A local Indigenous-led coalition has launched a new publicity campaign aimed at raising awareness about the importance of salmon conservation and restoration. The push comes as salmon populations continue to decline, despite ongoing conservation efforts.
Formed in 2018, the Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition is made up of Pacific Northwest Indigenous tribal leaders, environmentalists and commercial fishers with a shared interest in restoring salmon populations. Last month, the group updated its website, sent press briefs and released videos featuring coalition members to bring more attention to the issue.
Salmon are considered a keystone animal in the Pacific Northwest and play an essential role in the ecosystem. Their cyclical lifespan starts in mountainous streams and rivers. They then swim downstream and spend their adulthood in the ocean before making the heroic journey back to their birthplace, where they mate, lay their eggs and die. Five species of salmon are native to Washington state: Chinook, coho, sockeye, chum and pink. A sixth species of fish native to the Pacific Northwest, the steelhead trout, also makes the journey between river and sea; unlike salmon, steelhead trout can mate and return to the ocean multiple times in their lifetimes.
For millennia, salmon have been a key source of nutrition for many animals, like bears and orca. Their bodies also fertilize the soil, allowing forests to thrive. But perhaps one of the closest bonds salmon have is with humans.
A cornerstone of Indigenous life
For Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest, salmon are sacred. Before colonization, their populations are estimated to have been in the millions. The first Euroamericans to arrive in the region remarked that the salmon runs were so plentiful that people could literally walk across rivers on the backs of salmon. However, the arrival of settlers seeking the region’s rich natural resources and the genocide of Indigenous people led to overharvesting and the loss of traditional ecosystem management.
“Culturally, [salmon] are a huge part of how Indigenous communities identify with the landscape around them,” said Kadi Bizyayeva, council member and fisheries director for the Stillaguamish Tribe. She is also a member of the Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition. “Everything that we do has centered itself around salmon. I mean, every gathering that we have, that’s part of what we serve each other to sustain it and feed us.”
Today, most salmon and steelhead populations in the region are considered endangered or threatened. According to the 2022 Washington state of salmon dashboard, an official government website that tracks the status of salmon in the region, 10 out of the 14 monitored salmon populations were considered “in crisis” or “not keeping pace.”
This scarcity has impacted not only food security and commercial fishing but also traditional tribal fishing.
“I’m 32 years old, and I’ve never had the opportunity to go out and fish for Chinook,” Bizyayeva said. “The way that I practice my treaty right is ensuring that we still have an allocation remaining for our ceremonies, like funerals and namings and our first salmon ceremony.”
Willie Frank III, chair of the Nisqually Tribe and the son of Billy Frank Jr., the legendary activist whose name the coalition took on, said the fact new generations are now unable to experience the same fishing he got to do as a kid motivated him to expand his efforts with the coalition.
“One of our young tribal members, he says, ‘Willie, how am I supposed to be as passionate as you are about the environment and stay as positive as you are when we didn’t grow up fishing like you or we didn’t have the same experiences?’” Frank III said. “For me, it really hit home on how we tie in the past, present and where we’re going in the future: Show our younger kids the salmon are the center of everything.”
The responsibility to protect and restore
Restoring and maintaining salmon populations is not just important for Indigenous nations but also a legal obligation. Under the mid-19th-century treaties signed between the U.S. and Pacific Northwest tribes, the federal government pledged to uphold Indigenous peoples’ rights to fish and hunt on their homelands. However, over the century that followed, those rights were ignored, as commercial fishers were allowed to harvest without limitations.
In the mid 20th century, alongside other civil rights struggles, Indigenous activists participated in what became known as the Fish Wars. Fishers like Billy Frank Jr. held high-profile “fish-ins” in which activists were arrested by state fish and game wardens for fishing on treaty lands. This struggle culminated in the 1974 Boldt decision, in which the Western District Court of Washington ruled tribes were entitled to 50% of the annual fish catch.
The Boldt decision was a pivotal case in the history of tribal law and led to numerous rulings upholding Indigenous nations’ rights and sovereignty. One of these decisions was a 2013 injunction that required Washington to eliminate culverts and other physical barriers to salmon along state highways by 2030. As of June 2023, the Washington State Department of Transportation removed more than 100 such barriers, restoring about 500 miles of habitat.
Federal funds have also been allocated for adding fish ladders to dams and removing the two dams on the Elwha River in the Olympic Peninsula, which were torn down in 2012 and 2014.
However, 50 years after the Boldt decision, tribal fishing rights remain infringed by the continued decline in salmon populations, which face a multitude of threats.
“The language is that tribes in the state are entitled to 50% of the harvestable surplus,” Bizyayeva said. “However, since populations have really dwindled, there is no real harvestable surplus. Our populations have been listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and as a result, we are kind of at the mercy of ESA authorization from federal agencies.”
Overcoming myriad challenges
In addition to physical barriers, salmon are impacted by losses of riparian and estuary habitats as well as climate change, predator resurgence and stormwater chemicals.
For decades, scientists were puzzled by mass deaths of coho salmon. After sifting through literally thousands of chemicals in stormwater runoff, they pinpointed the cause: a tire rubber stabilizer called 6PPD-quinone that can extend the life of a tire by as much as 10 times.
“They started noticing that when coho came in to spawn [and] it was raining in urban streams, they would keel over and go through all these weird gaping and poisoning behaviors and then die,” said John Stark, a professor at Washington State University and the director of the Washington Stormwater Center. “And anywhere between 70% to 90% would die before they spawn, which is an incredible loss, and no one knew why.”
Stark said that while it’s unknown why coho salmon in particular are so susceptible to 6PPD-quinone, it has something to do with their blood-brain barriers becoming more porous. Although the state is working with tire companies to find an alternative to 6PPD-quinone, Stark said, policymakers can take steps in the interim to mitigate stormwater pollution. This includes reducing the amount of driving done by Washington residents and restoring habitat along watersheds to catch and filter stormwater before it makes it into the river.
Another challenge salmon face is rising river temperatures. This threat is forecasted to be particularly high this year, with the Washington State Department of Ecology declaring a drought for most of the state due to below-average mountain snowpack. One possible fix, Bizyayeva said, is restoring forests along streams so trees shade rivers and streams, thus cooling them.
“On the Stillaguamish River, salmon are being impacted by climate change,” Bizyayeva said. “Every year, we’re seeing really low flows in the summer and warmer temperatures in the rivers. Then in the fall and winter, we’re seeing really high flows that can be extremely volatile.”
While salmon populations have been declining since the 1970s, populations of pinnipeds — the group of ocean mammals that includes sea lions and seals — have rebounded under the ESA. Glen Gobin, a fisher from the Tulalip Tribe and co-chair of the Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition, said these predators have made salmon even more vulnerable.
“They are so far out of control, it’s unimaginable,” Gobin said. “As a child growing up, we never used to see sea lions out here, and it was a fairly big deal if you saw a seal out here. And now, today, no matter where you look, you can find pinnipeds.”
Choosing a different path
As co-managers of the state’s salmon populations, Washington and tribal governments are both obligated to restore salmon.
Erik Neatherlin, the director of the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, said the state’s population growth must be decoupled from the degradation of salmon populations.
“When we look backward, we can see that a lot of the growth and how Washington has developed as a state was maybe done on the backs of salmon, and a lot of it was done on the backs of tribes,” Neatherlin said. “As we look forward, we’re in a much better position to say, ‘We welcome people to Washington, but we don’t want to have the future of Washington built on the backs of salmon.’ And that is going to take us working together, coming up with innovative and creative solutions and sometimes making some hard decisions.”
In order to overcome salmon population loss, Washington communities will have to confront those difficult and politically thorny decisions, especially when it comes to land rights. This may include restoring riparian habitats to Indigenous management. For Bizyayeva, the Land Back movement — which aims to fully restore Indigenous peoples’ self-determination and sovereignty — must include the restoration of salmon.
“One of the more fundamental principles of the Land Back movement is the understanding that we can’t buy our way out of this. There is no price on our culture — there is no price on our resources, like salmon,” she said. “We’re really focusing on ensuring that that will be there for future generations.”
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the April 24–30, 2024 issue.