I have been working on the river and in the Oregon wilderness for better than 40 years now and I was pretty naive to a whole list of environmental changes that I remember watching happen. For instance, from 1980 to 1985 we received more than 40 inches of rain each year and that average held steady right up to the 2000s. From 2016 to 2022 that average was only about 22 inches – a decline that also began in about 2000. Just that statistic alone is troubling and I personally believe that human activities and our use of fossil fuels is mostly to blame. Others believe that climate change is natural, a cyclical process and that the current western drought and increasing summer temperatures will eventually pass. But regardless of what you believe, the erratic weather we have experienced the last few years will likely have some impact on your ability to access and enjoy the outdoors to the extent we were all able to engage in, just a decade or so back.
Anglers Log: Troubling environment for salmon
