Salmon program was ‘dumber than dirt’

Funny to read your “still-dead” salmon story about a bloated, failed, and disastrously misguided federal fish-farming hatchery program that finally fell under its own weight four years ago (So Long, Salmon! Atlantic salmon are spawning in the CT River, but it’s too little, too late,” March 31-April6, 2016). A modest salmon run sprang up on the Connecticut River — the southern-most river in its cold water biological footprint, six centuries ago. That brief colonization of our river was a by-product of a short-term climate aberration, the Little Ice Age (1400 – 1800 A.D.). The waning of that cold period — along with the building of dams, ushered that southern, outlier-run of salmon to extinction here in 1809 — the year Darwin was born. That’s the year any salmon program should’ve been declared dumber-than-dirt. In science, extinct is not a term subject to interpretation.

The hybrid fish your article depicts was a cobble-set of genetics borrowed from struggling native runs in Canada and northern New England. Neither the Fish & Wildlife Service nor the Connecticut River Watershed Council ever spoke up about the impacts of that fish-farming program. Those federal hatcheries turned out to be vectors for spreading fish diseases and river plagues like Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis, Infectious Salmon Anemia, and Didymo. Repeatedly those hatcheries had to be “depopulated” (millions of smolts, fry, and breeders killed) and chemically disinfected, to guard against transferring those disasters to wild fish populations in rivers and at sea. The hundreds of millions of hybrid salmon fry released by that program proved half as likely to survive in real-world habitats. That’s how you help weaken wild stocks.

Hundreds of millions was spent on that program; millions more would’ve followed. Curiously, there was virtually no intervention in 2012 on behalf of the Connecticut River’s only real federally-endangered migratory fish. That year, two decades of in-depth federal research on the Connecticut River shortnose sturgeon was published — showing that it’s only documented natural spawning site, the Rock Dam, was starved of riverbed flow in Turners Falls. Neither the Watershed Council nor the USFWS went to court on its behalf. This year, once again, spawning will fail there.

Karl Meyer

Greenfield

Local suicide resources ready to help

Although it was useful to provide the national suicide hotline number in your recent piece on suicide (“Between the Lines: Suicide’s Shameful Stigma,” March 31-April 6, 2016), even more useful would have been to provide information about local resources — places where a suicidal person could actually see a clinician in-person and get the necessary help. In Massachusetts, there are many crisis services, or emergency services programs (ESP). In Springfield, BHN Crisis is at (413) 773-6661. In Holyoke, Mt. Tom Crisis Center for Mental Health Recovery is at (413) 536-2251. Clinical and Support Options (CSO) provides emergency service programs for Northampton and Greenfield areas, at (413) 586-5555 and (413) 774-5411 respectively. People thinking of suicide can call these numbers and reach someone to talk to on the phone or arrange a meeting. Crisis clinicians will help the caller find a way to be safe, whether that means staying at home with a plan or being hospitalized or something in between.

Michael Wilmeth

Greenfield

Rally for tax reform

The destructive effects of big money influence in elections and government is clear, although it runs deeper than many people see. As the deadline for paying our income taxes approaches, our resentment intensifies over the unfairness of the burden on the working poor and middle class who carry on our backs the effects of the sweetheart deals the wealthy and corporations have managed to get built into the tax code.

Changing this will not happen from the top. Asking Congress to overturn Citizens United today is a waste of energy. Change also will not come from the left or from the right. This change has to come from the 99-percent and build from local efforts growing momentum that transforms how government works, and returns us from the oligarchy we now have back to democracy.

The tide is turning and this change is beginning to happen across the country. Join this effort at a rally on the steps of Northampton City Hall, Friday, April 15. Make Tax Day “Representation Day” by joining Represent Us Western Mass and several other co-sponsoring groups to build our grassroots movement. Become a part of making those wins happen in Western Mass.

Reed Schimmelfing

Northampton