Dams, Loss of Habitat May Write <i> Fin </i> to Pacific Salmon : Conservation: The Snake River Sockeye is now so sparse that it is protected by the Endangered Species Act. Three other varieties are threatened.

SEATTLE —  At the Pike Street Market, camera-clutching tourists still marvel at the “salmon toss” where vendors hurl the glistening fish across aisles to have them wrapped for customers.

Piles of the fabled fish, stacked like cords of wood on ice, give no hint that the Pacific salmon is in a state of crisis.

“We’ve got plenty of fish,” said Harry Calvo, 46, who has been hawking salmon ever since he came back from Vietnam.

But the bustle at the market belies the turmoil and urgency that surrounds the Northwest’s most famous fish. If something isn’t done, say environmentalists and fishermen, the Pacific salmon might disappear.

Alaska and Canadian salmon still are abundant. But along the Columbia River, where once 16 million adult salmon swam each year, it is another story. There were only 1.2 million adult Columbia River salmon found last year and most of them came from hatcheries.

Fewer than 2,000 adult salmon made it up the Snake River to Idaho this spring and summer, compared to 10 times that number as recently as four years ago, say federal fisheries experts. The Snake River Sockeye is now so rare it is protected by the Endangered Species Act and three other salmon species are classified as threatened.

“The Northwest without salmon is unthinkable, but now we are on the brink of the unthinkable,” said Lorraine Bodi, who has followed the decline of Columbia River salmon stocks for 15 years as a government worker and now with the conservation group American Rivers.

Never has the need for revitalizing the salmon been as urgent.

From Puget Sound to Northern California, salmon fishermen have been confined to shore this summer after the government banned salmon fishing along the U.S. Pacific Coast to the Canadian border in an attempt to restore stocks.

Salmon still come into Seattle docks from Alaska and Canada, but the Canadians recently became so outraged about U.S. fishermen catching too many Canadian salmon that they imposed a $1,100 transit fee for fishing boats using Canadian waters.

Along the Snake and Columbia rivers, a protracted war of words, conflicting scientific studies and finger-pointing have hampered efforts to develop a salmon-recovery plan. The key question: How to protect the fish from the string of hydroelectric dams that are blamed for killing young salmon by the millions as they make their way to the ocean each spring and summer.

In a region that has been stung by the emotionally charged conflict between loggers and environmentalists over ancient forests and the endangered spotted owl, the fight to preserve the salmon has especially difficult.

“Saving the salmon has immense economic implications,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “We have to learn the spotted owl lesson and act together now to avoid legal gridlock later.”

But the antagonists have had difficulty getting together.

They talk of the “Four H’s” of salmon recovery: habitat, harvesting, hatcheries and hydropower. All share the blame.

“There is no simple solution. Improvements in survival must be made in all stages of the salmon’s life,” said Donald Bevan, the University of Washington professor who headed a government-sponsored team of scientists that studied the problem.

The scientists--and almost everyone else, in fact--agree that the answer rests in better protection for the spawning areas harmed by commercial development; in improved hatchery operations so the captive fish do not degrade the wild ones; in curbing how many fish are caught.

Finally, there are the dams that have given the Northwest the cheapest electricity in the country and have allowed the irrigation of parched high-desert land, turning it into profitable farms and orchards.

“We must fix the dams to recover the fish (or) . . . all our other mitigation efforts will be in vain.” said Bodi, the conservation worker. Environmentalists argue that there is no chance for salmon recovery unless reservoirs behind the dams are drawn down, allowing the water to flow more rapidly.

But that would require major modifications. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has maintained that to dramatically draw down four dams on the Snake could cost as much as $4 billion. Reducing reservoir levels also would interrupt hundreds of millions of dollars in commerce that moves on the waterways and would disrupt agricultural irrigation.

The Columbia River Alliance, which represents industrial and agricultural interests that use the river, strongly opposes any drawdowns that interfere with river traffic because of the economic impacts.

Meanwhile, federal and state agencies have directed interim measures to increase the water flow. The Corps of Engineers has continued its practice of transporting by barge millions of young salmon so they avoid some dams.

The barging has been widely controversial, with the Corps claiming it saves salmon, but environmentalists arguing that the fish become so disoriented that they lose the “mapping” ability that brings them back as adults to spawn.

The benefits of diverting more water from the electricity-producing turbines and spilling it over dams to help the salmon also has been in dispute.

After a recent series of dam spills were ordered by the National Marine Fisheries Service, scientists at the Bonneville Power Authority maintained that the additional water flow may actually harm the salmon. They attribute this to the creation of high amounts of nitrogen bubbles that give the fish something akin to the bends.

Last year, Bonneville, a federally operated provider of wholesale electricity, spent nearly $350 million for salmon recovery, compared to $150 million three years ago, said Randy Hardy, authority administrator. He suggests these costs are certain to increase.

Earlier this year a federal judge in Portland accused the federal National Marine Fisheries Service of not adequately protecting the salmon under the Endangered Species Act. Since then, both federal and regional regulatory groups have stepped up the pressure to develop salmon-recovery plans.

No one believes the task will be easy or quick.

“There’s no magic solution. There is no technological breakthrough that will painlessly solve this problem,” Rolland Schmitten of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a recent congressional hearing in Washington.

Bodi countered that “our legacy to future generations hangs in the balance. We will either be known as the generation that saved the salmon or as the generation that let them go extinct.”