Snake River

For years, the federal government has struggled to find a way to operate the massive hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest and still recover the endangered salmon that all too frequently are slaughtered at the massive dams as they make their way up and down the river.

In southeast Idaho, the Blue Heron Inn offers stunning views of the Snake River and a gourmet breakfast. Innkeepers Dave and Claudia Klingler can suggest many nearby activities. Seven rooms, from $109. Blue Heron Inn, 706 N. Yellowstone Highway, Rigby; (208) 745-9922, http://www.idahoblueheron.com Judi Hills Valencia

A raft that was part of a scenic float trip on the Snake River overturned Friday in Grand Teton National Park. Three people drowned; 10 others who were in the raft were rescued, park officials said. Park spokeswoman Joan Anzelmo said two women and a man died. She declined to release their names or hometowns, saying the park service was still trying to notify their families. She said the victims were not locals. Thirteen people, including the boatman from Grand Teton Lodge Co.

Even among those who seek to protect wildlife above all, there are moments of great conflict. One of those moments is playing out near Portland, Ore., as sea lions gorge on endangered chinook salmon that gather at the base of the Bonneville Dam, preparing to make their way up the fish ladders to spawn. Last week and this, wildlife officials have killed six of the most incorrigible of the animals, which have refused to be dissuaded by noise, rubber bullets or other harassing techniques.

At the end of a day's float and fly-fishing on the south fork of the Snake River--the section that runs through Idaho's Swan Valley--my cousin Don Granger's assessment was unambiguous. "This is the most magnificent river I've ever seen," he said. It had come well recommended by Ron Simmons, another cousin. Silver-haired, patrician, a Westerner (from Salt Lake City, like Don), Simmons fishes everywhere, dedicating his semi-retirement from architectural practice to the pursuit of trout.

If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.

Nearly everything about "Snake River," the centerpiece of an absorbing but frustrating show at the Gallery at REDCAT, involves a split, a duality. The two-channel video was made by two artists, Charles Gaines and Edgar Arceneaux, both based in Los Angeles. It was supported and exhibited through the joint effort of two institutions, REDCAT and the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and is accompanied by a two-volume catalog due out in November.

A young salmon making its way to the ocean has three alternatives when it hits this 100-foot-high hunk of concrete in the middle of the Snake River. If the river's running good, it can spill with the whitewater over the top, getting its blood pumped full of dangerous levels of nitrogen gas in the froth below the dam. It can plunge down through the hydropower turbines, getting sliced up on the blades or battered against the walls.

Here in the heart of potato country, where the swift-flowing Snake River generates cheap electricity, people were both amused and scornful as they brushed aside Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn's recent proposal to channel river water to parched Southern California. Among themselves, though, Idahoans bicker fiercely over use of the Snake, which was named for its meandering 1,038-mile course.

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.

Recently, a photograph made its way to me on the Internet: In a surging Alaskan stream, a grizzly bear stands with a salmon in its jaws, and in the shallows, a wolf -- keeping its distance -- also hoists a thrashing salmon. Your eye goes to the bear, then the wolf. But the salmon convened the meeting. Without the salmon, you'd see only water. When salmon return from the sea, their bodies are the ocean made flesh. Their tails propel ocean nutrients upstream and into forests, rivers and range lands, where they benefit hundreds of other species.

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.

If ever there were a story that foreshadowed the political and legal Waterloos that loom in seeking solutions to climate change, surely that cautionary tale is the one about the Columbia and Snake rivers' salmon and their imminent extinction. And like most stories about endangered species or environmental threats, this one is not only about fish and rivers -- it's about us.

For years, the federal government has struggled to find a way to operate the massive hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest and still recover the endangered salmon that all too frequently are slaughtered at the massive dams as they make their way up and down the river.

Nearly everything about "Snake River," the centerpiece of an absorbing but frustrating show at the Gallery at REDCAT, involves a split, a duality. The two-channel video was made by two artists, Charles Gaines and Edgar Arceneaux, both based in Los Angeles. It was supported and exhibited through the joint effort of two institutions, REDCAT and the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, and is accompanied by a two-volume catalog due out in November.

A raft that was part of a scenic float trip on the Snake River overturned Friday in Grand Teton National Park. Three people drowned; 10 others who were in the raft were rescued, park officials said. Park spokeswoman Joan Anzelmo said two women and a man died. She declined to release their names or hometowns, saying the park service was still trying to notify their families. She said the victims were not locals. Thirteen people, including the boatman from Grand Teton Lodge Co.

And now, the White House assures us, the real white water story. It's about the boiling rapids of the Snake River here, not the land deal gone sour in the Ozarks. It's about the First Family enjoying the splendor of the mountain West, which is accessible to millions of American families, not the inside dealing of financial and political speculators in Washington.

The river workhorse begins here in the northern Idaho farm belt, slicing a canyon through the rolling grasslands of the most productive wheat fields in the nation. Here, the Snake River takes 722,000 tons a year of wheat and barley on its back and carries it down through the confluence with the Columbia River and on to the sea--465 miles of what was once the wildest river system in the West.

A federal judge Thursday rejected the Bush administration's $6-billion plan to improve the Columbia Basin hydroelectric dam system, saying it violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to protect threatened and endangered salmon. Noting that federal law puts salmon "on an equal footing with power production," U.S. District Judge James A. Redden ruled in favor of a challenge by environmentalists, Indian tribes and fishermen to a NOAA Fisheries plan for balancing dams against salmon.

Liz Hansen said she would walk around the rapids. "I don't have a good feeling about this place,'' she said, stepping out of the raft onto a stony beach. "When it comes to nature, I don't take chances.'' Liz's assessment was good enough for me. The slightly stooped Gwich'in grandmother had never run a river before unless you counted trips on the Mackenzie River in her late husband's motor launch. No matter.