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In the following Q&A , Martin Lee Mueller , author ofBeing Salmon , Being Human , discusses the importance of rethink the human - Earth relationship , why salmon are the perfect creatures to start the conversation , and what we can do to give back .
Q: Part of your inspiration to write this book came from an opinion piece about the salmon industry in a Norwegian business newspaper. What struck you about that article?
A : A professor of fishery economics at a Norwegian business school compose that the fourth dimension had come to permit Norway ’s idle salmon go out . It may be an awkward but inevitable choice , he wrote . The fish land industry may be the number one threat to the wild salmon , but it had also become such an of import motor of economical development that it was worth protecting at practically any price . The loss of an intact species was a forfeit , he suggest , that Norway absolutely should be uncoerced to make . With my book , I desire to stand up not only against the arrogance and the ignorance , but also the loneliness of that view . The professor presented his case as if there were no realistic alternatives to it . I intuited early on that this shine not so much the military capability of his argument as much as a lack of the imagination .
Q: You write that “our sense of who we are as humans is mirrored in our lived relationships with other creatures.” Why, of all creatures, write about salmon?
A : Salmon , like any other - than - human beast , are a mirror in which we can seek a inscrutable understanding about our own humanity , and our topographic point here inside this biosphere . They are another unique way in which the Earth imagines itself , one existential story that thread its frail screw thread into the living and breathing web of which we too are a part . At the same time , Salmon River now look an existential crisis both here at nursing home in Norway and elsewhere . They may have hold out ice ages ; they may have pull through every geologic upheaval of the past few million years . But it is not yet clear whether they will be capable to live through the roll up stressor of industrial civilization .
Q: By suggesting an economy of “reciprocal obligations,” you propose a relationship in which salmon not only give gifts to humans, but one in which humans must give back to salmon. You write that salmon give us many gifts, including nutrients, nourishment, and less quantitative gifts like sense of place and community building. What can we humans give back to them?
A : The notion that salmon gift themselves to humans is widespread in many regions across the north , both among indigenous cultures in North America and also among the Sami of the Norse Arctic . This intellect may be taunt in language , stories , or taboos and regularization concerning sportfishing right and places . There is a shared , fussy - ethnic discernment that wecanharvest Salmon River in rather great quantity , and indefinitely , if we do n’t become too proud . Before the fish farming industry generalise the whim that intensive farming is necessary to acquire great quantity of fish , salmonwere already known as a potentially superabundant staple food across the northerly hemisphere . But wealso regain rich support that if taken for granted , and if harvested greedily and rakishly , their numbers would correct — sometimes irreversibly — , and those who depended on the intellectual nourishment would be leave alone to face the consequences . We humans are pecker - building , crafty , cunning , endlessly creative , and pioneering . All of these are double - edged tone : On the one bridge player , they make us the tremendously powerful and adaptable top vulture that we are . On the other hand , they may ensue in overconfidence , forgetfulness , ineffable ferocity , abuse , and devastation .
So what are some of the ways in which we can make return gifts to them ? First , we can indue them with measured , attentive science . life scientist are well afoot to documenting the rich inner lives of fish , and ecologists are adding ever more subtleties to the story of salmon as lynchpin species that enrich entire landscape , from sucker to bear to vineyards to forests . We can also gift salmon with grassroots work that helps streams regenerate and diversify . From daylighting streams to dismantling dams to institute aboriginal riverside vegetation , such oeuvre is now springing up in so many places , including Germany , where I was stick out and raised , and where Salmon River had disappeared from some river so thoroughly that they ’d vaporize even from collective store .
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