ABSTRACT
As fisheries scientists and managers, we are but minor players in determining sustainability of Pacific Northwest salmonids and the ecosystem functions that support them. To the extent that we can have a role in achieving “sustainability,” the challenges may be greater than we think. The population processes of Pacific salmonids are set within a background of four interacting systems: the forest/land/freshwater, ocean, climate, and human systems. The degree of complexity within these interrelated systems demands that new dimensions be added to our understanding of that complexity, and of its implications in regard to the behavior of ecosystems and biological populations. Beyond these difficult considerations, other challenges to the achievement of sustainability aie even more daunting. Whether salmonids and, more importantly, the ecosystems that sustain them, can be maintained, depends on future scenarios of human population and industrial growth—locally, nationally and globally. If the current exponential growth patterns continue, salmonid resources will be lost in a maze of cumulative impacts and a prolonged series of conflicts and compromises. The time horizons at which such losses will occur are not predictable, but their inevitability is indicated by our history and our continuing actions. The public must be educated that fisheries scientists and managers are willing and anxious to fulfill their roles to the greatest extent possible, but the future of salmonids and their habitats will be determined by the direction of society as a whole. The public, political leaders and, last of all, biologists should not allow terms like sustainabihty to become the “idea-fixes” of the present that replace failed “techno-fixes” of the past. Fisheries scientists and managers have a responsibility to raise these issues as high as possible into public view so that neither society nor politicians can avoid the broader challenges that surround the problem of sustaining salmonids in the growth-dominated Pacific Northwest.
