Where Have All the Salmon Gone?
The world is a huge balance of give and take. When one side abuses it's "taking" privileges the balance is thrown off. For many years the salmon runs were big and plentiful many people benefited from the abundance of salmon and the salmon's lives were indeed better. The nations growth in population and need of resources actually took things away from the salmon such as habitats and their lives. It is now clear that dams and logging were both major contributors in the decline of the salmon population, and programs like hatcheries that were supposed to be build the population of salmon actually hurt them.
Salmon decline is overlooked everyday but is in fact very real. Over the years the population of salmon has drastically decreased and really doesn't show much sign of improving. As shown in the data that I collected, each year there is a noticeable change in the count of salmon.
English: Wester Ross Salmon - Assynt Hatchery, nea...
The Chinook salmon, Oregon's state fish.
Chinook Salmo 'Oncorhynchus tschawytscha'The graph and table illustrate this point. To form the graph I took the years from 1986 till 2000 and plotted them on a graph. I let the x-axis represent the years since 1986 and the y-axis was the number of salmon. Then I formed a model base on the two points (876.3, 1) and (380.6,10). I found the slope of there points then drew a line that best fit's the data. The prediction I would make from the graph would be that the population would be about 100. I think that the salmon will reach extinction by about 2007. However in the model, it predicts that they will be extinct by 2003. Unfortunately the salmon have many obstacles to overcome.
During the 1950's human settlers began to need electricity. To solve their problem they decided to construct dams. It...