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Introduction. <br />The West is composed of three river basins: the Columbia, the <br />Colorado, and the Missouri. Marston (1986a) states that pt he <br />West comes close to practicing single-issue politics.p Its <br />political capital is spent ppushing-the Central-Arizona Project, <br />the Central Utah Project, the Columbia Basin expansion, the <br />Garrison Diversion, Animas-LaPlata and a-flood of smaller <br />projects.p Instead of pchanging our notions and habits to <br />conform with nature's ways°, we have ptried to change nature's <br />laws to fit our notions and habits.p The method is damming the <br />Columbia River; presently it is nothing more than a series of <br />lakes, one backed up against the next. it is water withdrawal <br />from the Colorado River; it no longer reaches-the Pacific, <br />instead plying an arid and salty death in the deserts of Northern <br />Mexicop; and it is the Missouri River's northern plains occupied <br />by sprawling Pick-Sloan reservoirs, and the central plains <br />draining into a rock-lined canal. <br />The Columbia was famous for its runs of salmon and trout. <br />Annual catches-have declined from I1 million kg before 1920 to <br />1.3 million kg presently (Ebel et al. 1986). The wild stocks and <br />their important gene pools have nearly disappeared because of. <br />- 3 - <br />