Time to change or disappear - As go the salmon, so may we

ADAPTABILITY, ambition, determination, pragmatism, courage and an understanding of the power of community — and the game-changing gift of a thumb — are some of the

We have, for the great majority of people, at least nullified disease and hunger. Though millions struggle with hunger and poverty every day the graph is ever upward, especially in emerging economies. This relentless progress has not been without cost, one that has, according to science and increasingly irrefutable evidence, become unsustainable.

Today, the eve of the end of the salmon angling season on most Irish rivers, we report on the state of Atlantic salmon in Ireland. The iconic species is caught in a disastrous spiral of decline for many reasons, all of them manmade. Less than a century ago the population was so abundant that in one setting — the River Lee — there were multiple and lucrative netting stations; a major one at Carrigadrohid, another as far upstream as Inchigeelagh.

Today the world’s remnant population is little more than a scattering of crumbs from the past. If current rates of collapse persist the existence of salmon will come into question. Long-regarded as a contemporary canary-in-the-mine indicator species, its grim prospects offer us profound lessons, if only we might heed them. The fate of Atlantic salmon is a symptom of Earth’s manmade malaise rather than a self-contained tragedy. As go the salmon, so may we.

One of the first lessons of our betrayal of one of nature’s great gifts is that we left it far too late to intervene, to protect salmon habitat, threatened on land or at sea. We left it far too late to protect the species from man’s relentless predation, made ever-more effective by advancing knowledge and technology. Even though we now understand that we did not act soon enough. Those who would save salmon are still dismissed as self-serving cranks from an easily ignored fringe of humanity. Essentially, President Trump’s attitude to those who would work to try to limit climate change.

The salmon-as-a-canary parable can be expressed in many ways. One of the starkest focuses on population growth in Africa. It would be immoral to point the climate collapse finger at Africa but the figures are staggering. Today 1.2bn people call that continent home — up from 477m in 1980 — but in the last year, Africa’s population grew by 30m. By 2050, according to the UN, the annual increase will exceed 42m and total population will have doubled to 2.4bn. This is 3.5m more people a month; 80 more mouths to feed per minute. In 1960 the world’s population stood at 3bn. Today it is 7.5bn.

Over the next year public debate will be inflamed and dominated by arguments around the Eighth Amendment. Debate around salmon or population, or any other way of expressing the destruction that led to Stephen Hawking’s warning that we will need to abandon this planet within a century, will be ignored as if they were the ravings of the village idiot.

Maybe it’s time to ask if we are really the winners in the evolutionary race — or how long we can remain so.