Time to reel in Atlantic salmon program

[Spiel]

Time to reel in Atlantic salmon program

 

May 10, 2009

Matt Crawford / www.burlingtonfreepress.com

 

 

I remember the first time I saw a wild Atlantic salmon. We were on Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula in the autumn, and I stopped on a bridge spanning the Bonaventure River to watch a fly-fisherman casting into a deep pool.

 

The angler had been thigh-deep for about an hour, casting to three or four silvery shapes that flashed deep in the hole below the bridge in the October sun. The fisherman would cast his fly, let it ride down to where the fish laid, and then skitter it across the surface, hoping to anger the big fish into a strike.

 

It didn't work -- at least I didn't see it work -- but he kept at it. Atlantic salmon, after all, are known as the fish of a thousand casts.

 

In New England, particularly on the Connecticut River, Atlantic salmon are the fish of millions of dollars. And like the fisherman who keeps casting to them hoping his luck will change, we continue to pour tens of millions dollars into an Atlantic salmon recovery program hoping our luck will change.

 

The difference is this: The angler, standing in the moving water casting his fly, is expending little more than time. On the Connecticut River, where the Atlantic salmon restoration program has been floundering for more than 40 years, we're spending time and a whole lot of money. Too much money, perhaps.

 

In the wake of the recent news that the federal stimulus package contained an $890,000 earmark for an electrical system upgrade for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's salmon hatchery on the White River in Bethel, it seems as good a time as any to re-examine the Connecticut River salmon restoration program.

 

Even the fisherman under the bridge on the Bonaventure River eventually called it quits. To stand there, doing the same thing, expecting different results just didn't make sense. When is somebody going to reel it in and wade away from this program?

 

For years, I've operated under the belief that the paltry returns of Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut (the runs of anadromous fish were wiped out more than 200 years ago) made ecological sense. Every fish returning was a ray of hope, disregarding the fact that Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service have spent millions of dollars on the program since it began in 1967.

 

I've held out hope that science, money and hard work would someday restore a population of fish with deep social and biological importance. But now, with only about 150-200 salmon coming back into the Connecticut River each year, with our federal and state wildlife agencies (indeed, the country as a whole) forced to make difficult financial choices, with decades of science behind us, I wonder if it might be time to give up on the noble dream of restoring runs of Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River.

 

And I know, it's hard to bring it up right now as thousands of school kids in New Hampshire and Vermont are involved in stocking Atlantic salmon fry in tributaries of the Connecticut. But if not now, when?

 

Nobody wants to be the person who will be forever held responsible for allowing Connecticut River Atlantic salmon to become dinosaurs, and yes, the program has been on the cutting edge of fisheries science for years now. But at what cost? What else could the fishery folks in the states and federal agencies involved in the salmon program be doing if that money and time could be re-allocated.

 

I'd love to see Atlantic salmon come back to New England's longest river, and even I'd pay extra money to fish for them if they ever did, but that's not going to happen. If we're going to get serious about climbing out of this country's economic mess, if we're going to get serious about getting our fish and wildlife agencies working on programs that deliver results, it's time to bow out of the Connecticut River Atlantic salmon restoration program.

 

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Matt Crawford is the former Outdoors editor of the Burlington Free Press. He now contributes two columns a month.