Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders

Rating:
Summary: How to save the northwest
Review: Manning does for the Northwest what he did for the Prairie in his other great book, Grassland. Both are great reads.

Rating:
Summary: The Art of Zen Ecological Repair
Review: Richard Manning takes his readers on a very interesting journey into a new terrain of environmentalism hinted at by his subtitle, "A Journey Beyond Borders". Traveling by sea kayak and light plane, as well as by land, he paints a grim picture of environmental degradation along the "inside passage" between Astoria Washington and Juneau Alaska. At the same time he is pricking some of the hallowed sacred cows of the conservation establishment. The primary focus of this book is on the decline of the salmon along the Pacific slope of North America. In the process he explains its relationship to lumbering and dams. He also takes a fast tour of the ecological ruin caused by the exponential growth of aquaculture around the Pacific Rim. Manning describes himself as a science writer, but he excels at turning a mixture of personal observation, interviews, and historical data into a vivid picture of decline -- not only of the salmon and the forest -- but of the people who depended on them for a livelihood.

One of Manning's interesting conclusions is that, as the size and technological complexity of our food-producing and timber-harvesting efforts have increased, their efficiency has plummeted. A modern rancher in Idaho, using large quantities of subsidized water and energy, cannot begin to match the protein production of the wild salmon that once teemed the rivers of his state. His calves would have to grow into 50,000-pound cows in order to match the four-year weight gain of a wild salmon. The salmon harvested the bounty of the sea and returned it to the land without any expenditure of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, the salmon run in Idaho's Snake river has declined from 2,000,000 to less than 9,000 -- despite taxpayers spending, Manning says, "$3 billion on a Rube Goldbergian scheme of hatcheries, fish ladders, and barges that give young salmon a ride past the dams." We have traded a very efficient form of food production for a very inefficient one.

Manning adds his voice to the growing chorus that argue that salmon hatcheries are not just inefficient but counterproductive. The young hatchery salmon have a very low survival rate (100 return for each million released), but they still compete with remaining wild salmon for scarce resources in stream and ocean. The kind of conservation Manning espouses is being practiced at a former salmon hatchery in Chinook Washington. The local community took it over and has turned it into a center for long-term restoration not just of a wild salmon run, but also of the habitat in the clear-cut drainage around it.

Manning and his concept of borderless environmentalism is as radical as those who claim trees cause air pollution and Caspian terns are responsible for the decline in the Columbia salmon run. He thinks that most well-intentioned protectors of "wilderness" from Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot down to present-day conservationists have not adopted a sound strategy for presserving the environment. His point is that when you draw a line around a piece of land to protect it from clear-cutting and strip mining you are tacitly accepting those practices everywhere else. It also means that if one President has the power to protect an area like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge then another has the power to un-protect it. Manning's solution is for everyone, everywhere, to walk more lightly upon the land every day and perhaps to lend some help to small scale preservation activities in their own back yard. He reminds the reader that those areas of the west that we now revere as "wilderness" were occupied continuously by moderately-dense populations of human beings for ten thousand years before the coming of Lewis and Clark without any noticeable ecological damage. The real message of "Inner Passage" is that we must each internalize environmentalism in the inner passages of our soul.

I enjoyed Mr. Manning's novel analysis of the serious ecological problems outlined in this book and I admire his faith in a utopian soluction, but I don't share that faith. Too many of the people who conscientiously lend their effort and money to worthwhile enviromental causes still drive SUV's home to their 6000 sqaure-ft starter castles and a dinner of farm-raised prawns.

Rating:
Summary: How to save the northwest
Review: Richard Manning takes his readers on a very interesting journey into a new terrain of environmentalism hinted at by his subtitle, "A Journey Beyond Borders". Traveling by sea kayak and light plane, as well as by land, he paints a grim picture of environmental degradation along the "inside passage" between Astoria Washington and Juneau Alaska. At the same time he is pricking some of the hallowed sacred cows of the conservation establishment. The primary focus of this book is on the decline of the salmon along the Pacific slope of North America. In the process he explains its relationship to lumbering and dams. He also takes a fast tour of the ecological ruin caused by the exponential growth of aquaculture around the Pacific Rim. Manning describes himself as a science writer, but he excels at turning a mixture of personal observation, interviews, and historical data into a vivid picture of decline -- not only of the salmon and the forest -- but of the people who depended on them for a livelihood.

One of Manning's interesting conclusions is that, as the size and technological complexity of our food-producing and timber-harvesting efforts have increased, their efficiency has plummeted. A modern rancher in Idaho, using large quantities of subsidized water and energy, cannot begin to match the protein production of the wild salmon that once teemed the rivers of his state. His calves would have to grow into 50,000-pound cows in order to match the four-year weight gain of a wild salmon. The salmon harvested the bounty of the sea and returned it to the land without any expenditure of fossil fuel. Unfortunately, the salmon run in Idaho's Snake river has declined from 2,000,000 to less than 9,000 -- despite taxpayers spending, Manning says, "$3 billion on a Rube Goldbergian scheme of hatcheries, fish ladders, and barges that give young salmon a ride past the dams." We have traded a very efficient form of food production for a very inefficient one.

Manning adds his voice to the growing chorus that argue that salmon hatcheries are not just inefficient but counterproductive. The young hatchery salmon have a very low survival rate (100 return for each million released), but they still compete with remaining wild salmon for scarce resources in stream and ocean. The kind of conservation Manning espouses is being practiced at a former salmon hatchery in Chinook Washington. The local community took it over and has turned it into a center for long-term restoration not just of a wild salmon run, but also of the habitat in the clear-cut drainage around it.

Manning and his concept of borderless environmentalism is as radical as those who claim trees cause air pollution and Caspian terns are responsible for the decline in the Columbia salmon run. He thinks that most well-intentioned protectors of "wilderness" from Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot down to present-day conservationists have not adopted a sound strategy for presserving the environment. His point is that when you draw a line around a piece of land to protect it from clear-cutting and strip mining you are tacitly accepting those practices everywhere else. It also means that if one President has the power to protect an area like the Arctic Wildlife Refuge then another has the power to un-protect it. Manning's solution is for everyone, everywhere, to walk more lightly upon the land every day and perhaps to lend some help to small scale preservation activities in their own back yard. He reminds the reader that those areas of the west that we now revere as "wilderness" were occupied continuously by moderately-dense populations of human beings for ten thousand years before the coming of Lewis and Clark without any noticeable ecological damage. The real message of "Inner Passage" is that we must each internalize environmentalism in the inner passages of our soul.

I enjoyed Mr. Manning's novel analysis of the serious ecological problems outlined in this book and I admire his faith in a utopian soluction, but I don't share that faith. Too many of the people who conscientiously lend their effort and money to worthwhile enviromental causes still drive SUV's home to their 6000 sqaure-ft starter castles and a dinner of farm-raised prawns.