[5] Business Coalition Weighs In On Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Effort

The Puget Sound ESA Business Coalition has filed initial comments about the region's draft salmon recovery plan developed by a huge collaboration of local governments, state, tribal federal agencies, and watershed groups.

The filing says the plan should focus on delisting stocks, rather than recovering them to levels of sustainable harvest. "We have to recognize that we do have limited resources," said coalition chair Allison Butcher.

The habitat improvement plan is called the Shared Salmon Strategy, and when it's completed, federal fish authorities hope to use it for the basis of their own plan to recover ESA-listed chinook and chum stocks in the Sound. The plan is scheduled for release by the end of the year.

The business coalition says actions should be prioritized before recovery strategies are placed into programs to meet city and county Growth Management Act planning deadlines, as the Shared Strategy advocates.

The coalition also says the recovery goals in the draft plan should be subject to future modification through the application of adaptive management principles and practices.

Butcher told NW Fishletter that the plan is unclear about transferring mitigation funding to salmon projects in program budgets where mitigation is already earmarked for other purposes.

She said the planners should recognize that federal salmon dollars may be shrinking next year, especially from the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund that has paid for millions in projects from Alaska to Oregon.

"Some of these watershed proposals are awfully expensive," Butcher said, adding that Congress wants performance measures put in before it votes for more recovery funding. She also said hatchery operations and harvest practices should be integrated into any final plan. With so many Puget Sound fish caught in Canada, she said, there needs to be more focus on renegotiating the international salmon treaty, although talks on the subject aren't scheduled until 2008.

Butcher said these comments are just preliminary, but when the draft recovery plan is available in the Federal Register, the coalition will provide detailed responses on many of the issues. The Puget Sound Business Coalition includes the Boeing Co., Weyerhaeuser and the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish counties. -B. R.

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