At certain times of the year, as many as twenty vertebrate species, including deer and elk, feed directly on salmon carcasses, cycling those nutrients further into the landscape. The natural community has an economy built on its members, all meshing together like a series of gears. Remove one gear, and the machine stops turning. It loses its power. All who rely on this productive power, including humans, become impoverished in the process.
Life flows both ways.
The forest raises the salmon, but the salmon also raise the forest. This mutual dependence is the very definition of community, and in the end, the heart of the matter. The fish leave the bay's web of streams no larger than a fat pencil and disappear into the ocean for three to six years. They return weighing up to sixty pounds, all biomass, the fat of the land, harvested from the sea. Salmon are traders, importers, bringing this mass of life back into the forest to feed it and, in the meantime, feed their next generation.