Columbia River

Hauling truckloads of hitchhiking juvenile salmon around dams is one silly way to save a species. And it doesn't work either. As four dams were built along the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington from the late 1950s to early 1970s, it took only a few years for the river's healthy salmon populations to plummet. By the mid-1990s, the populations of four types of salmon had been declared endangered or threatened. The federal expenditure of $8 billion since then for fish ladders, hatcheries, habitat restoration and, yes, trucks and barges to transport the salmon around the dams has not restored the fish.

The first thing we hear is the tootling. As we make our way to the banks of the Willamette River, we see the impressive Queen of the West, a gleaming white, 230-foot-long, four-deck riverboat with an enormous fire-engine red paddle wheel at its stern. But it's the syncopated sounds emanating from the bunting-draped upper deck that capture our attention. We try to act like dignified vacationers, but the circus-sounding music is having an effect.

Travelers can set eyes on some of the same landscapes that Lewis and Clark saw while relaxing on two ships from Cruise West that ply the Columbia and Snake rivers in Oregon and Idaho. The Spirit of Columbia and the Spirit of '98 leave from Portland to Hells Canyon on Idaho's Snake River on a weeklong round-trip cruise. The Spirit of Columbia, which carries 80 passengers, leaves each Saturday through Nov. 18. The Spirit of '98 (101 passengers) offers departures only in September and October.

In the still waters of a lake suspended 6,500 feet up and more than 900 miles from the sea in the Sawtooth Mountains, the sockeye salmon each year complete their primordial underwater ballet. Answering a call from somewhere deep inside, the sockeye make their way from the sea into the Columbia River and swim relentlessly up through Oregon, Washington and Idaho--finally showering their red eggs in the old gravel of Redfish Lake before they die.

Wildlife officials from Oregon and Washington have voted to close spring salmon fishing on the Columbia River to save endangered fish runs. Members of the Columbia River Compact, a board made up of wildlife officials from the states, voted to close the fishing season effective Feb. 16. It is the first fishing ban on the river since the compact was formed in 1918. The closure bans all sport and commercial fishing along 140 miles of the lower Columbia below Bonneville Dam.

The Clinton Administration, under federal court order to save endangered salmon stocks in the Northwest, Wednesday proposed what it called "major changes" in the way it operates the vast hydropower system of the Columbia and Snake rivers. But the Bonneville Power Administration says it will need federal assistance to compensate for those changes, and environmentalists say the plan does not change enough to help the dwindling salmon runs.

The Columbia Gorge packs a lot of Oregon into its narrow confines: pioneer history, epic water projects, boggy rain forests, neat orchards, high desert and high waterfalls. No wonder Portlanders with only a day to show visitors the Beaver State's diversity drive east an hour to the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. While the great gorge has an abundance of spectacular scenery, it has a dearth of dining establishments, hotels or even campgrounds; thus, the gorge is an ideal day trip.

A federal agency recommended killing about 30 sea lions a year at a Columbia River dam where the marine animals feast on salmon migrating upriver to spawn. By many estimates, the sea lions devour about 4% of spring runs. Fishermen and Columbia River tribes have urged action for years against the sea lions at Bonneville Dam. Sea lions are attracted to the dam east of Portland because of the large number of fish that gather there to pass through the fish ladders.

Traps, pyrotechnics and bean bags shot at sea lions have failed to deter the annual springtime feast of threatened salmon at a Columbia River dam, so federal authorities gave some of them a death sentence. The National Marine Fisheries Service authorized officials to attempt to catch the sea lions that arrive at the base of the Bonneville Dam and hold them for 48 hours to see whether an aquarium or zoo would take them. Otherwise, they could be euthanized along with those that avoid trapping.