Elwha - Righting a century of wrong

Elwha River recovers after over 100 years under water.

Okay, friends. I'm going to make a couple of statements which, if you give them real thought and maybe a bit of research, you will know are right but which will, unfortunately, mean that some people will stop reading by the end of the paragraph. Actually, since this is a success story, I'd hope that even those who can't handle the truth about homo sapiens would want to finish.

We know that the human animal is far from the brightest bulb in the box. We have the idea that because we can abstract and do other tricks, we're smarter than nature. We all know that this is not true. We don't hold a candle to nature. We talk about wildlife management and forest management and land management, none of which would be necessary if human's hadn't mucked things up in the first place. We are so bad at trying to do what nature does that, if it weren't so sad, I laugh my gluteus maximus off.  The second truth is that we think that the homo sapiens is the most important animal on the planet. This is so far from the truth that it is ludicrous and only a religion could make such a unsubstantiated claim. Actually scientist have to admit that if bugs were to suddenly become extinct, Earth would be in serious do-do (literally) while if homo sapiens were to suddenly become extinct, Earth would start to heal. So humans aren't nearly as important as your basic cockroach or dung beetle. Sorry folks. The only thing at which humans excel are creating weapons of mass destruction and being the most invasive species known, otherwise we're at the bottom of every list. Nevertheless we are so certain of our superiority that we gauge everything in light of human comfort, convenience and survival. Sadly that's where our story begins. Happily it ends with humans making right over one-hundred years of wrong. That's worth celebrating! That's worth you knowing. And so the story of Elwha River.

Moving through the gorge
 where it had been dammed.

The Elwha River is on the Olympic Peninsula in the State of Washington and is currently inside the Olympic National Park. In the early part of the twentieth century - before 1910 - over 70,000 pounds of salmon was caught annually just in this river! To use human measurements - that is a lot of food, a lot of people fishing, which means a lot of tourism, a lot of fishing licenses, a lot hotels, restaurants, etc. Nevertheless, humans, applying their normal myopic and unintelligent ways, decided that they needed to dam the Elwha River to provide cheap electricity. Forget what such a dam would do to nature. Ah, humans' don't generally give a hoot about what happens to nature, but think about what happened to the fishing, which was providing not only food but a great deal of money to the local economy. Well, obviously no one took time to think. Very likely someone, or several someones, was/were seeing dollar signs in their dreams and didn't care what happened to the local economy or nature because they were going to get rich!

Two dams were built on the Elwha River which created Miller Lake. It looked lovely. People came from near and far to see it and use it for recreation. The stream looked healthy. It flowed down to the ocean providing a post card view.

Sadly no one bothered to determine whether what they had done was really environmentally healthy. I mean, who would really want to know that they had destroyed an unreplacable piece to nature's scheme? We're humans, after all, and know everything. (NOT!) The lake was actually doing great harm beneath the beautiful placid surface. The dams blocked over 95% of the salmon's natural habitat, which meant that the salmon vanished. The new river caused erosion both in the canyon and at the mouth of the river. While it was pretty and gave humans a lot of pleasure, the project was an environmental nightmare.

A remnant of the dam.

Now this is where the story get good. I could go on for quite some time about the damage that these dams did to that entire valley and portion of the Olympic peninsula, but I'm really anxious to get to the good part of the story. It isn't that often that I'm able to show what humans did right!

In 2012 and 2014 the dams were removed! Yes, both of the dams on the Elwha River were removed so that the river could return to its natural state . . . so that it could return to what nature intended. I'm sure it wasn't an easy project, and it did do some significant damage to human campgrounds, roads and other structures. However, the Elwha River has returned to its natural course. With the help of humans who were intent upon learning from nature, instead of trying to "manage" nature, plants were returned and the salmon are back. The area which was once slowly dying is now rapidly returning to life.

Today I was up where the upper dam was located. There were a great number of cars filled with people driving a road that is barely wide enough for two cars to pass so that they might see what humans might call a miracle. It really wasn't a miracle, unless you want to call humans finally admitting that we'd screwed up and have tried to make amends a miracle. But I was so happy to see not only the return of the rule of nature but to see that people were there to witness it. Hopefully they also learned. There are a number of exhibits that truthfully explain the damage we did and the efforts to rectify what we had done. People were reading them. I certainly hope they were absorbing what they were reading.

It is hard to tell you how witnessing this lifted me up. Most of the time I am quite embarrassed and ashamed of my species, but this wasn't one of those times. This was a time when homo sapiens - humans - showed that we can admit that we've been wrong and do our best to give control of the earth back to Unci Maka (grandmother Earth) where it belongs. When you spend most of your life being ashamed of what you're species has done to this planet, Elwha River is a wonderful experience.

Elwha River proves that we can accept that we were arrogant, thoughtless and totally stupid without it bring an end to our species. Just a bruise to our fragile ego. It proves that we can realize and accept that ONLY nature - Unci Maka - can properly manage life on this planet. Nature, Unci Maka, that mysterious force or whatever it may be, was successfully managing life on planet earth long before the narcissistic humans ever arrived. As one person explained it ... if from the beginning of earth to today was a football field, humans first showed up on Earth 1/8th of an inch from the inzone. That means we've only been here 0.000035% of the Earth's existence. Doesn't exactly qualify us as experts.

Elwha River is just one great example of how we can return planet Earth to its rightful, and only successful, manager . . . nature. Humans are still enjoying the area. Hopefully they will soon be able to provide their own food by catching salmon from the river. This is our only hope as a species. This is our only hope for this planet. We must stop being the destructive, invasive species and do our best to become a productive part of nature, returning the control of planet Earth to its only successful manager ... nature.