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[VAGAbond]

The following link to an article in the  Washington Post suggests you tell your children about how it was back then, otherwise people forget what the natural world was like in the 'old days'.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-you-should-tell-your-children-about-vanishing-fireflies/ar-AA1fVwQV

It is described as shifting baselines and the prime example used is fisheries professionals who take the way it was when they arrived as the baseline to which they manage.  It is mentioned that typically 1970 is taken as the baseline for salmon population on our coast.  I have read this before and also the stories of plenty from the old-timers being disparaged as warped memories based on a few good experiences.

I do think there is truth in those old stories worthy of consideration in setting management targets..   My earliest memories go back to 1950 and I am convinced that what I observed then was way more fish than in 1970.   And mostly there were far more in 1970 than now but there are some successes. Where I stood waiting for the school bus for elementary school was a stream, hardly more than a ditch, that regularly had spawning coho in November.   By the time I was in high school, those fish were gone but some remained in the larger stream  that the little creek drained into.    By the time I finished university in 1967 the fish in the larger stream were also gone.  If you told folks living in that area now there used to be spawning salmon at the bottom of their garden, they would not believe you.

The foregoing relates to my experience on a little local watershed overwhelmed by development but in the larger streams near town, I recall seeing much salmon activity late October, early November, noticeable even to a child riding past.   There are still salmon in those large streams that are managed by the professionals but where you used to see much surface activity in the early 50s, now there is little.  I conclude that the managed stocks are well short of what there was and could again be.

[Blood_Orange]

Here's a podcast where they read excerpts about the settling of North America, from a book about shifting baseline syndrome, set against a live musical score. I find it both beautiful and melancholy. Well worth a listen, if you have time: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/wild-ones-live/transcript/

I don't see how we can go back, as far as management objectives go, when we're dealing with increased development, fewer undisturbed streams and spawning areas, more pollution (like that tire chemical that kills fish), more pressure from commercial fleets, more rec anglers, more seals. There are so many issues it just seems impossible

I once read a quote about the Brunette River in the 1920s, about how you could almost walk across on the backs of spawning salmon without getting your feet wet. Some hyperbole, sure, but a far cry from today.