[Cannonball]

I'm no expert, never took a class in marine biology, but here goes.

There are several kinds of Salmon. The west coat salmon spawn but once, then die in the fresh water. The east coast salmon can spawn many times. There are more than one specie though. To learn all that you might find a more complete run-down on the net.

Two major spawning runs occur. In the Columbia River in the west, and in the Hudson river in the east. Most other rivers had runs, at least at one time, but the Columbia and the Hudson are really big rivers, so they were once choked up with salmon, by the millions, at spawning time. Industrial waste and human waste and erosion has all but wiped out these big runs.

Fish ladders were built around the dams, but they hardly worked. They did get quite a few salmon up, but the problem came up when salmon fingerling were swimming downstream. When they hit the dam backwaters they thought they were in the ocean, so they rarely swim on down. Oddly, a few accidently make it though. Salmon runs have slowed to a very few thousand in the Columbia. Polution has competely stopped the Hudson run.

Now there's an environmental drive to take out the dams, and replace the electricity those dams produced with a few nuclear power plants, and Wyoming coal plants.

I don't know whats going on about the Hudson. New York City relatives inform me that there now is something of a beginning of a drive to bring the salmon back to the Hudson. I suspect stopping pollution so the river runs clean is easier than removing a number of rather large power dams but I have seen no study.

So bringing back the big salmon runs is a fast growing environmental issue. So where do you stand?