Fish and Fishermen 229 



less efficient ways is a necessary concomitant of democracy 

 and a free competitive system; it is the price we gladly pay 

 for our freedom from regimentation. 



This life habit which makes the salmon so valuable is also 

 what makes it so vulnerable. No widely distributed marine 

 species could conceivably be exterminated by man, even 

 though he be admittedly the most dangerous predatory ani- 

 mal that has appeared in the whole history of evolution. 

 But destruction of the salmon by him is not only conceiv- 

 able, but seems at times probable. For the salmon must 

 come up the streams to reproduce, and man makes this ever 

 more difficult. Pollution has played an important part in the 

 past, particularly on the Atlantic seaboard: rivers in which 

 Salfno salar used to spawn and be captured in apparently 

 inexhaustible numbers have been rendered unfit for all fish 

 life and salar has vanished from them. The dangers of pol- 

 lution and means for its control have now been established, 

 and it can and should cease to be an exterminator of salmon 

 runs. The major threat at present lies in man's desire to take 

 water out of rivers for purposes of his own, principally for 

 irrigation and power. To do this, he must build high dams 

 and in some cases leave long stretches of river bed below 

 them with little or no water j either or both of these exploits 

 impede the salmon's efforts to reach the spawning areas. 



In the early days, when the country was new, there were 

 many localities where irrigation and power projects could 

 be constructed with much benefit and with very little damage. 

 Governmental agencies were created and given money to carry 

 on these works. As time went on the favorable locations be- 

 came fewer, but the governmental agencies did not. Their job 

 was to build dams, and if no dams were planned they ceased 

 to exist. The incentive has inevitably been for all such agen- 

 cies to comb the country for locations which might possibly 

 serve as dam sites and to count heavily on the support of the 



