Why then are federal regulators cutting the season by 60 percent along a 700-mile stretch of California and Oregon coastline? Because the state's second-biggest salmon-producing river, the Klamath, is on life support. The result makes for a bitter choice: Because salmon are indistinguishable once they swim into the Pacific, the fish-catching at sea must be curtailed to safeguard the dwindling numbers from one river.

The pared-back season is a hard outcome. Water diversions, dams, logging and development have harmed the clean, cold flows of water needed for rearing salmon. Commercial fishermen are paying the price for problems caused by others, and many may go bankrupt.

This huge price shouldn't be ignored. Federal authorities should use the opportunity to mend failed policies and consider new approaches. Drought, which cut steady flows needed to raise salmon, may be uncontrollable. But other destructive policies to steer water to farmers or allow migration-blocking dams must be re-thought. This winter's heavy rainfall may restore rearing conditions, a gift that mustn't be wasted.

The Klamath needs help badly. The minimum number of returning salmon is pegged at 35,000 by wildlife experts, though only 25,000 are expected this season. To accommodate this lapse, commercial boats will face a limited season that aims to push fishing away from the mouth of the Klamath north of Eureka. Expect the price for wild, local-caught salmon to soar as a result.

In the short run, the Klamath's problems may push Congress to aid the state's $100 million salmon industry. But finding money in deficit-fixated Washington may be hard.

Longer-range solutions may be just as hard, given the way the Klamath was treated in the recent past. A White House move in 2002 flipped the spigot on the upper Klamath to send water to farmers in southern Oregon. That move, in a low-water year, meant less for salmon, who died by the thousands in warm, sluggish pools downriver. It was a lesson in destructive environmental decision-making that ignored sound science.