Our Disappearing Miracle

 

Imagine casting a fly into a calm, cool clear-water pool. Wham! The water explodes upward as a 30-inch 15-pound Chinook Salmon leaps out of the water attacking the fly, hooking itself, realizing its mistake, and ripping flyrod reel line as it tears off downstream. You run downstream in waders trying to catch up to the fish, but you hear a ping snap, feel a slack line in your hand, know it’s no use. A common occurrence in the olden days, another fish tale about the one that got away. It’s not a common tale anymore.

 

Take it from Bill Platts, a 98- year-old biologist who has had salmon on his mind longer than most of us have been alive. Idaho’s iconic fish is going extinct. It won’t happen in his lifetime, but it will happen in some of ours. He’s convinced of that. Like most things we come to regret in our own lives, the signs were there. We just chose to ignore them. “In the 1950s I saw more fish in one pool than now occupy the whole Middle Fork of the Salmon River,” he told me in 2025.

Bill and I knew each other but had never met. Even though I had retired from OI several years earlier, I figured this eleven-time USA Masters track and Field world record holder was worth meeting in person. Bill told me that once he turned 100, he’d likely collect even more world records in his age group. He said the secret was chukar hunting. Bill’s employment with Idaho’s Fish & Game Department and later the U.S. Forest Service gave him a thorough understanding of how Idaho’s mountainous landscape affects the journey of one of the world’s most extraordinary creatures.

In fact, Bill was the first to blow the whistle in the mid-1960s on the drilling in the White Cloud Mountains by the Arizona-based American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO). Bill was doing water-quality surveys of the White Cloud Lakes for the Forest Service when he stumbled upon ASARCO’s mining operation at the base of Castle Peak. Bill’s chief concern, as he told anyone who would listen, was that the proposed open-pit mine deep in the mountains would destroy much of the salmon run to the ocean and back. The threat is different today, he told me. “It’s the politics that will kill the salmon. It’s not going to be logging or mining. It’s going to be politics that causes them to go extinct.”

In my work on Outdoor Idaho I’d seen black-and-white photos of salmon so thick that you could almost believe a person could walk across a stream on their backs. Not so today. In 1992 only one sockeye salmon returned to the Sawtooth Valley. It was quickly dubbed “Lonesome Larry” by a hatchery worker’s daughter. Larry had swum 900 miles upstream, from the Pacific Ocean to Redfish Lake in central Idaho, climbing 6,500 vertical feet, all against the current. That’s a lot of rough frequent-flyer miles for a fish who just wanted to return home.

One thing these 4-to-5-pound sockeye have going for them is their refusal to give up, coupled with a state agency that also refuses to give up. In 2025 166 sockeye returned to Redfish Lake, but it took an emergency room intervention to make that happen. Sockeye fish deteriorate when the water temperature climbs above 68 degrees. The Snake River had reached 70 degrees and was still climbing. Toxic algae blooms were the new norm.

Underwater cameras confirmed that large chunks of flesh were missing from many of the fish, and they had bulbous growths across their bodies. The fish were literally rotting to death in the river that had worked for them for thousands of years. A “trap-and-truck” operation ensued. Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) employees trapped the fish below lower Granite Dam on the Snake River and whisked them to the safety of the Eagle Fish Hatchery.

It’s not all gloom and doom, because salmon don’t ask for permission. Whenever dams are breached and rivers returned to their natural state, the fish race back within months to claim territory denied them for decades or even a century. Washington State demonstrated this with the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, in 2011 and 2014 respectively. It was proven again when the four dams along the main stem of the Klamath River came down in 2024, the largest restoration project in American history, propelled primarily by native tribes. Within the year, thousands of fish reclaimed the new/old territory. It was as if they couldn’t wait to renew the world taken from them more than a century earlier.

“This is not some crybaby species,” reporter Lynda Mapes of the Seattle Times commented to us when we interviewed her in 2021. “These animals have radiated since the Pleistocene into every single possible usable habitat. And you can be absolutely sure that if you provide habitat for them, they will utilize it. Life finds a way.”

Some irrigators, wheat farmers, data farms, consumers, and recreationists still perceive salmon as a problem.  It’s been hard to eliminate pesky creatures who refuse to give up after thousands of years, since “time immemorial,” as the tribes tell it. But it’s happening.

“Salmon Reckoning” is the one show I felt compelled to produce before I retired. As the first show of our 39th season, I reached for some topnotch people for the “tease.” Not all of them supported the return of the salmon, and that was precisely why we interviewed them. I wanted to produce a program that showed the challenges of returning salmon to their homeland. I wanted viewers to understand what confounds western politicians about  this issue and to show smart, thoughtful individuals on all sides of the debate.

There were certainly enough angles and complications to justify an hour, but even half an hour would be a stretch for some viewers expecting stories on bear captures, wild-horse roundups, problem mountain lions, whitewater river runners, or wolverines co-existing with snow machines. “Salmon Reckoning” was instead about the politics and roadblocks surrounding a fish that spent most of its life in the Pacific Ocean and when it came home looked like it had been in a cat fight.

There was some talk of making the program our December 2021 “Pledge Special,” but the station’s fund-raisers weren’t interested. “A fish will not make the phones ring,” they said. Nothing good could come from a controversial Outdoor Idaho topic more complicated than a Rubik’s Cube, they said. They advised me to “bury the show in the September or the October schedule.” I reluctantly obliged, knowing they were correct and that in Outdoor Idaho country, half-hour shows get repeated more often than hour-long programs. I figured the half-hour version had another 10 years in the OI schedule.                                       

What other animal so closely defines “hero,” in the classic sense of the word? In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, author Joseph Campbell used the ancient Greek warrior, Odysseus, as the archetypal hero. His long journey is a departure from the ordinary world, then a series of trials and transformations, and a triumphant return home. The hero’s cycle applies to all who depart, overcome challenges, and eventually return home. It can even apply to a fish.

The salmon starts life as a tiny orange egg in a mile-high, crystal-clear Idaho stream. It’s a nice hangout for a year or so, but eventually something in its tiny four-inch body says it’s time for an adventure and urges it to allow itself to be propelled tail-first by the fast current before hitting the slack water reservoirs of the four lower Snake River dams and the four dams on the Columbia River.

The slow-moving water confuses the smolt and changes its journey to the ocean from a matter of days to sometimes more than a month. During this time, a metamorphosis has begun. A biologist might refer to it as “the great osmoregulatory leap,” a biological retooling where all parts of the tiny fish body, kidneys, gills, and body fluids, shift to allow it to survive in saltwater. A nice trick if you can pull it off.  

Odysseus would be impressed at the daunting challenges these tiny fish must face, every bit as difficult as his battle with the one-eyed giant Cyclops, the six-headed Scylla, the whirlpool Charybdis, and the Sirens. Towering concrete dams, ravenous seals, predatory birds, and hungry invasive fish species are some of the threats the tiny salmon smolt must face. Even the water itself becomes its enemy. Like Odysseus’ men, most tiny salmon do not survive.

Once in the ocean, the tiny traveler clocks several thousand miles toward the nutritious waters near Alaska. Depending on the salmon species, the creature will live in salt water for one, two, or three years. 

Eventually, something causes it to begin the 900-mile trek back up the Columbia and Snake rivers and to face other challenges, including orcas, sea lions, bears, and eagles, the eight large concrete dams on the Columbia and on the Snake. Once again, this creature of the sea makes a radical adjustment to become a freshwater fish again, deserving of the term “anadromous,” migrating up rivers from the sea to spawn.

The healthy fish starts out plump and energetic, with a different threat from discerning chefs who covet the rich savory taste of the sea, the muscular flesh, and vibrant color that diners pay good money to enjoy. Almost immediately upon ascending upstream to the place of their birth, the fish experience a rapid decline in condition.

In the small central Idaho town of Donnelly, 5th grade teacher Deirdre Abrams realized that her students knew next to nothing about Idaho’s migrating fish. She asked the Nez Perce tribe for 100 salmon eggs for their classroom aquarium, and the tribe obliged. Deirdre also wrote a book on the life cycle of the salmon, got it published, and used it in her classroom. Over the course of a year the students had a ringside seat watching the baby salmon break free of their egg’s soft shell and begin feeding on the yolk sack still attached to their bodies. Eventually the fish became free-swimming fry, then parr, with dark rounded vertical markings on their sides.

“The students became really attached to these fish,” said Deirdre. “They learned all about the fish and the journey they have to overcome—all these dams, all these obstacles, all these predators. We worry about them, but we hope some of them will make it to the ocean and back home.”

In the classroom the students learned how magnetoreception allows salmon to travel thousands of miles without getting lost by sensing the earth’s magnetic field, not unlike having a built-in GPS. The fish’s extraordinary sense of smell helps them locate the exact gravel bed where they were born.

When it was time to release the four-inch salmon into the wild, we were there. It was actually a bittersweet moment for some of the girls who had given names to their fish. The boys probably figured they’ll be harvesting “Flippy” and “Kevin” in another four years. The Nez Perce biologists told us the children were releasing fall chinook, so they would start migrating immediately and head to the ocean.

The tribe had also tagged 82 of the fish, so that the students could follow them as they traveled down the river, then up to Alaska and then back upstream to Idaho. “We’ll be able to track this group of fish for the next four years to see if any of them make it back,” said Deirdre. “It’s just an amazing learning tool and gives students something authentic.”

One of my friends told me no one wants to read a book that doesn’t have sex in it. So here goes. On their final journey home, the fully grown fish stop eating, exhibiting a single-minded pursuit of reproduction. The male develops a hooked nose. The fish change color. Muscles weaken, and organs start to fail. Splotched patches of deteriorating flesh appear on their sides. The haggard appearance signals that death is imminent. Those of us along the banks of the river can see the change as the exhausted fish begins its final dance, the female laying eggs and the male fertilizing them. After that, there is nothing more to be done, except to offer its decomposing, nutrient-rich body to the river, linking the ocean to the protein-hungry plants and animals of the forest.

So why would an animal make that treacherous journey back to Idaho, to spawn and then, within days, to die? That’s a good question. We all have our reasons for returning to Idaho. For some the lure of outdoor adventure, the conservative lifestyle, or the slightly lower cost of living brings people back to the state. Somehow salmon know that their only chance to perpetuate the species is in the cold clear water of Idaho’s mountains. A return to one’s roots, a feeling deep in one’s bones. Some of us can relate to that pull.

Would we have tackled the plight of the salmon if Republican Congressman Mike Simpson had not entered the fray? Probably not. We had already covered the remarkable story of Idaho’s fish in more than a dozen segments. In 2008 Outdoor Idaho devoted an entire show to “Idaho’s Salmon.” For some of us, the salmon story had become a broken record. We knew the primary cause of the salmon’s decline and were sure that no politician had the stomach to call for the removal of even one of the offending structures.

Concerned citizens had pretty much resigned themselves to losing one of the miracles of the animal kingdom. Once the Outdoor Idaho production staff had determined that Congressman Simpson was offering the nation something different, a comprehensive plan that considered all the various players in the dam removal scenario, we decided to tackle the issue once again, but in a different manner. We front-loaded the “tease” for “Salmon Reckoning” with our most interesting, hard-hitting comments. If we couldn’t hook viewers in the first three or four minutes, I figured the TV remotes in public TV land would be clicking away to something more comprehensible and palatable, like “Baking with Julia,” or “Call the Midwife,” or even “The Joy of Painting.”

A comment from the northwest’s long-time environmental reporter Lynda Mapes made it into that three-minute introduction. “All of a sudden onto the scene comes somebody named Mike Simpson. I never heard of Mike Simpson. I had to keep looking up his name. Is it Tom? Is it Pete? Some one-syllable-named guy? Who is he? Mike Simpson, Republican out of Idaho. Whoever would have thunk it?” 

The thing that struck Lynda as a reporter was how little had changed over the many years she had followed the story. “Seventeen billion dollars has been spent on hatchery operations and habitat fixes and a lot of changes in the dams,” she told us. “But the fact is, these fish are still headed for extinction. And now so are the orcas.”

Others who made the show’s first controversial minutes were probably not folks you would invite to the same party. A fight would definitely break out. None of them pulled any punches for our show. Steve Hartgen, a former newspaper publisher and retired Idaho legislator from Twin Falls put it this way: “Salmon were here before we got here, but that doesn't mean they have to stay here. So were mastodons. And so were large herds of bison. And so were Dodo birds.”

Contrast that to businessman, sportsman and water-color artist Link Jackson. “The thing is, we’re human. We make mistakes. Take the dams out. It was the wrong idea. They don't generate much good for humanity and they're killing the most magnificent run of salmon on the planet. We need to get rid of them. Pronto.”

In the state of Washington, along the Columbia River, the argument was that we just don’t know enough, according to David Reeploeg, a member of the Tri-City Development Council. “Removing the dams would be like throwing a Hail Mary pass in a football game when you don’t even really know the score.”

Ed Chaney, the unapologetic founder of the group “Save Our Salmon” was never one to back down from a fight. “Those dams don't even pay for their own maintenance. Idaho is losing hundreds of millions of dollars. They're zombie, money-losing dams. The extinction train is rolling down the tracks. And if we don’t do something, it’s over.”

If the salmon do continue to hang on, it will probably be because of the native tribes whose way of life depends upon the fish that appear every year at the same time. The 1854 Treaty of Medicine Creek and a handful of other treaties from that era, written and signed by the U.S. government and ratified by the tribes, reserved the tribes’ rights to fish in their “usual and accustomed” fishing grounds.

“Without the salmon, it’s a pretty lonely world,” Coeur d’Alene tribal member Hemene James said. “Not just for us, the human beings in our country, but the waters, they’re not whole. The riparian zones, they’re not whole. The birds that fly, that used to feed on the fish, they’re not whole, and they never will be, until those salmon are returned.”

We let Congressman Mike Simpson wrap up our “Salmon Reckoning” introduction. We had interviewed him several times before. We caught up with him at the Washington State Salmon and Orca Summit in 2021 in western Washington. He was the keynote speaker. “Twenty-five years ago, when I was in the state legislature, it was the first time that anybody had ever come to me and said, you know, we ought to breach these lower Snake River dams. I started to laugh when he said that, because I thought that was the craziest idea I've ever heard.

“I said you’ve got to do everything else you can to save salmon before you go to that extreme. Well, guess what? We've tried everything else, and nothing's worked. I don’t think we should ever let a species go extinct if we can prevent it. Especially when it’s going extinct because of actions we’ve taken. To me the science is clear. You've got to remove the dams.”

His final words to the gathering of tribes moved him almost to the point of tears. “We will never, never, never give up.” No wonder Native Americans love this man. The congressman may be their favorite white man in the West.Taken together, I thought it was the strongest Outdoor Idaho tease we had produced. For all the good it did.

                                

Simpson’s plan was a real whopper, a Hail Mary pass to be sure, with almost no chance of success, even though a major part of the plan was to keep economically whole all those affected by the dams’ removal, to the tune of 33.5 billion dollars. His plan would essentially revamp the northwest’s power grid and agricultural-product transportation network.The rest of the Idaho congressional delegation was having none of it, finding it much easier to kick the proverbial can down the road for another generation to contemplate. 

A lot of Idahoans agree with Congressman Simpson. Give the salmon a fighting chance. Help them get past all that flat water behind the dams. On the return trip back up the Columbia and the Snake, with each dam taking a toll on their numbers, make it easier for these heroes to return home, to Idaho.

After “Salmon Reckoning” aired in the autumn of 2021, I received one of those handwritten notes that convince a guy it may have been worth the effort. “You have done many wonderful Outdoor Idaho programs over the years. ‘Salmon Reckoning’ is likely the most important. Thank you.” 

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank several of my colleagues who elevated “Salmon Reckoning” immeasurably by their willingness to go the extra mile. Producers Forrest Burger and Aaron Kunz traveled to Texas to speak with an ailing Ed Chaney, the most eloquent and aggressive advocate for salmon I ever met, for his  final interview before his death. 

Forrest and Aaron then traveled to the Salmon and Orca Summit in Squaxin Island in western Washington to videotape Congressman Simpson’s keynote speech to native tribes. It turned out to be a highly emotional event. The respect the indigenous peoples have for Congressman Mike Simpson was truly palpable.

While he didn’t succeed with his salmon plan, this was not and never will be solely an Idaho issue. The political leadership in Oregon and Washington, representing each side of the Columbia River, chose not to play ball. Besides, taking out a dam that supplies clean energy seemed counter-productive, with all the talk about a warming planet.

What the congressman and his staff did achieve, however, was to present a comprehensive plan that proves there are other ways to accomplish our goals without destroying the salmon runs. Instead of using barges to haul grain to Portland, bring back the trains. Rely on technology to significantly improve battery capacity, helping to replace the loss of hydropower. All parts of the Simpson plan.

I believe a healthy salmon run in Idaho is worth all the effort. Salmon recovery has never been a big issue in eastern Idaho, likely because salmon have never gotten past the Snake River’s 212-foot-tall Shoshone Falls, the “Niagara of the West.” The congressman explains to potato farmers each year that Idaho is legally bound to flush 487,000-acre feet of water downriver, just to improve the tiny salmon’s chances of making it to the ocean. “But the one thing it's not doing,” he told us, “is recovering salmon. And that's the reason we flush.”

                                    

If American politics is best described as a swinging pendulum, perhaps one day a younger generation will see the benefits of befriending the gift that keeps on giving. At least they now have a blueprint if they choose to save our ocean-going fish. Retired biologist 98-year-old Bill Platts believes it may already be too late. As he put it to me, the loss of Idaho’s salmon runs will be the result of “nibbling to death by ducks. It won’t be sudden, but it’s going to keep happening. Death by nibbling, by ducks.”

Retired Fish and Game director Virgil Moore may not have studied salmon as long as Bill, but his 40 years in the field as fisheries bureau chief and eight years as Idaho’s Fish & Game leader have convinced him what the problem is. “There is very little uncertainty about the fact that we can’t get functional recovery with these dams in place,” he told us in an interview for “Salmon Reckoning” at his home along Cascade Reservoir.

The models the former IDFG director has seen give the fish another twenty to forty years, as long as those four dams on the lower Snake River remain unchanged. Just one more human generation. Not much time. And yet, Virgil told us, “The survey results are very clear. The vast majority of Idahoans desire us to do the right thing. If we know anything in natural resources today, the only way to move forward is with these huge collaborative efforts that bring everybody to the table to sit down and talk.”

                              

Idaho’s salmon are true American heroes. They migrate further than almost any other animal on the planet, and with precious little help from humans. Each year salmon swim a gauntlet to bring spiritual and economic revival to our rural Idaho towns and nutrients to our forests, streams, and wildlife. This sacred spark of life is an important symbol to native Americans and a marvel to those who study its complex life cycle.

Salmon remind us that home does matter and some things are worth the journey. I do believe these fish deserve our respect, our assistance, and our thanks. Idaho and salmon belong together.