"There are fish in the river," the watchers have proclaimed.

Only a couple of decades ago, that would have been an unspeakably obvious statement. Who would even have thought to say it? One might as likely note that there are birds in the sky, or that there are leaves on the trees, or that there are cars on the roads.

So poorly have we managed our natural resources that a statement as obvious as "there are fish in the river" has become no longer obvious at all.The estimated 30

million sockeye entering the Fraser River on their way to the spawning beds have come as a remarkable surprise -- and a remarkably pleasant one, at that.

The past few years saw such a dramatic decline in sockeye numbers that, until this summer, there was much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth over the fishery's apparent collapse and the species' imminent demise.

It has come as a monumental surprise that, after the salmon run last year was so tenuous that the commercial fishery was never opened, this year's run is the strongest since 1913.

Not so surprising was the reaction to the surprisingly good news: joyous cries, from fishers to economists and anyone else who might make a buck off the unexpected bounty, calling for the capture and death of as many of those 30 million salmon as possibly can be managed.

Perhaps next year we will all be surprised again when the watchers proclaim, "There are no fish in the river."

We must not lose sight of the fact that the millions of salmon goosed by recent rainfall to speed their way up to their spawning beds are in no way a confirmation of humanity's stewardship of the environment, but rather are a testament to Mother Nature's ability to overcome -- at least this time -- the adversity that humanity has created.

Bob Groeneveld is editor of the Langley Advance.