly.
That's one of the reasons people care so much.
Another reason, if you suspend your human-centric worldview, is seeing other creatures as our relatives on the biological tree of live, admitting their ability to have feelings and desires and suffering, and caring for their plight and happiness alongside ours.
We don't have to kill the biome to sustain ourselves. In fact, the opposite is true.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
By that standard the monarch butterfly is stupid too. That said they are smart enough to follow only a portion of their full migratory route which takes 4 generations to complete. Squirrels remember where they bury their nuts. Octopuses can solve puzzles. So what about fish? Salmon remember where they were spawned before they head out to the ocean, and come back to the exact same pool to spawn before dying. https://b…
Squirrel do not remember much though. They fill the ground with nuts. Then they dig the ground seemingly at random. Most of theis caches are forgotten. Which often leads to nuts trees sprouting all over the place during spring.
https://www.livescience.com/64104-how-do-squirrels-find-buri...
This article seems to suggest otherwise.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#45I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam.
It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge.
Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that part of the river is heavily polluted.
And south of Coulee Dam, there is storage of nuclear waste, just north of Richmond, WA - Hanford site. Nuclear waste already leaks into Columbia river, north of Tri-Cities area.
So in my opinion, human created disasters in the Columbia river, rank in this order: nuclear waste at Hanford site > smelter at Trail, BC > Dams without passage for fish.
Sorry for typos, typing from phone.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, if the choice is removing the dams and moving to more polluting energy forms, or letting the fish go extinct, I think letting the fish go extinct is the best choice at this time. Maybe we freeze their fertilized eggs and reintroduce them at some point in the future when climate change has been reversed.
Salmon are used as food sources for humans and for wildlife. The stronger the salmon are, the stronger the ecology of the PNW will be. Not all dams that are blocking salmon runs in the PNW are used for hydro power, or for flood control for that matter.
Ok, I'll bite. If a dam isn't being used for hydro power, nor for flood control, what is it being used for? I'm assuming a dam that creates a reservoir for water storage is considered flood control but perhaps you are not.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#47I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that p…
How nuclear waste leaves power plant? I always was under impression the core is heavily isolated and water is just cooling or used for turbines.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If native populations are going to come back and be sustainable we have to tear down the damns. I realize that causes other political issues but that's the only way we're going to have native populations. I'm an avid fisherman and really LOVE fish. They're amazing animals. Fisherman have a connection to nature that just can't be appreciated unless you have spent significant time on the water. Fish are SMART, they're…
Fish are amazing, but do you really think they are SMART? In my experience, fish are incredibly stupid and wholly reliant on instinct. I suppose instincts can seem like intelligence sometimes, but if put into the wrong situation, fish will make the same mistake over and over and over again.
People say this about many beings, and even about other humans. What they all have in common is a lack of exposure to those they denigrate and reduce in their mind to dumb automatons. I don't think you are smart to say that about anyone you haven't spent much time around or bonded with in any significant way.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#49I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that p…
How nuclear waste leaves power plant? I always was under impression the core is heavily isolated and water is just cooling or used for turbines.
No active reactor but 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and areas of heavy Technetium-99 and uranium contaminated groundwater beneath three tank farms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
Federal government promised to clean up but failed.
Re: Salmon spawning in the upper Columbia River, first in 80 years
#50I live not far from where Columbia river comes out to US from Canada, in US portion of Selkirk Mountains. This is north of Coulee Dam. It's good that salmon can come into this area but smelter from Trail, BC has been polluting upper Columbia river for about hundred years. With chemicals and smelter sludge. Fish is not edible, sand is black from sludge. Salmon may have reached upper Columbia river, but water in that p…
How nuclear waste leaves power plant? I always was under impression the core is heavily isolated and water is just cooling or used for turbines.
Cleaning Up the Cold War’s Nuclear Legacy at Hanford
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/a-glass-nightma...
"During Hanford’s plutonium-production heyday, workers discharged some 1.7 trillion liters of waste liquids into soil disposal sites, which developed into vast underground plumes of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogens hexavalent chromium and carbon tetrachloride [PDF], that infiltrated aquifers."