About 70 percent of the people in our region live on about 2 percent of the total land mass of the Pacific Northwest. The proportion of the streams within the urban areas that are degraded is greater than the proportion of highly altered streams on agricultural, range or forested lands. Though the total urban area may be small, cities and towns are located at biologically critical positions on major rivers, tributary junctions and estuaries. This is Portland. Oregonians in cities and small towns around the state will need to make changes in how they live to make salmon recovery successful in their areas, many observers say.
People think that forest land is the best habitat for salmon.
That may be true today, but in the past, low-elevation areas where our cities lie were some of the best spawning habitat. Human populations have skyrocketed in the Pacific Northwest in the past two centuries, from 100,000 in about 1800, to 1 million in 1900, to almost 10 million as we approach the year 2000. According to the National Research Council's calculation, if the population growth continues at the rate it has in the past half century, the population in 2100 will be more than 65 million people. We have eliminated or degraded most of the wetlands in our urban areas. These streams and rivers were once important spawning and rearing habitats.