Watch the full documentary Salmon: Running the Gauntlet here on the PBS Nature web site.
This film investigates the parallel stories of collapsing Pacific salmon populations and how biologists and engineers have become instruments in audacious experiments to replicate every stage of the fish’s life cycle. Each of our desperate efforts to save salmon has involved replacing their natural cycle of reproduction and death with a radically manipulated life history. Our once great runs of salmon are now conceived in laboratories, raised in tanks, driven in trucks, and farmed in pens. Here we go beyond the ongoing debate over how to save an endangered species. In its exposure of a wildly creative, hopelessly complex, and stunningly expensive approach to managing salmon, the film reveals one of the most ambitious plans ever conceived for taking the reins of the planet. Watch the full episode. Buy the DVD. This film premiered May 1, 2011. (Video limited to US & Territories).
It was nice to see that there are solutions to the many problems we have created. Parents please!! Instead of letting your children sit on the computer all day and play with there phones, take them fishing, show them the outdoors! Teach them how this world works and they will learn a lesson more valuable and rewarding. Nature is a mirror, when we look at it we look at ourselves.
The best available science -
Western Division of American Fisheries Society Deems the Four Lower Snake River Dams a Threat to Wild Salmon and Steelhead Survival
Portland, Ore. – Today, the Western Division of American Fisheries Society (WDAFS) announced that it has passed a resolution acknowledging that based on the best available science, the four lower Snake River dams and reservoirs present a significant threat to the continued existence of remaining wild fish populations. The threatened fish populations include wild salmon and steelhead, as well as Pacific lamprey and white sturgeon. It goes on to say that if society wishes to save and restore these imperiled species, “then a significant portion of the lower Snake River must be returned to a free-flowing condition by breaching the four lower Snake River dams[.]” The resolution passed with 86.4% approval. Full text of the resolution is available here.
“This resolution simply tells it like it is from the science perspective: if we want to save Snake River salmon as habitats warm, we have to remove the four lower Snake River dams. There is just no evading that reality,” said Don Chapman, fisheries biologist, former fisheries professor, and consultant to industry, Native Americans, and management agencies.
Said Doug DeHart, former Fisheries Chief at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and fisheries biologist, “WDAFS did a great job applying the best available science to a tough issue. Let’s hope these scientists’ call for a hard look at removal of the four lower Snake River dams is heeded by this Administration. The future of these fish depends on sound decisions informed by this kind of scientific perspective, but it is also crucial for the future our salmon fisheries up and down the West Coast, and the jobs and the communities those fish support.”
The resolution follows previous WDAFS assessments in 2004 and 2009 of the federal Biological Opinion regarding Columbia and Snake River salmon policy. Those assessments also indicated that restoration of natural river conditions where the four lower Snake River dams occur has the highest likelihood of recovering wild salmon and steelhead.
“I’m proud to be an AFS member today. To stand up against the political forces trying to silence the science on this issue isn’t easy; this call for dam removal and the previous thorough WDAFS critiques of the current plan show that the members of AFS have strong principles and integrity,” said Chapman.
Established in 1870, the American Fisheries Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of fisheries professionals. Its 3,500-member Western Division covers the 13 western states and British Columbia, including the entire Columbia Basin.
I understand we can receive PBS on TV via satellite in UK now but I am still not able to view your full episode videos on my computer. I would love to watch some of the wildlife ones online but all I get is “Not available”. My USA friends often recommend your nature programmes and it is really frustrating not to be able to view. Please can you give any advice???
I’m a Marine Biology student and I can’t tell you how happy the end to this video makes me. More money needs to be used in the removal of dams!
Thanx to all the life loving people who made this showing possible. I am 76 yrs old, born on my aunt & uncles couch on 17th St,in 1935, and raised in downtown Vancouver Washington. Watched as a boy WW-2 as it happened thru the five movie house’s and their newsreels we had at that time period. Participated in the rationing efforts to help win the war, and fished the little lakes and streams with my two older brothers who eventually served in the U.S. Navy. Both our parents became citizens. Our dad came from Denmark when he was 17, and our mother came from Austria.
All thru my life spent here in the Pacific Northwest I had not known the size and scope of what has been shown here on your wonderful programs. A very BIG and heartfelt thank you for what has been a labor of Love on your part for all life.
‘Technical Difficulties’. You all bunch of Union thug crooks. We’ve been paying for this series for decades with taxes and donations and now you play tricks to keep them off the internet. Crooks.
It finally worked. That was awesome. My 5 and 6 year old boys just received a great introduction into the delicacy and complexity of life, and the power of nature to thrive when we reject confidence in our own understanding and consider instead the bounty that nature is able to provide in the presence of humility, care, respect and honor of the natural world.
the only solution i can see which is way too late to save salmon is removal of the dams… but with the electricity issues how would that lost electricty be replaced if that were to happen? coal fired? wind power? …both are a joke compared to the electricity dams create. the solution I can`t get around is nuclear. so before harping about hydroelectrity dam removal we need to figure out how to replace the clean renewable source of power. think nuke….
Video not available in my region (uk) due to rights restrictions. Is it posted somewhere else so I can watch it?
We must not forget the huge impact of clearcutting our forests on salmon. Dams are just part of the demise of our salmon population.
Leave the damn salmon alone. im so tired of hearing that were spending so much money on ridiculous things. Why not use that money for other important factors? schools, removal of dams, etc…
As a child in the 1970’s I fished the Salmon River I think there may be a picture of me still on the wall in riggings Id. That is if the restaurant and bar is still there. I had a dream as a child to move to the mouth of the Columbia River and I full filled that dream. I have fished this river all my life; I have seen a great loss over the year’s scenes the 1970’s. This makes me very sad that as humans we don’t think if anything but our self’s in this world today. The wildlife on the rivers in the north west needs our help we may make a video or two but this is not going to bring them back to the upper rivers without the help of each and every one of us you may not even think about this but we have developed new way of making power we need jobs so let remove some of the dams or build ladders so the fish can have a chance to come back,and mke power that don’t hurt the wild life. I love to fish and hunt and if there nothing to fish and hunt for. The history of the northwest as we know it is also going to die.
I’m sorry, qaisar. Unfortunately, our full episodes are restricted to the U.S. & Territories.
I couldn’t help but think that if these rivers were allowed to run free without the dams and diversions they would nourish us all. More Americans would have access to this fish that most nutrition experts think is one of the best things we can eat. And the whole Northwest ecosystem would benefit.
Maybe it’s unrealistic, but I wish we could remove all of those dams.
Thanks Leslie for reading and for sharing your experience here…
lets go steelheads bum bum bum lets go steelheads bum bum bum! yay!!!!!
ok that was fun ^.^
( i used the thing that the idaho steelheads use for ther hoky games )
Great movie, well worth watching.
A few people may be tempted to think that nuclear may be the answer after tearing down dams.
For more information about all things nuclear, go to http://www.agreenroadblog.com and click on pages, then click on nuclear issues.
If you become informed, this option will make no more sense.
Click on pages, and then green energy, and you will find out what our sustainable choices are, for seven future generations.
i am glad to see this is airing again. i would like to see how it ties in with the policy of killing bonneville sea lions. https://www.facebook.com/savethebonnevillesealions
@bert bowler- good news, and startlingly so, about the idaho rivers. we need to let our rivers flow mostly free again– to restore habitats and get the water cycle working properly again… smaller hydroelectric power plants, smaller lakes, smaller dams– of course a lot of people and their things would have to relocate. (whole cities, shrug!) it could be a period of human industry as magnificent (!) as they say the building of the great dams was.
Don’t even try to outsmart our mother nature! It has the best to offer. Our puny effort of saving nature is downright ludicrous to say the least. The best thing that I can do is to stay out of nature’s way.
Thanks so much for producing this show. The magnitude of what humans have done to the salmon population and the misguided and ridiculous efforts to save them now are just astounding. Watching this, I actually laughed out loud in disgust multiple times at the “down stream” effects of dams, hatcheries, paying to transport fish from one part of the river to another, just to have birds pick them over because they’ve been taught to swim close to the surface, to paying fisherman a boundy for pike, to dredging creating a new island and home for more birds to pick over the salmon, to killing the sealions … honestly, it was like watching keystone cops trying to fix and control the problem we created, only the laughter is heartbreaking and disgusting. thank goodness someone woke up and those dams are coming down and letting the salmon live their natural life. man alive – when will we learn not to mess with mother nature.
A fantastic video. Truly an eye-opener to say the least. I agree this is something that everyone should see! Amazing the way we try to apply band-aid over band-ais to fix the problems caused by our “technological advancements.” In the end, nature will prevail!
for anyone who cannot view this, make sure you have adobe flash player in the browser you are using to try and view it
You don’t RUN a gauntlet.
You THROW DOWN a gauntlet.
You run a GANTLET.
All you liberals that want to take down the dams.
You would destroy the economy of the Snake River Basin, plus all who depend on it.
Why don’t you quit eating salmon?
How about taking out all the Walruses down stream that sit on the bank next to the dam and eat the salmon (thousands of them).
As to electric power – hydroelectric is clean, safe, and inexpensive. Go live in a cave with no light, heat. Don’t forget you might harm the forest by having a fire.
Things become extinct – they have for eons, and human beings are not exempt.
Why don’t you guys just catch all of the running salmon from the bottom of the river and bring them to their home by the airplane or whatever that could transport them as quick as possible to their home; so the salmon doesn’t have to run through all of those obstacles.