Hatcheries vs. No Hatcheries

[Covelo]

while our mere existence does have negative impacts on habitat, there is much more to it than that.
People need to start thinking about where they exist. the choices we make on a daily basis (including where we set up camp, get our food/water) can greatly decrease or impact. most of california is not suitable for dense human population and at some point mother nature will make us very aware of that... the ironic part is that the most dense areas are the least suited for humans. It is very interesting that the most dense native American populations lived in some of the most rural parts of what is now ca, while the most heavily populated parts of ca today are almost historically void of native population.

Ultimately what i'm getting at is fisherman should be more conscious than your average joe and hopefully this influences their decision making process.

Call me a pessimist or a realist, but I do not see it happening. Our economy is tied to population growth. Until we get a handle on population growth, everything we do to conserve is just a band-aid. Imagine the impacts when you have to feed and provide water for another million or 10 million people in this state. We often post about conservation issues here but these are typically for incremental short term gains. Sometimes they are significant in our narrow view but we need a complete societal overhaul to save anything, even ourselves, in the long term. Maybe this is what you are referring to Dustin, but I do not see any evidence that it is going to occur. Most of the time it appears we (the human race) are singing merrily or squabbling about trivialities as the ship is slowly going down.

[Jgoding]

Totally agree with Covelo on this one. Until we look at our population growth we're a doomed species or I should say most other species are doomed. Can't just keep cramming more and more of us in any given area and expect everything to work out. Not that we can say where you can live etc.... but obviously the more people coming our way makes the situation more difficult. I saw an article on tigers, they'll be gone in my lifetime and in short order too (wild ones anyway) unless we do something about it. Sickens me at what bs $$ drives and what we do to such magnificent animals. I just don't see why we can't draw that line where poaching an animal into extinction is not acceptable behavior and attach the consequences that we need to, to the activities that fuel the behavior.

[Dustin Revel]

the ship will eventually right itself... are we due for a plague or what?

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

When I was in high school in the 1960s they had us read two books on population growth.

"The Population Bomb" was one of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb