I love this time of year. The chinook, coho and chum are coming back and we’re filling our smokehouses and freezers for the coming winter.
Scientists have seen adult coho salmon dying within 24 hours of returning to some polluted urban streams in Western Washington. In some cases, 60 to 90 percent of the coho are dying before they can spawn.
What’s killing the fish? It’s a poison soup of brake pad dust, oil, gasoline and other pollutants that are washed by rain or melting snow from yards, sidewalks, parking lots and roads, right into our streams and Puget Sound.
These short, cold, rainy and sometimes snowy days of winter always make me think about our treaties. It was during this time of year more than 150 years ago that the U. S. government negotiated most of its treaties with tribes here in Western Washington.
Some say the transfer would be wrong because the funds come from hunting and recreational fishing license fees, but will be used to maintain production at hatcheries that also support commercial and tribal fisheries. I would remind those people that in 2010, treaty tribes in western Washington produced more than 30 million salmon and steelhead at their hatcheries.
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