[4] Billion-Dollar Salmon Recovery Plan For Puget Sound
The impressive collaboration between local governments, stakeholder groups, tribes and the federal government has unveiled a habitat restoration plan years in the making that is designed to recover Puget Sound salmon stocks. The draft plan covers 14 watersheds and is expected to cost more than a billion dollars over the next 10 years, which would double the current funding of $60 million in annual spending on habitat-related projects.
On June 30, the Shared Strategy's development committee submitted their draft plan to NMFS and the USFWS, in the belief that it will satisfy ESA requirements for regional chinook and bull trout populations listed since 1999. Federal agencies and the public will be able to comment on the plan for the next six months.
"We are proud that the diverse perspectives both on our committee and within watershed planning groups, are reflected in the attached plan to help achieve our vision of meeting the needs of both people and fish," said committee chair William Ruckelshaus in a letter to the federal agencies.
The draft plan has been scientifically reviewed by the Sound's technical recovery team which is responsible for putting the stamp of approval on a plan that satisfies the ESA. But the Puget Sound effort is aiming to recover the stocks to high enough levels to allow for the sustainable harvest of returning salmon by both tribal and non-Indian fishers.
Recovery goals have been developed for each watershed, with the TRT already judging that the chinook will have little risk of extinction if all watersheds show some improvement; at least two to four chinook populations in each of five bio-geographical regions attain a low risk status over the long-term, and if at least one or more populations from major diversity groups present historically in each of the five Puget Sound regions reach a low risk status.
The plan recognizes the importance of keeping harvest rates low, especially on wild stocks, while rebuilding habitat, and it points to significant reductions by Puget Sound fishers, but it downplays the increased catch by Canadians in recent years. It says the salmon treaty that regulates salmon catches between the two nations will be open in 2008 for re-negotiation.
The region's hatcheries have undergone an extensive review and are being re-tooled so hatchery stocks have less adverse impacts on wild fish, while allowing for more harvest. Fishing effort has been reduced as well, but some important stocks from several key watersheds in the Sound are still hammered by ocean commercial and sports fisheries.
According to WDFW's harvest model, about 40 percent of the Skagit summer/fall chinook are caught before they return to their home river, with about three-fourths of them hooked before they return to Washington waters. Nooksack chinook are estimated to be harvested at a 30 percent rate, with less than 6 percent caught by US fishers. More than one-third of all Lake Washington chinook are still getting caught, about half by Washington fishers. And the famous Elwha chinook stock, whose home river is the scene of a huge project to demolish two ancient hydro projects, are caught at a 24-percent clip, but only 5 percent are hooked below the US/Canada border.
Somehow, the optimistic plan figures that Puget Sound chinook numbers could double over the next 10 years to about 76,000 fish, and possibly achieve 80 percent of historical numbers in the next 50 years. But who knows how many people will be living in the Puget Sound region by then? Another million folks are expected in just the next 15 years.
According to NMFS' own data, the sound's chinook population has ranged between 17,000 and 62,000 since the early 1980s, about evenly split between wild and hatchery fish. Other WDFW data from the late 1960s estimated Puget Sound wild chinook spawners at 32,000 back then (several thousand less than the 2003 return), with about twice as many fish returning to hatcheries. In those days, harvest rates were high, with Canadian sports and commercial fishermen estimated to catch more than 300,000 Puget Sound chinook a year, about twice the number caught by US sports, commercial and tribal fishers.
The Puget Sound planners say the next 10 years will be crucial to get a reasonable start to the recovery process. But faced with shrinking federal dollars to help out, the plan calls for exploring "alternative sources or change the scope or pace of recovery plan implementation." However, the anticipated pace of recovery is likely to slow down if fiscal constraints make it necessary for policy makers to prioritize recovery actions between watersheds. Business interests involved in the effort say they will weigh in soon with their comments on the plan, said Kay Gabriel, manager of government affairs for the Weyerhaeuser Co. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Draft Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan
Puget Sound ESA Business Coalition's Salmon Recovery Principles
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