When Don Chapman, a biologist
and longtime consultant for the hydro industry in the Pacific
Northwest, suddenly said four dams in Washington needed to be
breached to save Idaho’s salmon, it shook the region.
Until now, Chapman had staunchly defended technological
fixes for hauling salmon from their spawning grounds past the dams
to the Pacific Ocean. The former University of Idaho professor,
called the “guru” of fisheries biologists, said he changed his mind
because of new evidence of warming in the Columbia River. Warming
will make the river more deadly for salmon, Chapman said, reducing
the habitat needed for spawning and even causing the North Pacific
to lose much of its productivity.
So far, none of the
region’s scientists have chosen to refute his new position.
Politically, there has never been much support for breaching the
four lower Snake River dams.
Meanwhile, one group sees
Chapman’s turnabout in the context of the “Star Wars” saga: A
hero arises, he falls like Darth Vader, then when he’s needed
most he abandons the dark side to save the day. That group is his
former students at the University of Idaho, who, in the 1960s, went
on to major jobs managing salmon and steelhead. As a professor,
Chapman instilled a sense of idealism into his students,
encouraging them to be advocates for fish and their habitat.
“He was our knight in shining armor,” said Steve Pettit,
a retired Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist, and a former
student.
Then, in 1979, after a stint helping native
people in Tanzania and Colombia to develop sustainable fisheries,
Chapman left the university to work as a fisheries consultant for
the Northwest’s electric power utilities.
His
former students, who had become fisheries managers in Oregon and
Idaho, pressed federal and public-utility hydroelectric dam
operators to make their dams less deadly for migrating salmon. Over
the years, they saw that as eight dams between the Pacific and
Idaho were completed, salmon numbers plummeted. Dam operators had
developed a system to collect young salmon as they reached the
dams. They loaded the fish into trucks and barges, then shipped
them downriver to the estuary below Bonneville Dam, near Portland.
But state and tribal biologists never considered it sufficient.
Chapman, however, believed the system was enough to keep
the fish from going extinct. He was well-paid for his opinion.
His former students said they’d find themselves
sitting in court, testifying under cross examination from a utility
attorney. Whispering into the lawyer’s ear would be Chapman,
providing just the right question that illuminated the weakness or
uncertainty of the biologist’s point.
“It was
pretty intimidating,” said Frank Young, fish and wildlife
coordinator for the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority.
“You can’t help but feel betrayed.”
In 1999, the
Idaho Section of the American Fisheries Society voted
overwhelmingly that breaching the four dams was the best —
and perhaps the only — way to save the endangered salmon that
spawned upstream. Chapman was among the small minority who refused
to go along.
“I know what they say —
‘he’s gone over to the dark side,’ ” Chapman said
at the time. “I’m straight with myself, straight in my mind
that I’ve acted professionally.”
Fast-forward to
2005; Chapman has all but retired. He continues to write,
co-authoring a recent book for the National Research Council of the
National Academies of Science.
He filed a statement on
behalf of the public utilities, critical of the plan to spill
additional water over the dams this summer to help fall chinook
migrate. Chapman said he still thinks barging the fish would be
safer, but Judge James Redden, who ruled against the Bush
administration’s salmon plan, disagreed.
Then came
the news about a warming river and Chapman, most recently, deciding
that this overwhelms all the old arguments. Chapman hopes this fact
will spark a renewed debate among the scientists he respects on all
sides of the argument. He knows he’s moving out of the
scientific realm and into the political arena.
“After 50
years in fisheries, I take that privilege,” he said.
Science isn’t about accepting the majority opinion, Chapman
reminds us. It’s about peer review and scientists defending
their hypotheses with research and data. But as always, it is our
values that drive our politics and influence any conclusion we come
to about the worth of dams vs. the worth of salmon.
Rocky Barker is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is
the environmental reporter for the Idaho
Statesman in Boise, and author of the upcoming book,
Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed
America.
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