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[1] PATH FACILITATOR SAYS IDAHO F&G MISLED PUBLIC
The Idaho Fish and Game Department has just completed a report that recommends breaching Snake River dams as the best "biological choice" for recovering the state's salmon and steelhead. The agency took the report to its fish and game commission on May 7. A day later, the commission approved a policy statement that backed up the report.
IDFG cited recent work by the regional PATH process to support its case, saying the PATH modeling effort found the natural river option to be the only scenario under which Idaho stocks will recover, a claim made earlier in a presentation to the Orofino Chamber of Commerce.
But the claim was disputed by PATH facilitator David Marmorek, consultant with the Vancouver, BC firm Essa Technologies. In a May 4 letter to IDFG director Stephen Mealey, Marmorek said the IDFG presentation to the Orofino Chamber inaccurately described PATH conclusions and was incorrect and misleading "in several respects."
Marmorek's letter cited two statements used in an overhead in the Orofino presentation. One said "killer ocean, killer sea lions and seals, killer terns and squawfish are NOT what's holding our fish stocks from recovery. These conclusions are based on PATH analysis already complete, and indicate Snake River salmon/steelhead stocks aren't doing as well as downriver salmon stocks."
Marmorek wrote Mealey that "no PATH analyses have explicitly dealt with sea lion, seal, or tern predation. To my knowledge, none of the several thousand pages of PATH analyses to date have even commented on the significance of such predation."
The second misleading IDFG statement said: "Preliminary PATH results confirm IDFG scientists' conclusions that the natural river [option] has a high likelihood of being successful."
Facilitator Marmorek told IDFG that under certain assumptions drawdown of the four Snake River dams has a good chance of meeting 48-year and 100-year recovery standards. The assumptions include a strong flow/survival relationship, low post-Bonneville survival of transported fish relative to non-transported fish, and extra (post-Bonneville) mortality "strongly related to the amount of hydrosystem mortality."
But Marmorek wrote that under other assumptions, maximizing fish transportation had greater expectations for survival than natural river drawdown. He was adamant in pointing out that the PATH preliminary report does not "confirm" one action over another. Marmorek described how PATH scientists have narrowed uncertainties and are weighing evidence to develop the safest approach to salmon stocks.
Marmorek's letter also expressed concern that a public debate over recovery options organized by IDFG may oversimplify issues and "further polarize scientists into opposing camps." He said if PATH scientists were to take part in such debates, "the accelerated polarization might undermine the difficult but critical tasks in which PATH scientists are engaged."
He said the group needs the "greatest amount of internal cooperation and dialogue to determine the evidence for and against alternative hypotheses; where specifically we agree on the interpretation of this evidence and where we don't agree; and what management actions (including research, monitoring or adaptive management) will be most successful in resolving critical uncertainties." Marmorek finished his letter by saying the PATH group looked forward to presenting its final report and answering questions about it by late fall of this year.
But the following day he sent Mealey another letter, saying he "erred" by responding before getting feedback from other PATH members. It was reported that Idaho complained to other state and tribal PATH representatives, who voiced their own concerns about Marmorek's May 4 letter. Marmorek called his first letter a mistake and apologized for his action. He told Mealey that PATH representatives from Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission felt that "problems of this sort are best handled through internal discussions (in this case, within IDFG), rather than sending formal letters to a public body, which they feel may exaggerate the importance of an isolated incident. They, and I, have full confidence in the IDFG representative on PATH to accurately present PATH results," Marmock wrote. When contacted to explain the apparent contradiction in the letters, Marmorek refused to comment.
The internal cooperation that facilitator Marmorek is trying to keep alive is suffering on other fronts as well. Recent budget recommendations by fish managers of the Columbia River Fish and Wildlife Authority have called for cutting $120,000 from the UW/PATH technical support proposal of $302,000, while supporting full funding of $698,000 for state and tribal PATH participation and $450,000 for Essa Technologies' facilitation, technical assistance, and peer review. -Bill Rudolph
[2] DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON SALMON EXTINCTION
Jim Lichatowich, a member of the Power Planning Council's Independent Scientific Advisory Board, is principal author of a paper on salmon extinction that has been accepted for publication in the marine science journal ICES.
Lichatowich's paper on "Depletion and Extinction of Pacific Salmon" says that fishery managers have known for 122 years what would destroy the Pacific salmon, but possession of that knowledge has not prevented the depletion. In fact, depletion was not the outcome expected by state, tribal and federal fishery managers. So, what has gone wrong?
There are many reasons for salmon decline and extinction in the Northwest, ranging from a poor ocean environment to the effects of land alterations and stream flow changes to some common recovery strategies like fish hatcheries.
But Lichatowich's paper says that other important factors have contributed to the salmon's decline: community values, fundamental assumptions about nature, and the persistent belief in technological solutions to ecological problems. While these values and assumptions do not directly degrade habitat or kill salmon, they may ultimately be more important than the actions that do.
"We have also learned that massive funding cannot overcome failures in salmon management based on faulty assumptions," says Lichatowich.
His paper explores the effect of our assumptions on salmon management, and he calls this collection of assumptions and values a conceptual framework that shapes our management of salmon and their habitat. But this fundamental, firmly held perspective is seldom, if ever, stated. Because it's never stated, it is never questioned, and the region continues to fight the symptoms of salmon decline, never fully addressing the cultural foundation for the decline.
In his paper, Lichatowich builds a history of salmon assumptions. He focuses on artificial propagation of salmon to make his point for two reasons: artificial propagation has dominated salmon management for 122 years, and it is relatively easy to illustrate the fundamental assumptions that have formed the basis of salmon management through reliance on the hatchery tool. He starts with the beginning of the intensive salmon canning industry on the Columbia River in 1866. Soon after, in 1875, business and political leaders became alarmed about the decline of salmon runs in the Columbia and the possible effects on the industry. They sought the advice of the United States Fish Commissioner, Spencer Baird, on ways to maintain the salmon supply.
Baird said the salmon were being destroyed by habitat destruction, dam construction and overfishing. Lichatowich points out, "Its important to note that these causes for the decline of salmon have not changed in 122 years..."
According to Lichatowich, Baird believed enactment of restrictive regulations to protect salmon and their habitats would be futile and enforcement of those regulations would not work. As an alternative to regulation, Baird advised the Northwest to invest $20,000 in artificial propagation. By taking this action, he said the salmon would become so abundant again there would be no need for regulation. Even though Baird had no scientific evidence to support his recommendation, the salmon hatchery became an important tool in salmon management in the Pacific Northwest.
"The popularity of hatcheries was not based on any scientific evidence of success - such evidence did not exist" Lichatowich says. "Hatcheries were popular because they were consistent with the prevailing social and economic values and assumptions about nature." Hatcheries, he continues, "permitted the unregulated access to resources and watersheds." The hatchery became central to salmon management, and even though the future of the salmon packing industry was closely tied to hatchery propagation, fish managers failed to evaluate them. In 1930, J.N. Cobb noted that the salmon managers showed an "almost idolatrous faith in the efficacy of artificial culture of fish for replenishing the ravages of man."
"The hatchery program," Lichatowich says, "was implemented within a management framework that viewed the production process as something that needed to be simplified and controlled and viewed the river and its habitat as something to be circumvented. This framework, which arguably is largely intact, contributed to the depletion of salmon in the Pacific Northwest." In other words, the region's ideas and values have killed off the salmon.
Lichatowich says, "Good intentions and hard work cannot overcome the shortcomings of programs based on the wrong assumptions," and he points out that "Even well-intentioned management can have disastrous consequences if it is predicated on the wrong assumptions." -Bill Bakke
[3] CANADA CONSIDERS BIG CUTS IN SALMON FLEET, FISHING
The Canadian salmon fleet may be downsized again to keep the industry viable-- after it was cut 30 percent only two years ago, at a cost of $80 million. According to an article in the Vancouver Sun, a new report by the BC government says that fishing communities in the province have lost nearly 4,000 salmon-related jobs since 1995. Larger towns where most jobs were in the forestry and government sectors fared the best, but isolated communities with large native populations lost between 10 and 30 percent of local jobs.
Meanwhile, Canada's Fisheries minister David Anderson is faced with the decision of whether to close the entire salmon fishery down this season to protect weak runs of coho salmon. Combined losses for both the sports and commercial fishing sectors could top a billion dollars. An analysis by fisheries expert Parcival Copes said some fisheries could take place and allow for coho survivals as well, but others aren't so sure.
Anderson said he was looking at ways to harvest salmon while protecting coho and is getting advice from a special task force that has been meeting since February. One idea is to expand experimental fisheries in the Skeena and Fraser river, with traps that allow salmon to be released alive. Such ideas are also being considered for the tribal fisheries in the Columbia River this year, to help endangered steelhead runs while maintaining fisheries on fall chinook stocks.
But the Canadians are getting ready to buy out more fishermen, according to the government report leaked to the press last week. The Sun reported $200 million may be earmarked for the buyout. Mike Hunter of the Fisheries Council of BC said the fleet had to be cut in half. He told a Sun reporter that "the world has changed and there's no going back." He said the program must get people out of the business, not just through this year. To add to their woes, fishermen are facing even lower prices for the product as well.
The Canadian government has already spent nearly $2 billion to aid East Coast fishermen idled by the collapse of the cod fishery. Much of the money was spent to keep fishermen going until the cod stocks recovered, but they never have rebounded.
Another report leaked to the Canadian press on May 12 said Canada may have to accept a watered-down salmon treaty with the US over catch allocations. But a spokeswoman for Anderson told the Sun it didn't reflect the Canadian position. Treaty talks were being held in Portland the week of May 11. BC premier Glen Clark called the federal stance a surrender before the negotiations even started. A few days later, Clark's negotiator was recalled by the premier, who said they were not prepared to allow a sellout of their salmon resources. But other negotiators stayed on.
The two countries are trying to develop short-term fishing agreements before the fish show up, as recommended by special envoys William Ruckelshaus and David Strangway in January. -B.R.
[4] HCPs FOR TWO MID-COLUMBIA PUDS NEARLY COMPLETED
According to NMFS policy analyst Bob Turner, all parties to the Mid-Columbia habitat conservation plans are putting the finishing touches on the agreements. Except Grant County PUD, that is. Turner said the utility seems to be having a hard time evaluating the costs and effects of the salmon recovery measures outlined in the proposal-- "Could they do it and still remain economically viable?"
But for both Chelan and Douglas County PUDs, it's all just a matter of "dotting the i's and crossing the t's...We agreed to the big stuff a long time ago," said Turner. "But it's hard to say where we stand with Grant."
Grant County PUD manager Don Godard said his utility definitely will not be ready to sign off on the agreements along with the other mid-Columbias on June 12, when it's more than likely Vice President Al Gore will be taking part in the ceremony. Godard said his staff is still looking at the "the whole package." One big question: "Out of ten turbines, do we want to keep six idle?" Such a scenario would produce the 60 percent spill that the PUD would have to provide to meet a juvenile salmon survival target of 95 percent.
NMFS' Turner said the process had become one of either slowing everything down, or proceeding without Grant County. Chelan has signed on to pay for $35 million worth of habitat restoration in tributaries, and Douglas County PUD will pay $10 million. The agreements essentially guarantee that their dams will have no net impact on migrating fish because of bypass systems and spill, hatchery increases, and habitat improvement.
But Grant County dams are downstream and affect more fish. That adds up to more costs for salmon mitigation. Experiments with surface collectors to route fish around turbines have not shown much promise, either. Spilling water for fish cost Grant $10 million last year in lost revenues.
The PUD is facing an up-front cost of $13 million for habitat improvements and $1 million annually after that, plus a $20 million one-time payment for hatcheries and $2 million per year to keep them running.
Last winter, Grant forecast nearly $140 million in fish costs for the next 10 years, along with $123 million to pay for more "fish friendly" turbines at its two dams.
But it's not just utilities that are faced with increasing costs for fish enhancement. According to NMFS consultant Turner, many timber companies are currently negotiating habitat conservation plans to stay in business and help recover endangered fish and wildlife. "We have a ton of these in the works." -B.R.
[5] SARDINES STICK AROUND
Unusually warm ocean conditions in the North Pacific have again confounded fisheries scientists. Large populations of sardines evidently spawned off the BC coast last year--something that's never been observed before.
Large concentrations of sardines were observed last summer from Vancouver Island to northern Oregon, a biomass estimated at 130,000 tons. And what scientists think is their offspring were observed this past February by Canadian researchers looking for coho. Their findings were reported in the April 1988 edition of Westcoast Fisherman.
Seventy-five years ago, sardines (also known as pilchard) supported the largest fishery on the coast, but it collapsed in the late 1940s. When they were plentiful, large catches were also made off Vancouver Island, but it was thought the stocks migrated south and spawned off California.
The sardines began to reappear off the BC coast in 1992 and have been around ever since. By last summer, surveys showed they had not only mixed with herring stocks, but provided the "most common food item" for juvenile chinook and coho in the area.
When the fishery collapsed off BC in 1946, overfishing was the main culprit. But the article, by scientists Sandy McFarlane and Richard Beamish of the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, says that it is now known that massive sardine populations "fluctuate almost synchronously off Japan, Chile, and California."
The article says the large abundance of sardines that appeared off BC was associated with record sea surface temperatures that increased dramatically from April to July, but surveys showed the fish arrived before temperatures shot up.
"Why these large abundances of sardines arrived in BC remains a mystery," said the researchers. They still don't know if they are related to genetically distinct populations of the past or if they are part of the California stocks.
"What is difficult to answer," they say, "is what the future is for these sardines and how they will impact on West Coast ecosystems."
They say ecosystem-size changes in response to changes in climate are not gradual, but are analogous to turning a light switch off and on--the difference being that "the climate change switch goes in a number of directions."
They said it was tempting to point to the latest El Niño as a factor in the sardines' appearance, but they pointed out that such events "appear" to have less impact on ocean ecosystems than regime shifts. They admit there is still much to be learned about these conditions, but more evidence is adding up to support the regime shift concept than refutes it.
The article ends on a note of humility. McFarlane and Beamish say the sardines' return "should be a signal to all of us that we are not 'in charge.' Natural processes clearly override our abilities to manage these resources. The unexplained arrival of sardines is a signal that we are stewards of the resources and that we still have a lot to learn." -B.R.
[6] SHOW BIZ ON THE SNAKE
National news crews visited Lower Granite Dam last month to film part of a news piece that aired on April 30. The hydro system and the Corps of Engineers didn’t get off lightly, portrayed as fish killers and money wasters in the sound bites that followed. The ABC story prompted an unusually candid response from the Corps.
First the spot:
ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT ABC TV -- Peter Jennings, Jane Clayson, ABC.
Running Time: 2 min. 30 sec.
Army Corps of Engineers Project to Save Salmon Fails
Although the Army Corps of Engineers has spent over a billion dollars trying to save the salmon of the Pacific Northwest, the salmon are still dying due to man-made dams. Critics of the project say the Corps is wasting taxpayers' money.
JENNINGS: Tonight in our regular report on how the government spends some of your money - a very expensive project to save the Pacific Salmon. Millions of salmon are dying in the Pacific Northwest because they are unable to get up the river to spawn or back to the sea when they are born. There are just too many man-made dams in the way. Now, it goes without saying that trying to save the salmon is an important commitment to make. It's just a pity that with all the money they're spending, they can't get it right. Here's ABC's Jane Clayson.
JANE CLAYSON: In the Pacific Northwest, legend has it there were once so many salmon you could walk across the Snake River on their backs - sixteen million fish in the 1800's. Just over two million today.
The salmon are dying despite the nearly one billion tax dollars the federal government has spent to try to save them.
CHARLES RAY [Idaho Rivers United]: If nothing is done, the financial bleeding continues and the fish will be extinct pretty soon.
CLAYSON: One species already is. A big culprit - these dams, designed to provide energy, recreation, and navigation along the river. But they also kill salmon that can't by-pass them. So the Army Corps of Engineers has pumped more than a hundred million dollars to barge the fish. Gathering the salmon, chauffeuring them around the dams, and freeing them 292 miles downstream.
COLONEL ERIC MOGREN [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]: Barging was never intended as a silver bullet panacea to solving that problem. It was designed as an interim measure...
CLAYSON: Some interim measure! It's lasted fifteen years and still the salmon are dying. The Corps is trying. It spent millions for high-tech tracking systems and 25 million dollars for a steel wall to divert salmon away from the dam. Even Congress is concerned about the Corp's nearly one-billion-dollar salmon recovery effort, calling it "a black hole for tax money."
The Army Corps of Engineers says it will announce a solution to the problem when it comes out with a study late next year. But in the meantime, that hasn't stopped the Corps from requesting nearly a half billion dollars more to save salmon in a way that many say clearly isn't working.
RALPH DeGENNARO [Taxpayers for Common Sense]: And we need to send a message to the Corps of Engineers: "Stop wasting our money."
CLAYSON: The Corps is considering shutting down four of the dams, which one study says could save a hundred and eighty-three million dollars a year, but even that may not bring back the salmon. Nothing else has worked after nearly a billion dollars and counting.
Jane Clayson, ABC News, along the Snake River.
The federal agency’s response came from Colonel Eric Mogren, Deputy Division Engineer of the Corps’ Northwestern Division. In a May 11 letter to Peter Jennings of ABC World News Tonight, Mogren said the segment presented an "inaccurate and incomplete picture of the efforts of thousands of people and dozens of agencies working to help recover salmon in the Pacific Northwest."
Mogren pointed out that up to 75 percent of the salmon runs’ decline from the mid-1800s occurred before the first dam was built on the Columbia, and that many runs are still declining throughout the region, where no dams are impeding their migrations. "These facts lead most scientists to conclude that more factors than just the impact of dams are involved."
He said "for whatever reasons," the story ignored major impacts of declining salmon populations from harvest, habitat destruction , the introduction of "genetically weaker hatchery fish into the river and changing ocean conditions.
He also faulted the news broadcast for calling the transport program a failure and said it misrepresented the purpose of barging fish. Mogren pointed out to Jennings that PIT-tag studies have shown that barged fish return on an average of two to one over fish that migrate inriver.
"The transport program was never intended as the single solution to all of the impacts caused by harvest, habitat destruction, hatcheries and ocean conditions. To hold it as such is to judge it against a result it is not intended to achieve."
Mogren said it appeared that ABC had adopted the editorial line from environmental groups like Idaho Rivers United, which argue that the dams are the only problem. But he made clear other groups claimed different reasons for the major cause of
decline-- harvest, climate change or ocean conditions. He said the Corps believes that the decline has something to do with all of them.
Lower Granite in the Limelight "This is a very complex issue that defies simple silver bullet solutions. Rather than parroting the position of any one interest group, ABC could perform a great service to the public by more fully exploring all aspects of this important debate."
Seattle’s ABC affiliate ran its own version of the barging story on May 7, interviewing Idaho environmentalist Ray once again. "Barging’s a hoax," he said.
The report included a short interview with Montana biologist and ex-ISAB member Dr. Jack Stanford. Stanford said trucking and barging fish would never create a sustainable fishery. "We’ve got to let them do their thing in the river."
He said it wasn’t necessary to remove the dams, but a lot more water should be used to help their migration. "It may not be much more expensive," said Stanford, "because we’re spending billions--it seems to me that letting the water flow down the river can’t be that much more expensive. It’s probably cheaper."
Meanwhile, Mogren told NW Fishletter on May 14 that the Corps will continue to focus on the best science as the agency works to complete the Lower Snake Feasibility Study on the way to a decision point on the dams sometime next year. -B.R.
[7] NEW NMFS BIOP SIGNED BY ACTION AGENCIES
The Bureau of Reclamation, BPA and the Corps of Engineers announced they have signed off on the 1998 NMFS supplemental BiOp for salmon and steelhead. BPA’s fish and wildlife head Bob Lohn said his agency was keeping with the recommendations of the Independent Scientific Advisory Board and continuing the "spread the risk" policy of barging part of the juvenile migration and leaving the rest inriver. That settles, for now, the disagreement between NMFS and the action agencies over the value of transport. The action agencies called for maximized barging of juvenile fish in their biological assessment, a recommendation they said was based on 20 years of NMFS’ own research that showed clear benefits to fish from transport, especially steelhead.
Lohn also said they were going to work with the Corps of Engineers to review the use of transporting fish by truck, a concern expressed by the ISAB in its recent review of the transportation program. They felt that trucked fish may be subject to increased straying as returning adults.
Corps civil engineer Dave Ponganis said the review should be completed by December. As for now, the Corps may barge fish slightly longer this summer before shifting over to trucks as a cost-saving measure. Ponganis said there were not a lot of big changes in the BiOp from the draft version released earlier this spring, but some additional information has been included to update fish guidance efficiency numbers at dams where screens have been installed since the 1995 BiOp was written.
Other changes called for in the hydro system since the 1995 BiOp include spilling more water at dams (up to 120 percent gas supersaturation) to aid juveniles in river passage and establishing a flow target for the mid-Columbia of 135 kcfs to help migrating steelhead. The new BiOp also reaffirms the 1999 target date for a decision on long-term strategies for salmon and steelhead recovery.
Bruce Lovelin, executive director of the Columbia River Alliance, said that the NMFS strategies outlined in the new BiOp shows that the fish agency has no accountability to the region, stakeholders or Congress. "The Biological Opinion," said Lovelin, calls for more spill and less barging while it does not provide any estimate whatsoever of the benefit these measures will have on steelhead." -B.R.
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