414 American Fisheries Society 



ascending a given stream, it is evident that the number of 

 fish taken under a permit based upon such a calculation may 

 easily be distinctly excessive in those exceptional years when 

 for some unknown cause the run of fish drops well below the 

 average minimum. The taking of a set number in such a year 

 may reduce the run to dangerously low margins, and seri- 

 ously encroach on the normal yield of those waters. 



If a quantitative limitation is to be placed upon the fisher- 

 ies, it must be set so low that in the exceptional year enough 

 fish can get by the fishermen to insure the maintenance of the 

 run in the stream, and if there is a series of imperfectly sepa- 

 rated waves of migration in the general run of that stream, 

 then regulations must be so phrased that they will prevent the 

 extermination or even the serious reduction of the run to any 

 single spawning ground. The catch of fish can be distributed 

 equally over the groups of salmon that seek to spawn in dif- 

 ferent places only when the fishing is more or less continuously 

 carried on throughout the period of the migration and is so 

 limited that no single wave of movement can be deprived of 

 an undue proportion of its fish. Intensive fishing during a 

 limited period is unwise. 



THE PERMANENT PRESERVATION OF THE SALMON 



One other point of fundamental importance enters natur- 

 ally into this discussion and that is the formulation of a per- 

 manent policy with reference to perpetuation of the salmon. 

 Evidently with the development of the country and the larger 

 utilization of its timber and of its surface for agricultural 

 purposes and with the modifications which the streams will 

 thereby necessarily undergo, it will become impossible to pre- 

 serve everywhere and fully the favorable conditions that exist 

 in the wilderness for the spawning of the salmon. The in- 

 crease in population and insistent demands for more land and 

 for the utilization to their fullest extent of all natural re- 

 sources, must and will change conditions rapidly so far as the 

 streams are concerned. When timber is cut off and large areas 



