The tribal fishermen in the Pacific Northwest have watched their salmon harvest decline by more than 80% in the past decades. The impacts of climate change are sending the salmon toward extinction.
One Indian tribe is suing the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Swinomish people’s way of life and livelihoods, as well as protected Treaty rights, have been disrespected and disregarded for years. It is time for this to stop.
Swinomish is always thinking about the next seven generations, and we hope this can help ensure there will be salmon in the future. [Tribal leader Steve Edwards]
The problem is water temperatures in the Skagit River, the third largest river system in the West. Salmon swim upriver to spawn, and the baby fish are dying in the warm water before they can get back to the cooler Pacific Ocean. Trees and brush along the riverbank used to shade and cool the stream, but they’ve been cut down to add a little more cropland. The farmers refuse to give up the edges of their streamside fields to replant the vegetation. The EPA said they would do the replanting, but haven’t done so.
It’s not just fish.
The rest of the world’s water is warming dangerously as well. In 2023 temperatures made an unbelievable leap.
Rob Larter, a marine scientist tells us
It’s quite scary, partly because I’m not hearing any scientists that have a convincing explanation of why it is we’ve got such a departure.
Of course, beyond fisheries, the rise in water temperature has many more global consequences. Some are widely known:
The Arctic Ocean will be ice-free before long. This reduces the reflectivity of the Earth and lets the area absorb more sunlight and heat.
The melting Antarctic ice shelves are raising the sea level everywhere.
Warmer oceans are producing stronger hurricanes.
Other warm water effects are not as well known. Ocean acidification disrupts the process to build the shells of corals, oysters, and mussels. It hurts humans as well. Billions of us around the world rely on ocean fisheries for food and jobs. And it’s believed that a warmer Atlantic could reduce the heat it bestows on Europe if the Gulf Stream is affected. Stockholm is, after all, at the same latitude with Canada’s Hudson Bay. London’s up there with Labrador, France with Mongolia. It’s only the warm Gulf Stream that keeps Europe habitable.
We think about most of these changes only when we read the news headlines, that potpourri of distant concerns. But it’s not distant to Swinomish who can’t buy fish for dinner, or even for ceremonial use. We see their fishing fleet tied up all year. The tribal village is not thriving.
It’s even worse farther south. In Klamath, California no salmon was served at last year's Salmon Festival!
Up here in the Skagit Valley, Hilary and I are locals. We live on tribal land - owning our house and renting the ground under it from the Swinomish. They’re our neighbors. About seven generations ago, outsiders took the Indians’ croplands away. Today, outsiders around the world are causing global warming and helping to destroy - among other valuable things - the tribe’s fishing livelihood.
When will more Americans be able to think a few years ahead, let alone seven generations?
I once had a client in Massachusetts who was good friends with the Algonquin people of the Cape Cod region. He repeated their outlook often, which he steadfastly tried to live by: "Do nothing that would cause harm to the seventh generation yet unborn." That is a time frame of approximately 200 years. I have since found this sentiment in other native cultures.
I hope they win their case. One thing. Ice shelves melting do not directly add to sea level rise, it is that they hold back the ice that is currently on land. It is the melting of the ice still on land that raises sea levels. And Antarctica holds enough water as ice that when it melts sea level will rise 200 feet. Bye Bye every coastal city in the world., though by that time there will also be no food and the fires will have burned all the forests.