How does logging affect salmon

When adult salmon are ready to spawn, they migrate to the same freshwater rivers and streams where they were born. Because the salmon life cycle is so closely tied to the state of the trees surrounding spawning sites, changes to the forest can start a chain reaction that affects the health of fish populations. Balfour says the biggest, easiest to remove trees were found along riverbanks, and when the trees were removed, the riverbanks began to unravel.

Salmon spawning nests were filled with sediment, and rivers became wide, flat, and featureless. Restoring salmon habitat that has been impacted by historic logging is a slow process. Greenpeace says it will cost at least four billion dollars to restore B. In a report to be released this morning, Greenpeace says decades of industrial logging have destroyed the delicate balance between healthy forests and abundant fish.

The report says the staggering restoration figure was obtained from a provincial Ministry of Environment Report. It estimates nearly 20 thousand kilometres of B. C's rivers and streams may require repair. Without wood to slow them down, landslides can dump more mud into rivers, choking salmon eggs, Reeves said.

Also, the gravel that fish need to spawn may get quickly flushed out. Trees also slow rainfall runoff, so it doesn't rush from the landscape as quickly, he said, moderating floodwaters that could otherwise sweep vulnerable young fish away. Floating down the Kilchis River toward Tillamook Bay in a drift boat, Reeves points out that upward of 80 percent of the stream networks important to salmon are not big rivers.

Rather, they are much smaller rivulets, sometimes underground and out of sight, Reeves said. Fish never swim in that water, but it's still essential because it keeps the bigger streams clean and cool, he said. If logging, road building or other development interrupts that system, fish may feel the effects.

State forest standards call for loggers to leave woody debris behind to find its way into streams, and officials also may add it themselves.

But officials are assessing the effects of logging plans on fish and other wildlife through what they call a "species of concern" strategy that's still in the works. Josi and other county officials fear that will turn into another mechanism for delaying logging that could put much-needed dollars into county coffers. Although Tillamook's salmon and steelhead have declined since early in the century from factors ranging from commercial fishing to land development, they remain some of the strongest on the coast.

The fish are pushing their way up rivers to spawn now. Hulking salmon hover over precious spawning beds of water-worn gravel in the Little North Fork of the Wilson River. They tussle, spraying water into the air. The tails of the females are ghostly white -- the bony remnants left after the fish flayed away their flesh digging nests in the gravel, where they placed eggs that in a few months will hatch into a new generation.