By BOB VREELAND

Why should we try to save our urban streams like Thornton Creek and the salmon in them?

Some ³experts² say that it is a lost cause; urban streams like Thornton Creek are too far-gone to try to recover. Should we only spend our stream restoration money on rural streams were the ³experts² say we will get the ³most bang for the buck² rather than putting any money into Thornton Creek?

I believe there are several errors in this line of thinking. The first error is that the salmon don¹t listen to the so-called ³experts² or read their reports. Threatened Puget Sound Chinook salmon, Coho and sockeye have been returning to Thornton Creek over the past several years, all be it in small numbers.

Perhaps the real ³experts² are the salmon themselves, and we should be learning from them.

I believe we must do everything we can to protect our urban streams and the salmon in them. Aldo Leopold, perhaps the father of modern ecology, phrased it best when he said ³the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the pieces.²

Thornton Creek is one of these pieces. We have been trying to throw away many of the pieces of our natural environment for the past 50 or more years; however, there are still some pieces left since salmon continue to return to Thornton Creek and other urban streams.

If we human urban dwellers lose the salmon in our urban streams, we will eventually lose our interest in protecting the salmon in rural streams. It will become an out-of-sight, out-of-mind situation. Since most people live in an urban environment in the U.S., if the majority of the population loses contact with and interest in salmon in our urban steams, we eventually very likely lose the salmon in all our streams.

I believe we urban dwellers need salmon returning to our urban steams as an inspiration to keep us going, despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and incredible odds. The salmon enters the world after its parents have died. It has to survive in streams and then the ocean without any instruction from its parents. The salmon goes on a several hundred- to several-thousand-mile journey with only genetic guidance. The fish must avoid fish, bird and mammal predators all along the way. Then the salmon must find its way from far out in the Pacific Ocean back to the stream where it was born, to spawn and die. It does this all with a brain the size of the end of our little finger. This cycle has been going on for thousands and perhaps a million or more years.

Finally, we are already paying the costs of the problems that have lead to lose of most of the salmon in our urban streams. The flooding, property damage and pollution problems we have created for ourselves are the very same problems that have caused much of the drastic decline of salmon in our urban streams. We are paying ratepayer dollars to deal with the flooding, property damage and pollution problems.

If we spend these dollars judiciously and appropriately, we can reduce these problems and make our urban streams somewhat more habitable for salmon.

We will never return Thornton Creek and other urban streams to pristine condition, but we will be able to provide conditions that will support annual small returns of salmon for our viewing and inspiration.