M ost people -- from seafood lovers to fishermen -- are using one word to describe this year's nearly nonexistent salmon fishing season on the West Coast: disaster.

Typically, that word triggers the prospect of millions of dollars in federal aid to commercial fishermen and businesses. In 2006, the last year we experienced a salmon disaster, the government provided $60 million to fishermen sidelined by closures. This year, fishing interests are rightly asking for even more and will probably get it. Next year's season promises to be no better.

A boom-and-bust cycle has played havoc with the West Coast's $290 million salmon industry. But helping idled fishermen with massive federal largesse -- no matter how justified -- treats only the symptoms of a complex problem.

Dams have rendered salmon spawning habitat inaccessible to the fish and hampered downstream migration of juveniles. Water diversions for agriculture and other human uses have robbed salmon of vital in-stream flows. Poor land-use practices have ruined what few natural spawning grounds remain. Hatcheries, built to mitigate the loss of spawning habitat, have degraded the genetics of remaining wild stocks. And global climate change threatens to alter the fundamental conditions that salmon and many other species, including humans, need to survive.

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