Documents

September 4, 1997

The Northwest Power Planning Council, prompted in part by former member Kai Lee, has long espoused adaptive management. As we have all learned, adaptive management employs a technique, practice, or policy, monitors it, then evaluates its efficacy. If the technique or policy works, one would continue to use it. If it does not work, one would move in a new management direction.

Fish transportation falls under the general rubric of adaptive management. As you well know, barge transport of smolts has been opposed by Indian tribes, some fishery agencies, and certain environmental groups. Some object to transportation because runs declined while transportation continued. Some objections are rooted in politics. One of these is the position that as long as transportation is in place, the region will not provide inriver conditions (flow and spill) suitable for downstream migrants. A subset of this political position is that as long as transportation is in place, Snake River dams may not be breached.

Transportation of smolts has been intensively studied in dozens of tests. The results have demonstrated repeatedly that transported smolts survive to adulthood at rates higher than do inriver migrants. The most relevant tests were conducted after 1980, reflecting river and fish bypass conditions of the present. Opponents of transportation have attacked results of tests of transport versus inriver migration on several grounds. Chief among criticisms of tests post-1980 has been that in 1986 and 1989 tests, when results showed high transport:control (T/C) ratios (1.6:1.0 and 2.5:1.0, respectively), control fish (marked inriver migrants) were truck-hauled from Lower Granite collection and marking points to Little Goose tailrace, while transport fish were delivered directly to barges The truck haul was criticized as confounding the results. The main assumed reason was that release of control fish from the trucks at the shoreline downstream from Little Goose Dam increased predation on the controls and inflated the T/C ratio. Another important argument against the results was that water managers never provided enough inriver flow and spill to provide good migration conditions for the control fish. A lesser objection to the data stated that tests might show a positive T/C ratio at Lower Granite but homing problems would occur upstream, so that the ratio did not reflect relative survival to the spawning grounds or hatchery.

In 1995, over 250,000 yearling chinook smolts were PIT tagged at Lower Granite Dam. Controls were released to the Lower Granite tailrace. The PIT tags in control fish permitted slide gates at interrogation tunnels in fish passage routing at Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams to bypass controls to the river so that they would not be transported from the two dams. Thus, control fish had to migrate all the way through the hydropower system. Transported groups were hauled by barge to a point downstream from Bonneville Dam.

Flows in the Snake and Columbia River were above average in 1995. Substantial spill was implemented (over 40% of May daily discharge at Ice Harbor Dam, a non-collector dam, for example, and over 20% at the three collector dams on the Snake River). Thus, the objection that had been raised to past transportation studies, namely that flows and spill were inadequate, was effectively neutralized. With over 700 marked adults returning to Lower Granite Dam in 1997 from the 1995 tests, the T/C ratio is over 2.0:1.0. Because wild adults often return after three summers at sea, many 3-ocean wild fish will return in 1998. However, the results to date show that transported juvenile chinook salmon survive at rates twice as high as inriver-migrating smolts.

Transportation of yearling chinook was tested at McNary Dam in 1986-1988. The results demonstrated a T/C ratio of 1.55:1.0, comporting with presence of only three dams downstream from McNary Dam (as compared to seven dams downstream from Lower Granite Dam, where T/C ratios are higher). This means that transported fish survived to return at a rate 55% higher than the survival of inriver migrants. Transport tests with fall chinook juveniles, which migrate past McNary Dam in summer, have repeatedly demonstrated T/C ratios of about 3.0:1.0, or three-fold better survival for transported juveniles. Summer transport of migrants continues at McNary Dam, while spring transport of yearling smolts was terminated in the NMFS Biological Opinion.

Test and control fish from Lower Granite tests in 1995 have returned in 1997 to the Clearwater River upstream from Lower Granite Dam with a T/C ratio of over 2.0:1.0. These data, which indicate no decay of T/C from Lower Granite, and results of Chapman et al. (1996), demonstrate that adult homing upstream from the point of smolt collection is not affected for fish transported as juveniles.

Some critics argue that transportation should end because it has failed, pointing to run declines as evidence. But the runs would be in even worse state in the Snake River in the absence of transportation. I also suggest that many other measures have been in place while the runs declined, including fishing restrictions, fishway maintenance, total dissolved gas abatement, and predator control. One would not, I trust, do away with those measures.

No one believes that transportation is the answer to all problems of Snake River salmon. Dam-related mortality, ocean productivity, harvest, marine mammals, and stream habitat quality all affect these fish. For example, the 1992 and 1993 outputs of spring chinook smolts were decimated by Pacific mackerel in the nearshore areas of the continental shelf as the juveniles moved northward. However, I state unequivocally that under present circumstances, the available data show that transportation substantially improves smolt survival from collector dams to the estuary and to adulthood.

Some state that only dam breaching will save the runs. Debate is now underway on dam breaching. But whether society decides for or against breaching, we must maximize near-term survival of downstream-migrant salmon and steelhead. Responsible adaptive management would immediately re-initiate collection and transportation of spring-migrating smolts at McNary Dam. Responsible adaptive management would also transport every smolt that managers can collect at Lower Granite, Little Goose, and Lower Monumental dams. Responsible adaptive management would terminate voluntary spill at those collector projects and at McNary Dam, so that as many smolts as possible can be collected.

Even if society were to breach all the Snake River Dams, breaching could not occur instantaneously at all dams. Managers should transport all possible smolts from each remaining collector dam during a multi-year breaching process. Even absent Snake River dams, the available data strongly support collection and transportation of all possible spring-migrating smolts at McNary Dam.

To send smolts down the river through the hydropower system is at best simply not consonant with the tenets of adaptive management, in light of the weight of data available on transportation and inriver migration. To deliberately send smolts through the system to make a political point in support of dam breaching is, at worst, irresponsible, hypocritical, and criminal, for it clearly constitutes a "taking" under the ESA, whether the Biological Opinion permits it or not.

I urge you to consider my letter as various parties pull and tug for particular management actions. Some opponents of transportation will argue that because I have consulted at times with various utility groups, my opinion must be biased. Whatever the merits of that argument, the data on transportation versus inriver migration speak loudly and clearly in themselves. Their vital message should be heeded. Transportation of smolts should be maximized until inriver migration is shown to improve survival over that obtainable through transportation.

[Signed:]
D. W. Chapman, PhD.