Bill McKibben writes:

Of all the jobs I’ve ever watched humans do, few have seemed more appealing to me than counting salmon at the head of the Ugashik River, in Alaska. Every hour, the man charged with this duty would rouse himself from his cabin in that vast and sweeping wilderness, climb a ladder into what looked like a lifeguard’s chair, and then stare down at the stream—with a clicker in his hand, like an usher at a movie theatre. Each time he saw the flash of a fish passing upstream, he’d count it. Several times a day he’d send his count to headquarters and then climb back down—assuming, of course, that grizzlies had not appeared to do some fishing, in which case he would wait in his perch.

It is well known that the world’s fisheries are in hideous decline, a problem that will grow even worse as oceans continue to warm. But some Alaskan salmon are an exception to the rule—because of that guy in the chair with the clicker. His job is to make sure that enough salmon make it upstream to spawn. The biologists he reports to have worked out complex models of the state’s rivers; they know how many fish are required to keep the runs strong. After an initial early fishing season, when they’re convinced that plenty of fish have made it through, they’ll open—maybe only for a few hours—the fishing season downstream in Bristol Bay.

And when they do, it is chaos—dozens and dozens of high-powered boats milling around in a narrow strip of water, inching toward the front of an invisible boundary like runners crowding the starting line of a race. When the time comes, they drop their nets and surge forward; it’s possible to catch thousands of salmon in minutes. It’s old-fashioned cowboy capitalism, complete with trash-talking on the radio—but when the fishing window closes again, it all shuts down immediately. That’s partly because state troopers make sure of it, but mostly it’s because everyone understands the basic logic: salmon are the golden eggs of Bristol Bay, and if you don’t let enough fish back upstream, then you’ve killed the proverbial goose. It’s the resource equivalent of wearing a mask and staying six feet apart: biology sets the limits, and Alaskans have long obeyed them, with good results.

There are few enough success stories like this in the world. Which is why it’s even more aggravating than usual to watch the Trump Administration try to mess things up. [Continue reading…]