Recommended Reading from Pacific Rivers Council

Rivers of America

Tim Palmer

Rivers have fed Palmer’s imagination and commanded his attention for decades as an explorer, conservationist, photographer, and writer. Here he presents 200 awe-inspiring photographs of American rivers in all seasons and moods in every region of the country. In his persuasive commentary, he reminds us that there would be no life without water and that “rivers are the water supply of the world.” He then reveals what his photographs do not: the hard fact that nearly half of America’s rivers are polluted and endangered, jeopardizing countless ecosystems. "Rivers of America" is available from bookstores, from publisher Harry N. Abrams, and on Amazon.com. 

Salmon Without Rivers

Jim Lichatowich

Jim Lichatowich has worked on Pacific salmon issues as a researcher, manager, and scientific adviser for more than 30 years. He specializes in evaluation of the ecology and status of salmon and steelhead populations and the development of restoration plans. Jim currently serves on PRC's Advisory Board and is a member of our Independent Science and Economics Advisory Council.

From a mountain top where an eagle carries a salmon carcass to feed its young, to the distant oceanic waters of the California current and the Alaskan Gyre, salmon have penetrated the Northwest to an extent unmatched by any other animal. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the natural productivity of salmon in Oregon, Washington, California and Idaho has declined by 80 percent. The decline of Pacific salmon to the brink of extinction is a clear sign of serious problems in the region. In Salmon Without Rivers, fisheries biologist Jim Lichatowich offers an eye-opening look at the roots and evolution of the salmon crisis in the Pacific Northwest. He describes the multitude of factors over the past century and a half that have led to the salmon's decline, and examines in depth the abject failure of restoration efforts that have focused almost exclusively on hatcheries to return salmon stocks to healthy levels without addressing the underlying causes of the decline. The book describes the evolutionary history of the salmon along with the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest over the past 40 million years, considers the indigenous cultures of the region, and the emergence of salmon-based economies that survived for thousands of years. It examines the rapid transformation of the region following the arrival of Europeans, presents the history of efforts to protect and restore the salmon, and offers a critical assessment of why restoration efforts have failed.

Visit Jim's Amazon.com site to buy this and other books by James A. Lichatowich.

Notes on a shared Landscape:
Making Sense of the American West

David Bayles

David Bayles has worked with PRC nearly since its inception in 1987. As our former Executive Director, David is a national leader in the conservation community on aquatic conservation generally, and has particular expertise on the effects of land management on aquatic systems and the public policy setting for the watershed and aquatic species conservation. He is the co-author of several scientific articles on aquatic species conservation, watershed conservation and ecosystem management and co-authored the successful endangered species petition for coho salmon. He was a participant in Keystone Policy Dialogue on Ecosystem Management, and of the award-winning Policy Dialogue Group on Wild and Scenic Rivers. David now sits on our board as Secretary and chair of the Conservation and Planning Committee.

When European Americans "discovered" the American West, they fell in love with the resplendent landscape. The love affair and its congenital flaws persist to this day. Bayles writes, "...the question is why my people bungled our occupation of the West so badly when no one really wanted to, when there was every change to get it right, when voices of caution were constantly raised, when what needed to be done was frequently obvious, and when, occasionally, we did get it right (think: National Parks)." Notes On A Shared Landscape engages the issues that make the West the West -- widely ranging over the autobiographical and the cultural, the ecological and the epistemological, the cow and the potato. This is an intensely personal book, and though the Western library is huge, there is not another book like it. Much of the text unfolds in Yellowstone, where Bayles writes.

 Visit Amazon.com to pick up this and other books by David Bayles.