Connecting cultural and biological diversity in restoring northwest salmon." Fisheries 19

Salmon problems in the Pacific Northwest have an important cultural as well as biological dimension. Economic growth is a dominating cultural goal. Social and political units do not match well with ecosys-tems. Authority is fragmented, and local, state, and federal agencies have conflicting mandates. To achieve biological diversity, a suggestion is to use adaptive management, taking major subbasins as bio-regions. Using cooperative management a planning unit in each subbasin would determine the qualities of a long-term experiment that best assures biological and cultural diversity. An organization overseeing the whole region would coordinate activities among subbasins. he situation of endan-gered salmon (Oncorhyn-chus sp.) is as much a cultural problem as a bi-ological one. The dominant cul-tural preference in the Pacific Northwest has been for popula-tion and economic growth. Ac-cording to the Northwest Power Planning Council (NPPC) (1992:5), "Our prosperity has had a price: dramatically reduced salmon runs." Two related planning studies completed in the early 1970s pre-dicted the impacts of growth on the environment and fisheries. The Pacific Northwest River Bas