What is “Normative” for Fish Pathogens? A Perspective on the Controversy over Interactions between Wild and Cultured Fish

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Abstract
In its report, Return to the River, the Independent Scientific Group (now called the Independent Scientific Advisory Board—the scientific peer review arm of the Northwest Power Planning Council) advanced the notion of a “normative river ecosystem” as a new conceptual foundation for salmonid recovery in the Columbia River basin. With this perspective, the sum of the best scientific understanding of how organisms and aquatic ecosystems naturally function should be the norm or standard of measure for how we judge the effects of human activities on aquatic systems. For the best likelihood of recovery, key aspects of altered systems should be brought back toward normative (although not necessarily fully back to the historical or pristine state); new alterations should be judged by how much they move key functions away from normative or what might be considered as normal. In this paper, I ask what “normative” is for fish pathogens and how this concept could help resolve the long-standing disputes betwe...