Yeah, we're pretty cool. Fighting the good fight we are. This is my favorite Billy Column, by the way.

When you’re driving on a highway, you’re driving on the backs of salmon. The highway is paved with salmon carcasses. Sadly, most salmon are killed before they hatch from eggs. They die because their parents didn’t have spawning habitat to return to. They die every time a river is diked, a housing development is built in a floodplain, or a watershed is paved. They are killed just the same as if they were caught in a net or on a hook.

But we don’t see the salmon die when habitat is destroyed. How many folks would sit by and accept habitat destruction if thousands of chinook carcasses were piled in their supermarket parking lot? Not many. But that’s what’s happening every time a wetland is filled. Parking lots and urban sprawl are catching and killing more salmon that any fisherman ever could.