For more than a decade a massive effort has been underway on the West Coast of North America to try and restore degraded salmon streams. With many runs endangered, too many extinct, and hundreds if not thousands of streams in need of repair, billions of dollars has been spent - without much to show for it.

Although it seems obvious enough that habitat restoration work is valuable, the bottom line on many rivers simply has not changed. The streams might look better, but in many cases the salmon runs have remained depressed.

All of that makes this month's article, Miracle on the Keogh, all that much more exciting. Perhaps for the first time, fisheries scientists are documenting the positive impacts of stream restoration work. More fish are being produced in the Keogh - coho and steelhead smolt production has tripled over two years - and the fish are bigger. Mayflies, stoneflies and caddis flies have started to hatch on the river in big numbers. Resident trout are packing on weight.

Working with wild stock, in a river that was basically trashed by logging, the Keogh crew has done more than pull a rabbit out of a hat - they've produced a whole salmon run. Steelhead, down to a remnant run of 100 fish, were headed for extinction. The results of the last two years point to a dramatic rebound.

Ocean survival remains a problem about which scientists can do nothing. But if governments can work to get the rivers productive again, if they can ensure that freshwater survival rates remain high, then there's a good chance that when oceanic conditions turn around - and there are signs that that may happen soon - then the wild stock will be there to fill the void.

The Keogh project cost $1 million. That's a lot to pay to get a salmon river back. But imagine what the option is. A Pacific Coast without wild salmon is unimaginable. Let's hope that governments everywhere take note of the Keogh miracle, and that it inspires a renewed salmon restoration effort from Alaska to California.

The Editors:

A big thank you to Neil Cameron for coming to my defense (in Book Reviews, April edition).

I have not seen Henry Frew's review of my book about my parents, Deep Currents, but I gather he finds it a waste of time because it is too much about my parents' private life. Well, Neil got it! That was the whole idea.

I wrote Deep Currents because so many people over the years since my father died, and during which I have been meeting his public regularly, have wanted to know about him. Also, during those twenty-plus years various versions of his life or parts of it, some fraught with misinformation, have appeared.

I wanted to get the facts in order and let people draw their own conclusions. And it sure saves me answering a lot of requests for information.

Thanks to and for ariverneversleeps.com

- Valerie Haig-Brown,Waterton Park, Alberta

(Valerie is Roderick Haig-Brown's daughter, the editor of his writing collection, To Know A River, and author of Deep Currents, which explores his life.)

The Editors:

First-time American clients are usually skeptical, says Danny Gerak, the 38-year-old owner of the Upper Pitt River Lodge. It's tough convincing them that the Pitt River still has great fishing, and that it's only 20 miles from Vancouver. None of them has anything like that.

Gerak, a downsized commercial fisherman, also knows it's easier to sell a river's merits to American anglers than to most Canadian politicians. Some people might dismiss Gerak's long battle to forestall gravel mining near the headwaters of Olsen Creek, the main tributary of the upper Pitt River, as self-interest. Yet Gerak's efforts are in tune with the public's interest, and the evidence is the Pitt River and Area Watershed Network (PRAWN).

PRAWN is undoubtedly one of the most eclectic groups to ever raise the tattered banner of wild salmon. Besides Gerak, PRAWN's members include ecotourism guides, boom operators, naturalists, streamkeepers, the Vancouver Natural History Society, a sturgeon conservation group, wilderness advocates, other conservation and community organizations, Indians, anglers - including those who deploy lawyers to defend angling rights against Indians - and the volunteer manager of a hatchery on the nearby Coquitlam River - a river that epitomizes the incompatibility of salmon and gravel mining.

Recently, the member groups of PRAWN gathered once again in the Katzie Indian Band Office in Pitt Meadows, with experts from Sierra Legal and West Coast Environmental Law. They pored over newly-minted hydrological maps and fisheries reports that detail the mining risks - and the flaws in the mining company's reporting. Despite the evidence, the provincial government was, at that time, still refusing to recognize the special nature of the Pitt River.

Last week that changed when the government announced that the gravel mine would not be allowed. There was a lot of foot dragging, but the government finally acknowledged what PRAWN had long maintained - that British Columbians have not only said that they value wild salmon, but they have also indicated a willingness to pay more and do more to save those salmon. That much is evident from groups such as PRAWN, watershed restoration projects, streamkeeper initiatives, and the province-wide water-use planning process.

-Craig Orr, Vancouver, B.C.

(Dr. Craig Orr, a behavioural ecologist, is President of Watershed Watch, and a member of PRAWN, the Pitt River and Area Watershed Network. His response, when he learned that the government had agreed to kill the mine was: "That's great. We'll be having a meeting soon to get ready for whatever (threat) is next.")