Indigenous millennia
First salmon laws
Potlatch, weirs and first-fish ceremonies managed runs long before canneries.
The salmon did not enter English as a finished emblem. Hunts, films, listings and field stations rewrote the animal on a dated clock.
This chapter keeps ten timeline points, five eras and three milestones so a later translation can hold the same years.
Where it began
Miocene salmoninesNorth Pacific and North Atlantic basins
Timeline
c. 6 MaPacific Oncorhynchus split
Miocene radiation of pink, chum, sockeye, coho, Chinook and steelhead/rainbow.
1913Hells Gate slide
A Canadian Pacific rock slide blocked Fraser sockeye -- an early industrial-scale run failure.
1938Bonneville Dam
Columbia mainstem hydropower with ladders that became the icon of compromise.
1974Boldt Decision
Treaty tribes in western Washington won recognition of harvest share.
1991Snake River sockeye ES
Redfish Lake returns hit single digits -- a listing that still structures Idaho politics.
2000sWild Salmon Center
NGO science on Kamchatka and Pacific Rim strongholds as the Columbia fought dams.
2011Elwha dams start down
Largest US dam removal of its time; salmon followed the sediment out.
2014Elwha complete
Both Elwha and Glines Canyon dams gone; the river reoccupied the delta.
2019Norwegian lice crises
Farmed Atlantic lice treatments made global headlines beside wild-smolt papers.
2022Klamath dam deal years
Four-dam removal planning on the Klamath became the next Elwha-scale test.
The eras
1870s-1938
Cannery then concrete
Industrial harvest met mainstem dams; ladders were the offered peace.
1974-91
Treaties and listings
Boldt and ESA listings made salmon a court species.
2011-14
Elwha teardown
Removal, not a taller ladder, became a proven option.
2010s-
Farms and remaining dams
Net-pen lice and Klamath/Snake arguments are the live files.
Milestones
Boldt Decision
1974Treaty harvest share re-entered US salmon math as law, not courtesy.
Elwha removal
2011-14A river showed what a ladder had been postponing.
Snake sockeye listing
1991Single-digit returns made an Idaho lake a national ESA exhibit.
Reading salmon history beside the resilience score keeps a recovered stock from standing in for a threatened cousin.
Keep exploring
More in Fish
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Overall 36