…  Spawning is about migration. Migration is about purpose and movement.  In short, every living creature, plant, insect, animal, fungi…virtually every living organism “migrates” for one purpose or another.

Salmon:  Well so far hundreds of millions if not billions have been spent on multiple salmon species to “recover” stocks.  In the case of Maine, adjusted for inflation, hundreds of millions.  Most monies for salmon in Maine have been directed to the Federal “hatchery” system.  What would it take for them to return?  A multi-faceted question w/ many answers.  Open systems would be a huge help.  Rule of thumb as it stands now is no salmon recovery effort has ever been successful on a river system with more than 4 dams. Ever.  Simply relegating a distinct population segment that is endangered to existing habitat is just plain stupid.  Take a tree for example:  If I were to cut off one limb from a mature fir lets say, the fir would continue to grow, then I cut off another, then another.  Finally you’re left with a telephone pole.  At what point does the tree stop growing?  At what point is the tree doomed?  The limbs are branches of a river system.  So far in New England we’ve managed to just about completely annihilate every fishery either through direct or indirect effort.  Not just here either.  Throughout the Americas.  At some point you lose the ecological function.  We’re just now, at this very moment, starting to realize the error of our ways.

Will and Ariel Durant were historians.  A great quote from them “History repeats itself in large because human nature changes with geological leisureliness”.  We’re slow to change.

Yes, hydro can and does produce energy.  No question.  But regulations as they stand right now treat water as a chemical compound.  A commodity.  Not the living, breathing stew of life it is in reality.  Biology, ecology can’t be “mitigated”.  So, I say “go Hydro” but with the caveat that the fish are first and foremost.  Safe upstream and downstream passage for all.  THEN some power.

Nate Gray