Salmon Nation: People, Fish, and Our Common Home

by Edward C. Wolf, Richard Manning, Edward C. Wolf

Along the Pacific coast of North America, the fates of people and salmon have been intertwined since the end of the last Ice Age. Salmon Nation leads readers deep into the watersheds of the West Coast in the company of six knowledgeable guides to better understand the most celebrated fish of western North America. Thoughtful essays by Native American writer Elizabeth Woody, fisheries biologist Jim Lichatowich, journalist Richard Manning, former commercial fisherman Freeman House, and environmental writer Seth Zuckerman trace the relationship between people and salmon from the abundance that sustained Northwest Coast cultures to the troubled world of salmon today, and depict a future of rivers restored and fishing livelihoods revived-a future still within our reach. Geographer Dorie Roth's full-color maps of the state of Pacific salmon today offer a powerful "big-picture" perspective that lends a new urgency to efforts to heal the breach between people and salmon. Though imperiled across much of their range, salmon populations can rebound when people mend their ways. With words, maps, and images, Salmon Nation invites its readers home to a place where people and fish can thrive together.

Genres: Ecology

92 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003

Reviews

[P C]

This book got me so obsessed with salmon😭they really just have all this unbelievable embodied knowledge!! I also loved the essay on celilo falls for surfacing histories of the landscape that we aren't taught growing up in the pacific northwest. I will say though, only 1/6 of the essays is written by native people and it shows. The book's general assessment of (the "problem" of) salmon genocide hinges on redeeming white settlers when...that's literally what got us here. The whole narrative arc of healing/indigenizing settlers is disturbing, but it appeals to the same audience that the book spends way too much time trying to convince of salmon protection being important.

[Robin]

Salmon Nation refers to the territory that is shared by salmon and their predators including humans. This collection of essays gives a good overview of factors influencing the decline in quantity and quality of salmon in the US Pacific Northwest, and suggestions for reversing this trend. Some essays evaluate decreasing populations, others delineate solutions that have not worked, and still others suggest new methods to increase salmon populations to historic levels. Many charts and maps make the material understandable and essays follow one another to tell a logical story.

Topics include natural history of salmon, habitat degradation, and fishing practices of both indigenous people and modern industry. All six species of salmon are described. Maps identify the modern and historic range of each species, and how endangered each is. The environmental costs of salmon farming are enumerated, explaining why farmed salmon are not healthy for consumers, waterways, or native salmon populations. This is a short and informative read, recommended for anyone who eats salmon.

[Sedona]

I read this for school, and I wasn't a super big fan of it.