OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, MAY 22, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Bad salmon
run hints at
trouble ahead
C
ount backward
three years and
we come to
2014 — precursor to
this spring’s extremely
poor salmon returns.
Fewer than 45,000
adult spring Chinook
and about 5,300 imma-
ture jacks have been
counted at Bonneville
Dam, compared to
10-year averages of
about 135,000 and
21,000. Shad, another
American Geophysical Union
Unusually high sea-surface tempera-
species that should
tures in the Pacific in May 2015, com-
begin surging toward
pared to the 2002-2012 average. These
inland spawning
conditions are starting to come back to
grounds about now,
haunt us this spring, in the form of dra-
matically poor salmon returns.
reached a count of
38 at Bonneville this
week, compared to the
10-year average of more than 33,000.
In the case of Chinook, actual returns may not be quite so
bleak as the dam count indicates. Heavy mountain runoff has
made the Columbia’s water cloudy and cold. Test fisheries found
quite a few Chinook loitering here in the estuary, delaying their
swim upstream. But with the start of summer only a month
away, there isn’t much time left for the spring run to come
through. If they don’t make it to spawning grounds, the run three
years from now also will be weak.
This three-year cycle of migration and return is one of the
Pacific Northwest’s great natural phenomena, one that has sus-
tained humans, wildlife and forests since time immemorial. But
today’s fast pace and many distractions mean most of us aren’t
closely attuned to this rhythm. We need to go back and look at
the news three years ago to understand what’s happening today.
The big news was “The Blob,” a peculiar concentration of
warm ocean water off Oregon, Washington state and Vancouver
Island. Born in late-2013, it was gathering strength in 2014 and
lasted until 2015. In September 2016, meteorologists said it was
returning, though there has been little indication of it since then
— this past winter was notoriously cool and wet, conditions
opposite to those delivered by the Blob.
Warmth and lack of normal precipitation during the Blob
years created lots of pleasant picnic weather but began worry-
ing salmon observers. Some local hatcheries struggled to have
enough in-stream flow for adult fish to be able to return. River
water temperatures approached and sometimes exceeded safe
levels for salmon. Meanwhile, out in the ocean where it remains
difficult to monitor exactly how well salmon are doing, the warm
water meant that young salmon weren’t finding the nutritious
cold-water prey they rely on. Ultimately, the best test of ocean
conditions is waiting three years to see how many salmon sur-
vived to adulthood in order to return to spawning beds. Clearly,
the news is not good.
Nick Bond, Washington state’s climatologist, said at a Long
Beach conference a year ago that more blobs and overall climate
warming are inevitable. Our region is heading toward a “really
sobering” time when many interior rivers will be too hot for
today’s native fish. “It’ll be a totally different place, and it won’t
be a good place for salmon. It’ll be a place for more southern
species, at least in the ocean, to be able to handle that,” he said.
It’s worth remembering that there sometimes were bad
salmon returns long before modern industrialization and white
settlement on this coast, according to native accounts. However,
there’s no discounting the fact we face a time of epic change.
This argues for several responses:
• We must continue supporting hatcheries; without them, this
year’s returns would be truly abysmal, to the detriment of all
sorts of fishermen, and other species that depend on salmon.
• We must continue managing the factors over which we can
exert some control, such as habitat conditions inside the estuary,
water temperatures and flows within the hydroelectric system, and
unusually high levels of predation by marine mammals and birds.
• We must invest in high-quality monitoring and research to
understand what’s happening in the ocean in real time. Waiting
until salmon fail to show up before amending fishing seasons is
becoming increasingly unacceptable.
• We must make both local and national plans to mitigate eco-
nomic and environmental damage from rapidly changing fisher-
ies. As southern species take up residence here, we should pre-
pare for both negative and, potentially, positive impacts.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Air Force One with President Donald Trump aboard taxis for takeoff at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Friday.
The Trump administration’s
power vacuum on display
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
A
fter an eruption, volcanoes
sometimes collapse at the
center. The magma chamber
empties out and the volcano falls in
on itself, leaving
a caldera and a
fractured ring of
stone around the
void, covered by
deadening ash.
That’s about
the shape of Washington after the
last stunning fortnight. The White
House at the center just collapsed
in on itself and the nation’s policy
apparatus is covered in ash.
I don’t say that because I think
the Comey-Russia scandal will nec-
essarily lead to impeachment. I
have no idea where the investiga-
tions will go.
I say it because White Houses,
like all organizations, run on talent,
and the Trump White House has
just become a Human Resources
disaster area.
We have seen White Houses
engulfed by scandal before. But
we have never seen a White House
implode before it had the time to
staff up. The Nixon, Reagan and
Clinton White Houses had hired
quality teams by the time their
scandals came. They could continue
to function, sort of, even when
engulfed.
The Trump administration, on
the other hand, has hundreds of
senior and midlevel positions to fill,
and few people of quality or expe-
rience are going to want to take
them.
Few people of any quality or
experience are going to want to
join a team that is toxic. Nobody
is going to want to become the
next H.R. McMaster, a formerly
respected figure who is now perma-
nently tainted because he threw his
lot in with Donald Trump. Nobody
is going to want to join a self-canni-
balizing piranha squad whose main
activity is lawyering up.
That means even if the Trump
presidency survives, it will be
staffed by the sort of C- and D-List
flora and fauna who will make
more mistakes, commit more scan-
dals and lead to more dysfunction.
Running a White House is
insanely hard. It requires a few
thousand extremely smart and
savvy people who are willing to
work crazy hours and strain their
family lives because they funda-
mentally believe in the mission
and because they truly admire the
president.
Even on its best early days, the
Trump White House never had that.
Trump was able to recruit some
talented people, mostly on the for-
eign policy side, but organizational
cultures are set from the top, and
a culture of selfishness has always
marked this administration.
Even if
the Trump
presidency
survives, it
will be staffed
by the sort of
C- and D-List
flora and fauna
who will make
more mistakes,
commit more
scandals and
lead to more
dysfunction.
Even before Inauguration Day,
the level of leaking out of this
White House was unprecedented, as
officials sought to curry favor with
the press corps and as factions vied
with one another.
But over the past 10 days the
atmosphere has become extraordi-
nary. Senior members of the White
House staff have trained their sights
on the man they serve. Every day
now there are stories in The Times,
The Washington Post and elsewhere
in which unnamed White House
officials express disdain, exaspera-
tion, anger and disrespect for their
boss.
As the British say, the staff is
jumping ship so fast they are leav-
ing the rats gaping and applauding.
Trump, for his part, is resent-
fully returning fire, blaming
his underlings for his own mis-
takes, complaining that McMas-
ter is a pain, speculating about fir-
ing and demoting people. This is
a White House in which the inter-
nal nickname for the chief of staff
is Rancid.
The organizational culture is
about to get worse. People who
have served in administrations
under investigation speak elo-
quently about how miserable it is.
You never know which of your
friends is about to rat you out. No
personal communication is really
secure. You never know which of
your colleagues is going to break
ranks and write the tell-all memoir,
and you think that maybe it should
be you.
Even people not involved in
the original scandal can find them-
selves caught up in the maelstrom
and see their careers ruined. Legal
costs soar. The investigations can
veer off in wildly unexpected direc-
tions, so no White House nook or
cranny is safe.
As current staff leaves or gets
pushed out, look for Trump to try
to fill the jobs with business col-
leagues who also have no experi-
ence in government. It’s striking
that the only person who this week
seems excited to take a Trump
administration job is Milwaukee
Sheriff David Clarke, who made
his name as a TV performance art-
ist calling the Black Lives Matter
movement “black slime,” and who
now claims he has been hired to
serve in the Department of Home-
land Security.
Congressional Republicans seem
to think they can carry on and leg-
islate despite the scandal, but since
1933 we have no record of signifi-
cant legislation without strong pres-
idential leadership. Members of this
Congress are not going to be judged
by where they set the corporate tax
rate. They will be defined by where
they stood on Donald Trump’s
threat to civic integrity. That issue
is bound to overshadow all else.
The implosion at the center is
going to affect everything around it.
The Trump administration may sur-
vive politically, but any hopes that
it will become an effective govern-
ing organization are dashed.