It is the need for an understanding and sensitivity to those limits, and a political priority reflective of that information which encourages bioregionalism to emerge as the most hopeful philosophy. If the limits of our awareness of place are restricted by the same beliefs that allowed the east coast cod fishery to collapse then it is time to look around. Whether one calls it watershed politics or the art of inhabitation, what makes bioregionalism relevant to the salmon debate makes it relevant to all environmental impasses from Clayoquot to Kemano. The unquantifiable value of ecosystems is lost to the modern economic calculations of cost and benefit. The deleterious effects of unchecked industry and urbanization will eventually ensure the extinction of Pacific salmon stocks.
Health is the basis of real prosperity.
The future of the younger generation of fishers is rather more tenuous. Salmon have been good to the people of the Northwest, both before and after the arrival of Europeans, but we are fashioning ourselves in denial if we think for a moment that there will always be a fresh, troll-caught salmon for our summer barbecues. How sadly altered our identity would become if we could no longer take for granted the silvery sparkle of a jumping coho in the Gulf, or the romantic notion of an autumn creek choked with returning spawners resting in the brakes where fallen leaves have gathered. Where the strength of our own species lies, and where perhaps our real contributions may manifest, is in our ability to inform ourselves, to become conscious, and to respond to that consciousness. A long walk through an old-growth forest, a meditation by the shore, a hike up an alpine summit are all steps towards that consciousness.