Tragedy of the Columbia River Salmon

A brief summary of what the “Tragedy of the Commons” is about when individuals act according to their own personal interests cause damage to a common resource (that is unregulated) because they over use it. In the end the resource is depleted for all. The Columbia River salmon population is a real life example that hits close to home. Thanks to the salmons unique life cycle it is a very important component in the Columbia River Basin. The salmon start out being born in the many tributaries of the Columbia River, sometimes hundreds of miles inland as far as Canada and Idaho. After the salmon mature they go downstream to the ocean where they spend most of their live enjoying the oceans bountiful nutrients not found in the rivers and streams, sometimes becoming as large as 70 pounds. Towards the end of their lives they venture back up the rivers to the place they were born to spawn the next generation. Before the late 1800s the “runs” of the fish traveling upstream were enormous providing food for all manner of native wildlife. When the fish reach their home and spawn they die. Their decomposing bodies become nutrients for the local stream ecosystem. This is the only way the oceans many nutrients have made it upstream, in effect the salmon help feed everyone from bears to trees and give them nutrients they otherwise would never get. In the latter half of the 1800s American entrepreneurs started developing canneries along the river and due to technological advancements in canning that allowed mass quantities to be canned and preserved, they were able to shift both the supply and the demand curves outward. They shipped salmon all over the world. It only took decades for the overfishing to have an effect on the environment and culture of the Columbia River. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, in its height in 1883 there were 55 canneries on the river that produced 630,000 cases of salmon or 30.2 million cans weighing one pound. After that year salmon production declined steadily, not just from overfishing but from logging, mining, and agriculture. Another huge factor was the building of dams that made it extremely difficult for salmon to return upstream to spawn. Today only 40% of spawning habitat is left. National Geographic states that today’s catch is about 2 million pounds. They also estimate that 10,000 jobs have been lost, that many jobs surely hurt the local economy and lowered or at least slowed the growth of the standard of living in the area. To combat the decline the main strategy for years has been of the style of Command and Control. First and foremost managers have tried to simply resupply the stock of salmon with large hatcheries. These hatcheries raise salmon until they are big enough to go out on their own and travel into the ocean. The problem is this program isn’t that successful, the fish that are hatched are used to being fed from feeding tubes at the surface and live predator, in short they are stupid and aren’t very good at surviving in the wild. Other command and control strategies have included limiting the season length you can catch and limiting the total number of catch. This is hard to regulate and leads to dishonesty. The book touts a cap and trade policy, where fisherman is given a quota or percent of the total allowable catch. They can also trade this quota so that fisherman with lower marginal cost can buy from fisherman with higher marginal costs. It is more efficient and cost effective because one fisherman gets to catch more fish which increases their profit, while the other fisherman gets compensated for their quota so they too get to make money.