The newest safety-oriented change around here is that pedestrians get a head start of a few seconds before the traffic lights turn green. The idea is that they will be well into crossing and more visible to motorists. Sounds good, right?
Except for one atrocious local driving habit⌠(of many, but lest I digressâŚ)
Ontario 
allows a right turn on red after you stop. The âstopâ part is a bit fuzzy in the minds of a lot of motorists, who interpret this as âright turn allowed on redâ.
We had a close call last week as we stepped into an intersection near our place and were nearly taken out by a motorist skipping the âstopâ part.
Worse, you call for enforcement and the reply from the police is, more often than not, âfill in a Road Watch reportâ. Thatâs a clunky process with lots of info collected, and Iâve had the patience to go through all 6 or 8 pages of details once.
âI was there, the day the strength of men failed.â
âElrond, Lord of the Rings
This is fine fucked.
@DukeTrout are you tracking this sort of thing? What can be done?
As a driver, I love being able to turn right on red after stopping. It simply makes no sense to wait to turn when there is no traffic or pedestrians. But, wow, when people get it wrong itâs horrible.
There was a particularly nasty (for pedestrians) intersection near my last workplace. The drivers leaving a shopping center often did not look for pedestrians when turning out of the area. The intersection was between my work and my favorite coffee shop. Once, when I was crossing back after getting my coffee, a car completely ignored the pedestrian light and walkway and very nearly ran me down. I jumped back to avoid them and in the motion, threw my 16-oz latte onto their windshield. (Oops! 
) They stopped and yelled at me for getting their car dirty!
I went back to the coffee shop to get a new drink. The baristas had seen the whole thing through the window and handed me a free replacement and a few high-fives. 
Always looking only left, or at their cellphone.
There are so many layers to how depressing this is.
On one hand, Iceland is in a great position, that they have such strong remaining wild salmon runs. That they see this as a catastrophe, that the company is fined for the escape and the CEO faces potential prison time for it, is inspiring. IF they get on top of it and make the changes necessary to eliminate or minimize escape, they are well set up for recovery.
What the article doesnât cover is that Iceland isnât in charge of their own destiny in this. If neighboring countries donât also get their farmed salmon shit together, farmed salmon genetics will still impact Icelandâs population. Salmon wander. We talk about how amazing their ability to find their natal streams is, but sometimes it either fails or for some reason they decide not to follow it. A certain percentage of each riverâs return goes elsewhere. And a certain percentage of spawning salmon in each stream came from a different one. So even if Iceland ensures that no farmed salmon escape in Iceland waters, some will invariably wander in from other areas. Plus, Norwegian or Scottish âwildâ fish that have farmed genetics will wander in, too. However, the main concern is those first-generation fish that outcompete true native fish prior to leaving for the ocean.
In the Pacific Northwest, we have such a very different, almost alien situation in comparison.
We intentionally flood our rivers with hatchery salmon. There are farmed Atlantic salmon in many of the same waters that wild Pacific salmon live in. Washington State had such a huge escape of farmed hatchery fish a few years ago that there was a viable sport fishery for them!
Another big difference is that we donât have a real viable recreational fishery for wild salmon outside of Alaska and parts of BC. Fisheries departments manage that by allowing angling for salmon but marking hatchery fish with fin clips and requiring the release of wild fish. Only hatchery fish can be harvested in most waters. But the catch & release of wild fish does cause some mortality. In contrast, IIRC, in Iceland they (obviously) fish for only wild fish. They require that anglers harvest all fish caught and limit how many can be taken. So itâs a completely different system.
In the PNW, weâve also seen an almost complete 180 about hatchery fish in the last few years from a conservation perspective. They are still harmful for wild salmon populations, but conservationists have recently gotten on board with increasing hatchery salmon production, due to the collapse of resident orca populations, which feed primarily on salmon. So for now, the priority is making sure the orcas have enough salmon to survive.
Of course, what fisheries managers and politicians arenât dealing with is the primary underlying problem. Over 90% of salmon bound for Washington, Oregon, and California rivers are intercepted by (mostly illegal) commercial fishing in the open ocean. We need to summon the will to act on that and shut that down with whatever means available to us if we hope for orca survival and salmon recovery.
⌠that state really needs another name
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Fuck George Washington
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Getting mixed up with DC
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Never knowing whether weâre talking about the territory or the university
I propose Washinghtonâs name be changed toâŚOregonâs Hat! Whoâs with me!?!
(But seriously, how about Tahoma, Mount Ranierâs Native American name? Wow,you beat me to the edit there, @smulder !)
Wait what?!?!?
Hmmm.
This is a bit like deer hunting in Texas, which hasâŚ
A bag limit.
And a size limit (though a significant number of hunters preferentially trophy-hunt bucks with big racks).
And a window (a time limit).
And oh man do we have escapees from game ranches all over the place out here. Ugh. Of course, if itâs an exotic (non-native) you can shoot those any time, no limit, no tags (hunting license), go git 'em.
Thanks for the update.
This is depressing AF and is properly situated in this aptly named depressing AF thread.
I mean, I am really grateful that you have brought be up to date, and I was expecting some really screwed up news, but still:
⌠people people people! We are fishing the seas empty, and now they wanna go after deep sea mineral nodules, like trawling and dragging every last lifeform out of the oceans werenât enough permanent habitat damage already.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-020-0027-0
Ok, I think I better do some time AFK.
Thanks again, and I mean it.
If we didnât, there arenât enough wild fish to support any harvest by recreational anglers; and if we just made salmon fishing illegal, the poachers would just take what they want anyway.
The silver lining is that, if we do shut down or at least curtail illegal ocean harvest, salmon have a shot here. We keep seeing against-the-odds recoveries. Oregon coastal coho and cutthroat trout were virtually extinct. With conservation, they have recovered.
If we clean up our rivers and give them habitat, then that has real potential.
Knock down the Snake River and Klamath River dams, and we could have salmon runs in the millions of fish per season per species again, all the way to Idaho.
(later, the next day⌠)
Thanks for this good news. For the fish, and for the planet.
And yeah poachers gonna poach. There simply arenât enough staff at either the state or federal fish and wildlife [game] warden level to provide coverage and protection.
We need to to that, all over the world, stat!
Itâs not like our finite supply of fresh water deserves what weâre doing to it, to us, to animal and plants, anyway.
Dunno if youâve seen or read this, itâs got its moments, and it is definitely related to what we are discussing, including the damn dams:
(I enjoyed it.)
Iâve met and talked with David James Duncan! We sort of hang around some of the same circles of conservationist-anglers. Thereâs this great crew of such writers here in the PNW: Scott Richmond, Dave Hughes, Maddy Sheehan, DJD, etc. Iâm not sure we have the same kind of folks in the subsequent generations. They could make a living as writers, but I think thatâs gone now. 
Ah haha!
Thatâs really cool!
I love overlapping Venn pancakes of reality.
Over the years Iâve bought ~4 extra copies of his book to hand out to conservationist-uh-environmental-people (not so much anglers per se, though water in Central Texas is never far from our minds). Btw one (an old Texas family rancher-turned-conservationist) gave me this in response, a work of mostly fiction:
We need more people publicly talking more sense about our rivers and streams, about the health of the fauna (and flora) in those waters, and how much of life on earth depends on the health of everything that lives in this crazy crazy substance that covers 71% of our home planet: water.
Water is life.
Thanks again, and for the work you do.
Band Name!!
Or disc one of a double album. The second is simply âmaple syrupâ
Reading this made me realize Iâm still angry at gig economy companies because of their disregard for worker safety. Something that many taxis have that ride share vehicles donât is a partition. Not sure if it would have helped in this case, but it prevents some attacks that have been in the headlines. Unfortunately, theyâre pushing to get rid of the ones that remain because they arenât âfriendly.â
Are these services offering rides to the driversâ friends or complete strangers?
