PAT NEAL: Traffic jam blues

IT WAS ANOTHER tough week in the news — when plans for the biggest traffic jam in the history of the Olympic Peninsula were made public. This new traffic jam will be bigger than Sequim’s Lavender Festival and Irrigation Festival traffic jams combined. At least it will be for a good cause, fish passage beneath our roads.

It is a worthy cause we all support, don’t we? We all want to save the starving orca. Who could argue with that? Read on.

Beginning in 2023, and lasting anywhere from 12 to 24 months, the fish passage projects on Lees, Ennis and Tumwater creeks will be not unlike enduring “dental pain,” according to a Washington Department of Transportation spokesperson at a recent meeting in Port Angeles.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that, unlike dental pain, where you might spend your way out of the problem, removing fish passage barriers doesn’t mean the fish will pass.

The DOT spokesperson did not want to sugarcoat the coming challenge and there was no danger of that.

Instead, we are asked “to keep a positive perspective of helping the fish.”

That is a challenge. We need only to look at streams on either side of these projects to observe the effectiveness of fish barrier removal. To the west, we have the famous Elwha Dam removal, the largest habitat restoration project in the country, that opened up over 70 miles of pristine spawning habitat for the 400,000 imaginary salmon that were predicted to return, someday.

Unfortunately, the salmon returning to the Elwha are failing to utilize this habitat. This is a situation in common with other Peninsula rivers that have never been dammed. Our salmon are failing to use their available habitat because they are dead, extinct or just plain gone.

We have only to look to the east of Port Angeles at Morse Creek, a stream once famous for runs of Spring Chinook, pink and coho salmon and steelhead. There was never a fish passage problem on Morse Creek. The formerly abundant Morse Creek Spring Chinook were raised at the Dungeness Hatchery.

When they stopped planting salmon in Morse Creek, the salmon disappeared.

Then along came the Elwha Dam Removal experiment. A multimillion-dollar king salmon hatchery was built at Morse Creek to act as a gene bank for the Elwha Chinook in case they didn’t return to the Elwha. They didn’t.

Then it was decided not to use hatchery-raised salmon to restore the upper Elwha and just let the salmon restore themselves on their own. They didn’t.

The Morse Creek king salmon hatchery was eliminated. Runs of hatchery-raised salmon always fail once you shut down the fish hatcheries.

Instead, the state did a “salmon restoration” project, building engineered log jams and buying streamside property for a homeless encampment with predictable results. Morse Creek is as dead as a ditch.

The Dungeness River has no fish passage barriers. It was once the best spring steelhead river in Washington.

The Spring Chinook fishery in Dungeness Bay was legendary.

With effective co-management and the best available science, the Dungeness Spring Chinook and steelhead have achieved threatened and/or endangered species status.

This has opened the floodgates of federal funding for even more salmon restoration projects like building log jams and buying property — with predictable results.

The Dungeness River is currently closed to fishing most of the year.

So, you see this new traffic jam really is a lot like dental pain, with a dentist who says “this is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

But it’s all for a good cause.

_________

Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.

He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.

More in Opinion

PAT NEAL: Twilight forever and ever

THERE’S A DISTURBING trend in modern journalism for reporters to use fleeting… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: A question of flowers

THANK YOU FOR reading this. Sometimes I think that if you didn’t… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The de-extinction of the 100-pound salmon

Who says there’s no good news? Recently scientists claimed they are on… Continue reading

Derek Kilmer
POINT OF VIEW: Your neighbors are fighting for a stronger local economy

GROWING UP IN Port Angeles, the hum of mills was more than… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: Smells like spring fever

THERE MAY BE nothing more beautiful than pussywillows in the snow. Unless… Continue reading

LETTER: There he goes again

Last Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced that his administration was once again… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: To build a fire

Camping isn’t just for summer anymore. The woods, beaches and campgrounds are… Continue reading

ron allen
POINT OF VIEW: Good stewardship for future generations

IT IS A tribal saying that “Every River Has Its People” and… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: Fishing from a sinking boat

It was another tough week in the news. Steelhead fishing on the… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The 50th anniversary of the Boldt Decision

It’s been 50 years since the Boldt Decision of Feb. 12, 1974.… Continue reading

PAT NEAL: The green crab blues

The green crab is in the news again. Scientists are tagging them… Continue reading

The monument to the October 1808 wreck of the S.V. Nikolai marks the area where a handful of survivors built a refuge after escaping from the Quileute and the Hoh. The monument at 5333 Upper Hoh Road was dedicated in 2015. (Pat Neal/For Peninsula Daily News)
PAT NEAL: Those crazy Russians are at it again

Those crazy Russians are at it again. In 2022, Russia made itself… Continue reading