Elwha: Value of a River. Managing Risk in the Pacific Northwest

Johnson, Philip

The broad goal of this dissertation research is to help understand how societies can balance environmental and human needs while avoiding natural resource and economic collapse. Using a case study set in the north Olympic Peninsula region of western Washington State in the Pacific Northwest, an investigation is offered to explore why some societies dependent upon natural resources succeed while others fail. Special emphasis was directed to events in the Elwha River Basin and nearby Port Angeles area where intensive fisheries, power generation and timber activities have overlapped for several decades. The study's central research question asked to what extent specific social and cultural factors shaped decision-making strategies relating to natural resource use and treatment of the environment over time. A land of mountains, rivers and rainforests, the Olympic Peninsula lies between the Pacific Ocean and Puget Sound. Formerly home to several native runs of salmon and trout, the Elwha River was endowed with a fisheries rare among streams its size south of Alaska. In the early twentieth century, a power developer completed two dams on the lower river. The projects--which are now being dismantled__provided electrical energy to create a regional timber and pulp mill economy. They also contributed to the loss of native fisheries and ecosystem integrity, the disruption of subsistence Native groups--specifically the Elwha Klallam--and the viability of recreational and commercial fishing. The study assessed legal, scientific and technological factors that drove a diverse set of exploitation and preservation choices among groups reliant upon natural resources. These included treatment of how societies attempt to regulate or guide their expoitative behavior, the interplay of groups competing for resource dominance, considerations of equity and fair play among different users, the application of technology and science to resource management and the role of legal institutions and laws in adjudicating access and control to resources. An integrated policy sciences and risk studies methodological framework guided and structured the research project. The analysis employed an interdisciplinary approach that treated and relied upon various disciplines and scholarship across the natural and social sciences. These included ecology, environmental science and fisheries biology, and anthropology, ethnology, law and sociology. A narrative analytical history encompassed a range of actors organized into seven story parts. Each part, comprised of chapters that profile different perspectives and standpoints, assessed how and why resources were valued and used, and by whom. Main characters include Native goups--especially the Klallam peoples dwelling on the north Olympic Peninsula--immigrant settlers, industrial and commercial interests, governmental entities, regulatory officials and individual advocates. Key outcomes of the analysis found lessons or principles that emerged from the core experience of societies on the north Olympic Peninsula over the past 150 years.

Elwha: Value of a River. Managing Risk in the Pacific Northwest

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