eer ate rae The land of magic and There will be no second - Noah's Ark: — Mikhail Gorbachey, 1990 High up in the Nass Valley, past the Bell-Irving, past the Kwinageese, a short flight fora raven from thé headwaters of the Skeena where the creeks — Shilahou, “- -Shashlomal, Slamgeesh, Damshilwit-— have the sound of the wind in their names, lies. Damdochax Lake. “The land is wild there: tis a” ~ place where. eagles soar: high above the heavily timbered flanks of valleys, and where the claws of grizzly have worn deep trails’ down to the rivers, creeks and springs in their annual quest for salmdn. :This - is rugged, demanding. ‘country °-—' a land where the moose-are herded to the valley bottoms: by the heavy snows of - winter where they browse ner- vously during the short days of winter, always on the lookout for wolves. The land where the Dam- dochax River runs is a land of magie atid. power where men, awed and made insignificant by their “surroundings, - brought order arid a bit of spiritual com-_ fort to’ their tenuous: lives by weaving. myths. from’ the mystery and mist that appears from nowhere, spreads oul over the lake§ and “rolls ‘like smoke down** draws. : ‘The salmon of these. valleys are the staff of life: they provide the rhythms to which‘all other ‘ creatures in -the watershed :res=" pond, There. are chinook’ and coho: here; * ‘there are sockeye,. And, when the cottonwoods along - the. banks. of. the*Dam- dochax. start to turn, steelhead . - reach ‘the‘rivers, Steelhead are the reason Ken Belford -and. his wife Alice’ are ~ the’ "hillsides * andthe” The Skeena Angier by Rob Brown there. Ken is the operator of Nass Headwaters Guiding and Outfitting, Steelhead have pro- vided his livelihood for many “years: Ken “is not’in’ business“lo- realize huge profits, bul lo con- tinue doing what he laves to do in the wilderness. that. has ‘become his home. -. ‘Ken ‘Belford’s existence, like” “that of the wild creatures in his guiding territory, is greatly af-- fected by. the size of.the runs, the overall and, by. extension, health ‘of the ecosystem within -which ites; Asa consequence, ‘Ker ~number of salmon. that ‘survive - is .very sensitive lo. the distress, the rigorous journey to the far reaches of the Nass each year. Traditionally sockeye are the most-abundant species in‘Ken’s” terrilary, Listen to what he says about this year’s return: “In the 1991 fishing season the sockeye numbers were. ap- palling. The entire fishery here in the Damdochax is now in dangered, in the real sense of that. term, We expected to see decent numbers of later return- ing sockeye, but did not. In fact we hardly saw any at all, ‘““Damdochax Lake has many.’ and probably. en-. Terrace Standard, Wednesday, January 22, 1992 — Page BS spring e¢reeks along the shoreline that annually hold 500 to 1,000 sockeye each, but this year we saw only 50 fish in total in all of those’ springs. Some springs had one fish. Many had none,” Ken continues: or October that “any: improve- ment was noticeable. The river was virtually empty all. fall, There was atime: from’ early ~~ September until the third week of the same month Ww hen there were no fish in the river. 1 mean na. sockeye, no coho;: no. ‘late chinook."* ~ Pek The Damdochax ig in ils natural state, The fish-“have clean gravels in which to spawn and unspoiled habitat in which to rear; they are being ‘exter. minated by:the same farce that _is--undermining: our - stocks and. which have seriously depleted stocks: throughout the.” Tumbers “There was. no time throughout: September: Skeena - i Ower globe: net fisheries... ; “Grizzly bears that normally frequent .the valley. in good S$ are. not