State of the Northwest
John C. Ryan
Northwest Environment Watch
No place on Earth has a better chance to reconcile people and nature than the Pacific Northwest: the greenest part of history’s richest civilization. State of the Northwest—newly revised and updated for 2000—is the only comprehensive health check for the region stretching from southeast Alaska to northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the crest of the Rockies.     Six years after Northwest Environment Watch published the first edition of State of the Northwest, the region’s ecosystems are still in critical condition. Yet our environment remains less degraded than almost anywhere else in the industrial world. We in the Northwest still have a rare opportunity to build a sustainable way of life—one that can last.    This book shows the region from a different point of view: a salmon’s. After traveling with a chinook from Idaho mountains to the Gulf of Alaska and back, you may never look at the Northwest the same way again.