[2] Feds Call For Public Comment On Puget Sound Recovery Plan
The National Marine Fisheries Service is calling for public comment on the huge, habitat-based plan for recovering Puget Sound chinook stocks developed by regional stakeholders over the past six years. The federal agency's comments, suggesting ways to make the plan more compliant with ESA requirements, were tacked on in a 42-page supplement.
The Sound's chinook recovery plan was developed by the Shared Strategy process, spearheaded since 1999 by ex-EPA head Bill Ruckelshaus. It has coordinated efforts of state, tribal and local government agencies, along with conservation and business groups, to create the giant plan for 14 watersheds in the region to deal with 22 chinook groups that are at "high" risk of extinction.
A technical recovery team (TRT), which includes NOAA Fisheries scientists, helped develop the plan. The team defined five geographical regions in Puget Sound and created criteria to gauge the "biological viability" of the stocks, which includes looking at abundance, productivity, spatial structure and genetic diversity.
The TRT is calling for at least two, and up to four chinook populations, in each of the five regions to achieve viability, with at least one population to be viable from each major genetic life history group historically present.
The plan focuses on the first ten years of recovery actions, which are geared to improve all chinook populations and evaluating priority actions. But it doesn't advocate any quick fixes. In fact, the plan estimates that recovering the chinook stocks could take 50 to 100 years.
However, the cost of implementing the first 10 years of restoration projects could be about $1.4 billion. This projected cost has some critics like the Puget Sound ESA Business Coalition asking why harvest levels aren't being reduced further while the region gears up to the full recovery mode.
Todd Woolsey, Coalition spokesman, said during a hearing in October held by three Northwest congressman, that his group felt recovery actions should first focus on delisting the chinook and chum stocks currently under ESA protection. Then it should develop ways to reach sustainable harvest levels. He said a big assumption in the Shared Strategy process was that constraints to habitat were the biggest problem and further harvest cuts were not necessary.
But NMFS says in its supplement that a resource management plan approved by the agency in 2005 will reduce the risk of harm to wild chinook, while providing harvests for both treaty and non-treaty fishers on stronger hatchery-stock chinook and non-listed species.
However, the agency said the plan needs to make it clearer that harvest management is a government-to-government process among state, tribal and federal managers involved in the Pacific Salmon Treaty, the Magnuson-Stevens Act and the Boldt decision.
A lawsuit has been filed by a coalition of sportsfishing/conservation groups and Snohomish County PUD to force the federal government back to the negotiating table in order to reduce Canadian interception of ESA-listed stocks from the Columbia River and Puget Sound, instead of waiting till 2008 when talks are scheduled to begin over interceptions.
NMFS said it agreed with the approach to hatchery reform now underway to reduce risks to wild chinook, and is now reviewing the hatchery plans for ESA compliance.
But the agency also said the TRT needs to more explicitly define the spatial structure and diversity parameters in its population viability criteria over the next few years. NMFS cautioned that monitoring and evaluation may show more actions are needed to recover the stocks than the plan calls for. In that case, the agency will look at all sectors for potential improvements.
NMFS also expressed concern that available funding may not cover the full first 10 years of the plan and said regional leaders need to address the issue. Current annual funding of regional watershed projects account for about half of the amount needed to implement the plan.
Over the next 10 years, the plan figures that Puget Sound chinook could double to about 76,000 fish, and possibly achieve 80 percent of historical numbers by 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 U.S. sports, commercial and tribal fishers. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Puget Sound Chinook Proposed Recovery Plan
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