[1] Feds Call For Less Harvest Of ESA Fish--Everywhere
A senior Bush administration official blindsided a convention of 300 wild salmon worshippers last week to announce a new initiative that will look at ways of reducing the harvest of ESA-listed salmon both in the Columbia River and the ocean between Astoria and Alaska.
James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, addressed the Salmon 2100 Conference in Portland, where an assortment of academics, biologists and salmon recovery addicts gathered to hear different prescriptions on how to preserve and improve salmon numbers over the next 100 years, or whether it was even possible to keep them going.
But no one but Connaughton suggested cutting harvest levels. Most of the discussion was on a loftier plane and dealt with various ways that steadily increasing numbers of Northwest residents might be able to reduce their collective ecological footprints and maintain "fishable" populations of salmon.
However, the CEQ chair stayed firmly within the bounds of the 4 H's - the realms of habitat, hatchery, hydro and harvest reform. He said the feds would also scrutinize 180-odd hatchery programs in the Columbia Basin in order to close the ones that don't contribute to the recovery of wild stocks, and only maintain others if they didn't allow for large numbers of ESA-listed fish to be caught incidentally.
Noting the billions already spent on habitat and hydro improvements, Connaughton said the power system was not off the hook, but added, "we still allow ourselves the luxury of eating threatened and endangered salmon that may be needed for recovery. Although I recognize the complexity and broader equities of the matter, something still seems curiously out of synch here. These are salmon on the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act."
He said the current ocean harvest will be scrutinized along with latest 2005-2007 inriver harvest agreement, and when talks come up in 2008 with the Canadians over salmon treaty issues, the U.S. will push for reduced interceptions of ESA-listed stocks like the Snake River and Puget Sound chinook.
He said that maintaining the treaty tribes' fishing rights is still an unshakable premise of the feds' position and noted that the tribes have already made a significant contribution towards recovery by limiting their own harvests. "We need to make sure everyone else limits their harvest," Connaughton said.
At an informal press briefing after his presentation, the CEQ chair, along with regional NMFS administrator Bob Lohn, explained things a bit more in depth.
Lohn acknowledged the near-term problem of sorting out catches with Canada, since their biologists have already decided the coded-wire tagging program, developed many years ago to track catches, has been severely compromised by the recent U.S. effort to mass-mark hatchery fish to allow for more sport catches.
But Lohn was hopeful that a new form of sampling catches using DNA analysis similar to the Canadians' method could eventually be adopted region-wide. Lohn said the Canadians DNA work has led them to reduce harvest effort on their own weak stocks off Vancouver Island by concentrating fishing efforts both earlier and later in the fishing season when the fish are less likely to be around. But that has meant that Canadians are probably catching more U.S.-bound salmon than current models estimate, Lohn said.
And though Connaughton's presentation downplayed any possible reduction by Columbia River tribal fishers, both he and Lohn said later that if the new harvest assessments show that overall rates must be cut, then both tribal and non-tribal shares will be reduced, with the U.S. v. Oregon process utilized to reset allocations between the different parties in the Columbia.
They also stressed the possibility of using more selective fishing methods that might keep catches of hatchery fish relatively high while reducing impacts to listed fish.
Connaughton said all runs of listed fish have increased since 2000, with upper Columbia spring chinook up 15 percent, and Snake River fall chinook boosted to better than 300 percent. He said survival of young fish is equivalent to that of the 1960s, before the lower Snake dams were built.
However, he pointed out that about half of the Snake fall run is harvested before it gets back to Idaho, with about 60 percent caught in the ocean off Alaska, B.C., Washington and Oregon.
Canadian analyses of DNA from their recent catches shows that nearly 90 percent of the chinook caught by B.C. trollers off Vancouver Island were U.S.-bound fish, and nearly 20 percent were headed for Puget Sound. More than 40 percent were lower Columbia chinook, and almost 7 percent were made up of other threatened Columbia, Snake River and Willamette spring and fall chinook stocks.
Though some angler and conservation groups are actually suing the feds to reduce the take of listed fish, the government's biggest chore will be to get regional buy-in for their new initiatives from other large stakeholders who feel they are unfairly singled out when it comes to making sacrifices for tiny numbers of fish. In 2005, the Snake fall chinook run (hatchery and wild) made up less than 4 percent of all the 416,000 fall chinook that passed Bonneville Dam.
Sportfishing industry spokesperson Liz Hamilton said sports fishers don't want to be held to a different standard than others, and Nisqually tribal member Billy Frank Jr., representing the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, told the Salmon 2100 crowd that if all harvesters were closed down, "you wouldn't get any more fish back."
But that's not how the federal government feels these days. CEQ chair Connaughton also told reporters that another reason new harvest and hatchery assessments are in the offing is because of "emerging" lawsuits over harvest issues.
Another one of those lawsuits emerged on the very day he spoke at Salmon 2100. The Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance, Washington Trout, Native Fish Society, and Clark-Skamania Flyfishers filed a notice of intent to sue NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the federally-approved Puget Sound salmon harvest plan, charging that harvest rates on chinook are too high for the fish to recover.
Seattle attorney Svend Brandt-Erichsen, who is representing the groups, said the harvest plan doesn't measure up to the recovery criteria for some of Puget Sound's listed chinook populations set by the technical recovery team.
As for the feds' latest initiative to re-assess all the harvest BiOps, Brandt-Erichsen seemed pleased, even though the process is expected to take a year, and talks with Canada aren't officially scheduled until 2008. He represents many of the same plaintiffs in another lawsuit that calls for reconsultation of the BiOp that OK'd harvest levels set by the salmon treaty between the two countries. Brandt-Erichsen said the treaty allows the parties to implement additional conservation measures sooner than 2008 if a new evaluation suggests that greater harvest restrictions should be put in place. He said newer analyses have shown that there are flaws in the assumptions that govern harvest allocations between the two countries and they need to be corrected.
"We are pleased to see the harvest issue on the table with the rest of the H's," said Brandt-Erichsen. "It's part of the problem and needs to be part of the solution."
Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R) supported the Administration's initiative, though he didn't agree with everything in Connaughton's remarks. "Our past practices have focused on keeping the fish in the river and in abundant numbers so that we can have our cake and eat it too," Craig said in Jan. 25 remarks on the floor of the Senate. "In no other place in the world, do we treat an ESA listed species this way. We don't raise Bald Eagles only to use their feathers for our clothes, so why do we spend hundreds of millions of dollars--each year--to recover the species, and then allow a majority of them to be killed through harvesting? The people who pay for these absurd practices are the Northwest ratepayers." -Bill Rudolph
[2] BPA Picks Short-Term Replacements For Fish Passage Center
The Bonneville Power Administration announced last week that the Battelle-operated Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of nine Department of Energy labs situated throughout the country, will take over coordination of the data analysis functions previously conducted by the soon-to-be-defunct Fish Passage Center. Five proposals were received by BPA to take over the FPC work that included analyzing potential flow and spill measures to benefit fish passage.
Greg Delwiche, BPA vice-president for Environment, Fish & Wildlife, made the announcement at a special Jan. 26 meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. He said Battelle has both a national and regional reputation for excellence, and a broad record of technical work on the Columbia River dealing with salmon passage and monitoring functions.
PNNL and its predecessors in eastern Washington have been operated by Battelle since 1965. The lab performs work for other government agencies besides the Energy Dept., as well as private industry.
Delwiche said Battelle Northwest's duties will include prioritizing requests for analysis, seeking governing committee advice as needed, assigning requests to technical analysts, and arranging for and enforcing peer review.
He said their very first task will be to develop a pool of scientists and biometricians who will actually do the analyses.
Delwiche said BPA has proposed that the policy coordination activities of the FPC's previous director be taken on by the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority through a contract modification. "In doing so," said Delwiche, "it would insure a clear separation between the policy coordination and the science analysis."
BPA has had to scramble to replace the Fish Passage Center, whose funding is due to run out near the end of March. The Center's funding was killed in report language added to a Congressional water and energy appropriations bill last fall by Idaho senator Larry Craig (R).
Craig said the BPA-funded Center played too much of an advocacy role in the region. Environmental and fishing groups have relied on several FPC analyses in their ongoing litigation to add more flow and spill to federal dam operations in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Delwiche also announced that the FPC data collection and warehousing functions will now be maintained by the Pacific States Marine Fish Commission, an entity created by Congress more than 50 years ago to help resource agencies and the fishing industry manage ocean resources in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. PSMFC already maintains large fish-related databases under BPA contract and handles the huge PIT-tag database that keeps tracks of millions of salmon and steelhead detection histories.
The meeting allowed supporters of the controversial Fish Passage Center one more venue in which to voice their displeasure with the state of affairs. Seattle-based economics consultant Kevin Bell said that the new contracts would cost more, and that Battelle was far less qualified scientifically "even to look at the numbers" than Center personnel. He called the move an act of political vengeance. "What we're seeing here is Bonneville taking control of the information. There is no longer an independent information function on what is happening with salmon in real time in the Columbia."
Delwiche took issue with Bell's remarks. He said Pacific States will hold the contract for the data warehousing. "We will not have a role in being any filter on the data," Delwiche said, noting that the clear intent is to have data that is open to the whole region.
John Platt, attorney with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, said he feared the NW Power Act had been "sullied by today's announcement," and consigned to a court battle that would pit state authority against federal authority.
He argued that the report language used to kill the FPC lacked the force of law. "Let's not mistake the fact that the purpose of this language was to deprive the federal and state fish and wildlife agencies and tribes of the information that they need to make informed requests for operations of the hydro system to protect anadromous fish while considering the needs of resident fish," Platt said.
Scott Corwin, vice president of the Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative, said there were aspects to the current proposal that raised questions, "but it looks like a vast improvement" to get credible science the region could rely on.
Judy Danielson, one of Idaho's representatives to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, also voiced support for BPA's announcement.
However, Melinda Eden, Oregon's NPCC member, questioned the closed BPA process that picked the proposals. Delwiche said the process was undertaken that way after legal advice was received on the matter. He said he would discuss the issue with Eden in the future if he had a procurement attorney on hand to answer her legal questions.
Several groups have already served notice they will take the demise of the Fish Passage Center to court. The Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association have petitioned the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals to review BPA's decision. They argued that it violates the NW Power Act, is inconsistent with BPA's fish and wildlife program and that the power marketing agency exceeded its statutory authority by unilaterally amending its fish and wildlife program.
The other regional entities that had proposed to take over some or all of the Fish Passage Center duties included a joint effort between CRITFC and ODFW, WDFW, and the University of Washington. Most have also submitted proposals to take over former FPC duties through the 2007-2009 funding cycle. The Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority has also submitted a proposal for the longer time-frame. -B. R.
[3] Oregon Coastal Coho Don't Make ESA List
The federal government has decided that the Oregon coastal coho stock, listed as a "threatened species" under the ESA in 1998, will not need legal protection under the law in the future. The coastal coho stocks plummeted in the 1990s when ocean conditions went sour, but have rebounded strongly since then. Their status has been in limbo since 2001 when they became the focus of a court case [Alsea Valley v. NMFS] that ultimately forced NOAA Fisheries to change its listing policy to accommodate many hatchery stocks.
In June 2004, NOAA Fisheries proposed to list the coastal coho as "threatened" and announced its draft hatchery policy. But last May, the state of Oregon released its own review of the stocks and concluded the populations were viable and "likely to persist in the foreseeable future."
The feds have reviewed that review and concurred with the state's judgment, announcing their decision not to list the coastal coho on Jan. 17. "This administration remains solidly committed to recovering Pacific salmon, and I am pleased to join the State of Oregon and local stakeholders in celebrating this important milestone," said NOAA Fisheries regional administrator Bob Lohn in a press release.
Lohn said he applauded the work of local stakeholders to develop a solid recovery plan. "This is an encouraging example of the diverse interests that can come together to improve conditions for salmon in the Pacific Northwest."
Critics of the announcement said most of the coho stocks' big jump in numbers came from improved ocean conditions that have boosted productivity since 1999. By 1998, the population had sagged to about 40,000 wild spawners, but rebounded to 265,000 fish in 2002.
In its response to comments, Oregon said that the low marine survivals of the 1990s were "unprecedented" in the past 50-year record. During the 1990s, the coastal stocks also endured drought and a major flood event, said Oregon analysts.
The state concluded that the life cycle of the fish, their population dynamics and structure, along with the broad geographic distribution of the species all reduced the likelihood of succumbing to a perfect storm of adverse environmental conditions.
But Bill Bakke, director of the Portland-based Native Fish Society, pointed out that comments from NOAA Fisheries' own Science Center in Seattle called the rosy prediction of coho futures into question.
"The NWFSC review posits that the empirical record is too short and the cause-and-effect relationship behind recent escapements is too poorly established to support Oregon's hypothesis," said Center scientists. They added that their reviews of the state's coho assessment "raise questions about the confidence one can have in the report's major conclusion--that the Oregon coast coho are not threatened with extinction."
Since 2000, more than $10 million in federal spending has been funneled through the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund to pay for restoring and improving habitat for coho and other listed species on the Oregon coast.
"I think the Oregon Plan works," said Dan Riddle, vice president for Seneca Sawmills of Eugene, Ore. He didn't see a huge effect on his industry from the coho not being listed because the state's timber business has already adopted a cooperative approach. "It's a go-ahead and harvest, but voluntarily improve habitat" approach, said Riddle, who noted that many of the old logging roads in his region are being rebuilt to reduce adverse impacts to fish habitat.
Riddle said it was a much better situation for Oregon timber harvesters, than in California and Washington, where habitat plans developed to aid ESA-listed fish have taken large blocks of land out of timber production altogether.
But independent mill owners in Oregon were not always so happy with the coho situation. It was reported by several sources both in and out of the federal government that in 2004, some unhappy timber industry folks tried to have regional administrator Lohn replaced after the listing determination for the coastal coho dragged on for years.
James Connaughton, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, paid a visit to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski in June 2003 to discuss the coho situation. Insiders say he had promised Kulongoski that the coho would be delisted by that November.
Riddle said there was admittedly some frustration with the slow progress of the federal bureaucracy to get the coho determination completed, but that it was a mischaracterization to say that the Oregon group was trying to have Lohn replaced. "He's got a tough job," Riddle said.
However, other sources say that some of the independent-minded small mill owners in Oregon, who were heavy contributors to the Republican presidential campaign, had gained Bush advisor Karl Rove's ear. And there was a subsequent attempt by the White House to have Lohn replaced by Mark Rutzick, a Portland-based attorney who once worked for timber industry clients through the Northwest Forest Resource Council (including Seneca Sawmills) and later moved to a position as a senior legal advisor for NOAA Fisheries.
Rutzick became a focus of scorn by environmental groups during his term at the federal fish agency, where he worked to broaden listed fish definitions to include hatchery stocks, redesignating critical habitat and was a principal architect of the legal framework of the 2004 hydro BiOp, since termed illegal. The 2004 BiOp analyzed effects of dams on fish in a more narrow way than previous BiOps did, because it placed the dams' existence in the environmental baseline. Rutzick is now back in private practice in the Portland area.
But Lohn kept his job after several influential Northwest Republicans, including Puget Sound salmon recovery czar Bill Ruckelshaus, made quick trips to Washington, D.C., to convince White House staffers that he should be kept on as regional administrator -B. R.
[4] Too Early To Evaluate '05 Summer Spill, Says Science Panel
The Independent Scientific Advisory Board that provides advice to NOAA Fisheries and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council has concluded that the effectiveness of last summer's court-ordered spill on juvenile fall chinook will not be known until adult fish return over the next few years. The ISAB was asked to look into the spill issue and the preliminary analyses produced to gage its effectiveness.
The added spill reversed a years-long policy of barging most fall chinook from Snake River dams. It was defended in court by federal attorneys who said leaving more fish inriver would likely kill more of them because of increased summer water temperatures. But U.S. District Court judge James Redden OK'd more spill after environmental and fishing groups filed a motion to have it boosted, though he turned down their request for more flows.
The ISAB looked at several preliminary reports on the spill, noting that most hatchery chinook had migrated before the spill regime even began.
The board said a preliminary analysis by the Fish Passage Center that compared survivals from 2005 to a few earlier years is of "limited utility" because of the variations in hydro operations from year to year, as well as the variations in run timing and passage behavior of the migrating fall chinook. The FPC study found the spill beneficial to juveniles and was cited by Redden in his late December decision to continue the increased summer spill operation in 2006.
The ISAB recommended a multiple-year study to measure effectiveness of the spill, with more monitoring of both juveniles and returning adults, along with evaluating consequences of changing spill for adult fish. The board also said more should be done to understand and estimate survival of the fall chinook that over-winter in hydro reservoirs and migrate early the following spring. -B. R.
[5] Karier To Chair Northwest Power And Conservation Council
Tom Karier, one of Washington's two representatives to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, was elected to chair the four-state forum for the coming year at the Jan. 18 NPCC meeting in Vancouver, Wash.
Karier, an economics professor and associate dean at Eastern Washington University has served as a council member since 1998, when he was appointed to the post by then-governor Gary Locke.
The Council chose Oregon member Joan Dukes as vice-chair. She was appointed to the Council in 2005 by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, after serving many years as a state senator. -B. R.
[6] Columbia Harvest Managers Hope Spring Season Lasts Past April
Washington and Oregon fish agencies announced last week a plan to allow sport fishers to target hatchery chinook in the Columbia River below the 1-5 bridge through April 19. And they say their staff expects the season to last much longer than that, according to ODFW's Curt Melcher.
Managers are a bit gun shy after only about half of last year's pre-season spring prediction actually materialized. The same situation occurred on the Willamette, when only 61,000 chinook showed up out of a 117,000 pre-season forecast.
Last year, sport fishing for chinook closed April 19 below the I-5 bridge. In 2004, it lasted until May.
With 161,0000 spring chinook expected to enter the river in 2006, and more than half projected to head for tributaries above Bonneville Dam, the managers are concentrating more fishing effort in the lower river to protect wild fish heading past the dam, while hoping to extend the fishing season.
The two states also ironed out their differences in the catch split between the commercial and the sports sector. Sports groups had lobbied both states' F&W commissioners to boost their share of the allowable, 2 percent non-treaty impact on wild ESA-listed chinook from 60 percent to 70 percent. However Oregon commissioners voted to cut the sporties' share by five percent, while Washington voted to maintain than status quo. They split the difference and ended up allocating 57 percent to the sports side and 43 percent to the commercial fishery, where generous prices are again expected from wholesalers
Managers expect the sport anglers to catch around 31,000 hatchery chinook, while the gillnetters are projected to choke about 6,700, which includes their catch from the selective areas that target net-pen fish outside the main channel where most wild fish are migrating. Managers estimate that mortality from releasing wild chinook from gillnets is about 4 times higher than mortality from the sports side unhooking wild fish.
The relatively good news is that 14,600 wild Snake River springers are expected. That's a slightly higher number than actually showed last year. The total upriver spring run (whose count now includes Snake summer chinook) is predicted to come in at 88,400 fish, which is down from last year's 107,000-fish return, but greater than the average runs of the 1980's and 1990's. -B. R.
[7] Will Northwest Salmon Be Around In 100 Years?
A crowd of 300 salmon wonks met in Portland last week to hear several prescriptions for how to keep Northwest salmon populations in decent shape by 2100. The issue seemed to strike a receptive note in the region, since another 150 people were turned away due to space limitations.
The Salmon 2100 project is the brainchild of EPA biologist Robert Lackey, who has published numerous articles on the topic over the past several years--generally expressing a skeptical attitude toward the effectiveness of current salmon recovery actions in light of the steadily growing population throughout the region. The project has put together policy prescriptions from 30 scientists and policy analysts, most of whom have concluded that "wholesale modification of core societal values and priorities" must occur for significant populations of wild salmon to exist a hundred years from now.
Lackey argued that the runs in 2100 "are easier to predict than in 2010" because of the extreme variability in the short-term and huge factors beyond our control over the future--ocean conditions, climate change, and what he called the BRIC factor [Brazil, Russia, India, China]; their growing economies are expected to have a huge global impact over the next century.
But closer to home, Lackey said there were controllable policy drivers that are currently working against keeping many salmon stocks around "fishable" numbers, rather than just remnant runs.
First are the rules of commerce, that he said, work against the increasing abundance of wild salmon, along with scarce natural resources, principally, high quality water. Next comes human population increases, where slowing birth rates of current Northwest residents will not offset large increases in population from outsiders moving in. He said it was likely the 40 million people that now reside in the NW, including BC, will expand to 65 million by the end of the century.
The last important policy driver is what Lackey called "individual priorities," the personal preferences each individual makes in daily life that could eventually impact salmon. "The fish won't go extinct, but what will it take to sustain significant runs?" He said any policy prescription would take 50 years to see if it worked--about two ocean cycles of productivity and downturn.
He said it was the general consensus among project contributors that the current long-term strategy to recover salmon will not succeed, and substantial policy changes are necessary. Simply focusing on the 4 H's, habitat, harvest, hatcheries and hydro, is "relatively cheap," Lackey said, "but won't keep the runs going."
White House Council James Connaughton was on hand to explain the Bush Administration's renewed focus on two of those H's (see story 1), harvest and hatcheries, to get more wild salmon back to spawning grounds.
Guido Rahr, head of the Portland-based Wild Salmon Center, plugged the idea of salmon sanctuaries in priority ecosystems, instead of the current government mandates that focus most resources on the populations at the highest risk of extinction. Others took potshots at the current salmon recovery management as well, arguing that much funding is wasted in top-down planning instead of getting directly to community-based restoration projects.
Jack Williams, Trout Unlimited's chief scientist, felt that huge lifestyle changes will be needed to cut energy consumption and reduce adverse affects on climate, which ultimately affect salmon resources.
Jim Martin, retired ODFW chief of fisheries, and now conservation director for the Berkeley Conservation Institute, funded by one of the largest fishing tackle manufacturers in the world, said the region will have to come to grips with climate change and urban growth in a big way. He said the effort to recover lowland salmon fish populations will largely be a waste of time as waters become too warm and degraded in the future. "We will lose salmon in low-elevation streams," he said. Martin suggested a focus on headwaters streams and a few dams. "The Snake River dams gotta go."
The Salmon 2100 crowd heard a different message from Ernie Brannon, professor emeritus in fisheries at the University of Idaho. Brannon says the salmon and steelhead ESA listings are unwarranted. As far as total numbers of salmon in the Northwest, he said the runs are as healthy as they were 50 years ago. For many years, Brannon has supported hatchery production to make up for wild fish losses from dams, harvest, and exotic species, but he said there is an "absolute need" to reform hatchery programs to complement wild runs. He called for the creation of "engineered" streams that mimic natural conditions, but would provide more security for young fish, with flow control, woody debris, and nutrients supplied to boost survival. -B. R.
[8] Corps Calls For Public Comment On Flood Control Report
The Corps of Engineers has just released a draft report that identifies possible new ways of handling its flood control obligations while providing more water to meet flow objectives for fish migration in the Columbia River.
In a Jan. 26 letter to interested parties, COE District Engineer Debra Lewis said the purpose of the study is to determine if there is a federal interest in pursuing a "more detailed feasibility analysis" for modifying current operations to benefit ESA-listed fish. She estimated that it would take about 6 years and $30 million to accomplish the study.
According to the study's executive summary, its objectives were based on Congressional language and supplemental language used in the 2000 hydro BiOp that calls for looking at ways to reduce effects of flood control operations on the spring freshet. The language calls for focusing on years of average and below-average runoff, so that spring and summer flow objectives in the Snake and Columbia rivers could be met more often.
Other study objectives include minimizing flow fluctuations when fall chinook are emerging, and achieving a high probability of refill at large reservoirs, but still providing "acceptable" flood protection for inhabitants of the floodplain.
The Corps says in 2004 NMFS compared fish survivals between its proposed operations and a hypothetical reference operation that the agency considered the best operations scenario for fish passage in the hydro system. NMFS estimated that ESA-listed Snake fall chinook and steelhead and Mid-C steelhead would get a 3-percent to 4-percent survival boost. The reference operation shifts water from Columbia storage for summer flow augmentation.
"These increases are based on the assumption there is a positive flow/survival relationship," says the Corps' report. "Without this assumption, the increase would only be one percent for all species."
Many different measures may have to be taken before operations are changed, including purchasing land and water, building new storage dams, upgrading levees, and improving the reliability of runoff forecasts.
The draft says there is a federal interest in pursuing a feasibility study and the report contains an alternative plan that could provide acceptable levels of flood control, fisheries benefits, and is "environmentally acceptable." But such an alternative would change systemwide storage control and calls for upgrading or removing levees, along with re-defining "acceptable levels of damage reduction." -B. R.
[9] "It's Still The Ocean, Stupid"--10 Years Of NW Fishletter
This newsletter has only been around for two or three salmon life cycles, but it has been on scene long enough to track the emergence of salmon recovery science from the Dark Ages of speculation when seven data points (and two of them highly questionable) on fish survival were used to "prove" the flow/survival relationship that has been used to justify the expensive flow and spill regimes in the Columbia River.
It's been a rough ride since then, but the revolution in PIT tag technology shows fish survival past big dams is much higher than the mixed bag of "experts" [PATH] and their hand-picked 1998 "weight of evidence" panel had ever thought. The old power centers are slowly being eroded by painstaking research and open dialog.
But state, tribal, and some federal fish agencies have had to be dragged kicking and streaming into the 21st Century. Some of them still don't believe what other federal scientists have come up with so far--that any flow/survival relationship for spring chinook is weak and inconsistent at best, while ocean-entry timing of juveniles seems to be a huge factor in their survival to adulthood. River temperatures have also been found to play a huge factor in fish survival, especially for fall chinook, at least for the ones who migrate the same year they hatch.
That "weight of evidence" panel from the late 1990s had even denigrated the notion that ocean conditions could make much of a difference in fish survival. But when plankton productivity doubled in cool ocean waters after 1999, salmon numbers climbed fast, leaving a group of astounded fish managers frantically re-tooling their messages.
However, as I said in a 2000 editorial celebrating our 100th issue, "It's the ocean, stupid," but "suggesting that the ocean is both culprit and savior doesn't do much at budget time for preserving a network of hatcheries and harvest managers who are ultimately at the mercy of Mother Nature. It's not fish that folks are trying to preserve here, it's turf."
But some of the old guard, supported by even older judges, and funding from large charitable organizations who want to keep the ESA on the front page, still propagate the notion that a lot more money might fix this mess, despite the fact that the Corps of Engineers has about reached its limit of how to modify dams and their operations to benefit fish. After the money is spent, it will still take another 50 years to figure out what kind of habitat restoration and other actions might really work. And that's assuming scientists can monitor these changes successfully. Some of them have even learned that many of these streams need more nutrients than the kind that comes from decaying dollar bills.
Unfortunately, some of the individuals who led the region down the garden PATH are now playing principle roles in the huge effort to keep track of these changes, and they are up to some of their old shenanigans, like trying to put the scientifically fraudulent upriver-downriver survival comparisons in their new bag of tricks.
Just last week, a federal judge told government agencies they'll have to spend a lot more money on fish before he will bless their next biological opinion. Somebody should tell him what scientists have been finding out in other watersheds in the Northwest--that little salmon die a lot during their migration, and that affordable habitat restoration is likely to have modest benefits. They are also finding out that in Puget Sound's dam-free, and relatively short Snohomish River, only about 3 percent of the migrating fall chinook smolts even make it to the salt water. And if by chance, all the planets, sunspots, spillways, drought, upwelling, fish barges, pikeminnow, smallmouth bass, cormorants, terns, hake, mackerel, sea lions, fish ladders and harvesters give migrating smolts a bit of a break, maybe one, two or three out of a hundred will make it back alive. And we call that success.
The new cadre of experts taking over salmon recovery should be forced to read an old recipe for salmon recovery written by the late Don Bevan and his team, that was later dismissed by federal agencies. It was a monument to common sense and clear thinking.
Now the region is on a salmon recovery rampage, led by a group of theorists who think they can determine whether these fish will be around a hundred years from now. Their veneer of mathematics disguises a simple assumption--if the fish numbers in stream X are trending upward now, chances are they will be going up a hundred years from now. But they are setting the recovery bar so high most of these stocks will likely never reach it. However, they will certainly preserve an industry dedicated more to its own survival than that of the fish.
What follows is a sampling of headlines from both the earliest and later issues of this publication to show how much the landscape has really changed despite the steady drone of lawyers and advocates of one sort and another maintaining a steady assault in the popular press, which never seems to have the time to look behind the curtain. -B. R.
....
1996: NRDC CALLS SPILL IMPORTANT TOOL FOR SALMON RECOVERY
A key environmental group is calling the federal program to spill fish and water over Columbia River dams "an important tool in salmon recovery."
2005: BIOP JUDGE ORDERS MORE SPRING SPILL, LESS STEELHEAD FOR IDAHO
Federal District Court Judge James Redden has ruled in favor of part of a motion by environmental and fishing groups late that calls for more spring spill to help juvenile fish get over federal dams, though he called for less spill than they wanted. At the hearing on Dec. 15, Redden upheld more spill for summer operations--a strategy that began last year when the BiOp plaintiffs [NWF v. NMFS] won part of a motion to change hydro operations. But Redden did not grant the plaintiffs' latest request for more flow augmentation. He said flow benefits were an issue both sides could work out during the year-long remand period that has started ticking down to create yet another hydro BiOp. He's thrown out two of them since June 2003.
1996: SPRING/SUMMER SMOLT COUNTS DOWN DRAMATICALLY FROM 1995
According to federal and state fish agency estimates, the numbers of wild spring/summer chinook smolts arriving at Lower Granite Dam this spring will be down dramatically from last year. A National Marine Fisheries Service report agrees with estimates from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game that only 168,750 wild spring/summers will reach the first dam on the Snake River in 1996. That represents an extraordinary drop from the 1.3 million wild spring/summers that showed up last year. Spring/summer chinook were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1991.
2001: SPRING RUN BUILDS RECORD MOMENTUM
This year's huge spring chinook run in the Columbia continues to stun biologists, who now say it may be coming in a bit early because of low river flows. The highest single day's count, so far, was April 11, when over 14,400 chinook were counted at Bonneville Dam. By April 11, the run was over 103,000 fish, just shy of one-third the total spring estimate. The past week saw three daily counts that were higher than the entire spring return of 1995 (10,192).
1996: NMFS SURVIVAL STUDY REPEATS EARLIER FINDINGS OF LOW RESERVOIR MORTALITY
The third year of a multi-year study by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the University of Washington confirms earlier results that showed low reservoir mortality for migrating salmon. The so-called Skalski/Williams/Iwamoto study claims that mortality was 10 percent or less in reservoirs between Lower Granite, Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams, with survival rates dropping down to 70 percent when measured between Lower Granite and McNary.
2002: COUNCIL'S MAINSTEM PROGRAM MAY COLLIDE WITH BIOP OVER FLOWS
A presentation on the latest state of salmon science indicates the Council's mainstem amendment process may be on a collision course with the latest NMFS hydro BiOp, which keeps current Columbia River flow augmentation and spill strategies in place for the next 10 years.
At the NWPPC's monthly meeting last week, consultant Al Giorgi reported that after nine years of NMFS research, the agency has found no "apparent" flow/ survival relationship for ESA-listed salmon and steelhead stocks. Council members seemed a bit stunned by the straight talk, though it's really not news. With salmon stocks showing a 10-fold increase in survival rates over the past 10 years, Giorgi, a principal with BioAnalysts Inc., told the Council that "conventional wisdom" holds that the boost isn't anything that could be expected from the fresh water system, but resulted from changes in oceanic conditions.
1996: CBFWA WILL NOT DISBAND, BUT FAILS TO FIND CONSENSUS
The Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, which has the critical job of prioritizing fish recovery spending, is still seeking consensus among its member agencies. In a March 13 meeting, the state, tribal and federal fish agencies that make up the group agreed to continue as an organization, but failed to find what one member called "a collective vision."
2005: PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE OF SUBBASIN IMPROVEMENTS PEGGED AT $3 BILLION
The cost of improving habitat and fish production in Columbia River subbasins could exceed $3 billion over the next 10 years, according to a draft decision memo being produced by a workgroup of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority. Just a day before the workgroup released its first estimate of subbasin costs, five upriver tribes in CBFWA from two regions that are likely to receive only about 15 percent of the projected subbasin funding, sent a letter to executive director Rod Sando explaining why they have second thoughts about maintaining the affiliation with the authority. The Colville, Couer d'Alene, Kalispel, Kootenai and Spokane Tribes said the body has changed from a powerful caucus of elected/appointed heads of governments to "more of a forum for managers to stake their claims to BPA's funding."
1996: KITZHABER LAUNCHES COHO SALMON INITIATIVE
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber has launched a coastal salmon initiative aimed at restoring coho salmon. The governor hopes to prevent listing by the federal government as a threatened species. The restoration plan will be given to the National Marine Fisheries Service by October 1, 1996. The initiative is intended to show NMFS that Oregon has a management plan for coho salmon that is sufficient to protect the species and negate the need for federal protection.
2006: OREGON COASTAL COHO DON'T MAKE ESA LIST
The federal government announced last week that the Oregon coastal coho stock, listed as a "threatened species" under the ESA in 1998, will not need legal protection under the law in the future. The coastal coho stocks plummeted in the 1990s when ocean conditions went sour, but have rebounded strongly since then. Their status has been in limbo since 2001 when they became the focus of a court case [Alsea Valley v. NMFS] that ultimately forced NOAA Fisheries to change its listing policy to accommodate many hatchery stocks.
1996: MONTANA DEFENDS RESIDENT FISH NEEDS; ASKS TO JOIN ENVIROS LAWSUIT AGAINST NMFS
Montana says it will go to court to defend fish in Libby and Hungry Horse reservoirs. On May 6, the state sought party defendant status in a lawsuit filed by environmental and fisher groups against the federal Columbia River salmon operations strategy. In pleadings filed in federal district court in Portland, the state called the lawsuit "a direct attack on Montana's reservoirs."
2005: COUNCIL 'GOT IT RIGHT' ON MONTANA FLOWS, SAYS SCIENCE PANEL
The panel of independent scientists charged with examining a Northwest Power and Conservation Council proposal to reduce and stabilize summer flows from its reservoirs agreed with the NPCC's analysis that found the biological tradeoff between upstream and downstream effects is way out of balance. In a report released Dec. 10, the panel said the adverse effects on resident species in Montana from current BiOp operations have been "demonstrated," but benefits to migrating salmon in the lower Columbia are speculative and very small at best.
1996: RANKING OF F&W PROJECTS IRKS CONTRACTORS
Conflict of interest charges are being leveled at Columbia basin fish managers due to recent ranking of salmon restoration projects. Some of those who proposed projects claim the salmon managers gave their own projects high rankings, all but guaranteeing they would be funded by Bonneville. Projects proposed by outsiders were ranked low, claim the contractors, sharply reducing their chances for funding.
1996: SENATE AMENDMENT CALLS FOR NEW PEER REVIEW FOR SALMON FUNDING
A new peer review process for salmon funding has come one step closer to reality with the passage of the Senate Energy and Water appropriations bill on July 26. The bill would attempt to remove any suggestion of a conflict of interest by federal and state fish and wildlife employees and the tribes who benefit financially from the present program.
1996: STATES AND TRIBES COME TO TERMS OVER ALASKA CHINOOK
After years of bickering, Alaska fish managers have reached an historic agreement with Washington, Oregon and Northwest tribal officials over just how many chinook salmon Southeast Alaska trollers will be allowed to catch this season. But Canadian fish managers were howling mad over the accord, claiming that the new harvest was twice as high as it should be. Canadian fisheries officials believe some of their own chinook stocks on Vancouver Island are in such bad shape that no commercial fishing for chinook will be allowed along the B.C. coastline.
2005: POLITICIANS GET EARFUL ON SALMON HARVEST, CANADIAN INTERCEPTIONS
With salmon recovery plans nearly completed for several Northwest regions, some stakeholder groups are wondering if stocks can actually recover if half of the fish are still being caught before they reach their spawning beds. Canada is a major culprit, they told a Congressional panel a couple of weeks ago.
1997: CORPS NIXES LOWER SNAKE SEASONAL DRAWDOWNS; FINAL DECISION ON DAMS DUE IN 1999
The Corps of Engineers has recommended that plans for seasonal spillway crest drawdowns and seasonal natural river drawdowns in the Snake River should be shelved for good because of little benefit to fish and the likelihood for harm to both juveniles and adults from dam passage. The recommendation effectively torpedoes a cornerstone of the Power Council's 1994 Fish and Wildlife Program that called for such measures.
2004: SCIENCE PANEL FINDS BIG HOLES IN SUMMER FLOW ANALYSES
At last week's flow symposium in Portland, an independent panel of scientists said the region needs to get a much better handle on measuring both water flows and fish survival before it can hope to implement a policy sure to benefit ESA-listed fall chinook. Panel members, who were charged with making a recommendation about Montana's proposal to modify current hydro operations, panned a federal fish passage model that links summer flow augmentation with improved fish survival. They also questioned the accuracy of current survival rate data after hearing about recent research that found half the ESA-listed Snake River fall chinook returning as adults had never been counted as juveniles migrating to sea.
1997: SCIENCE BOARD GIVES PIT TAG STUDY PROVISIONAL OK
The power council's scientific peer review group has given a lukewarm thumbs up for a controversial PIT tag study proposal from the Fish Passage Center. The Independent Scientific Advisory Board sent its recommendation to the power council to fund the PIT-tagging of hundreds of thousands of Idaho hatchery salmon this year because it will generate "new information of relevance to the evaluation of the mainstem hypotheses of the Fish and Wildlife Program and the NMFS biological Opinion." But the ISAB told the council that the proposal needs "substantial revision" before it can achieve enough scientific rigor for the scientists to endorse it as the basis for a long-term study.
2005: FEDERAL SCIENTISTS SLAM FPC SURVIVAL STUDY
Scientists from NOAA Fisheries' Science Center in Seattle say the Fish Passage Center's latest draft survival study of hatchery and wild chinook in the Columbia and Snake rivers is misleading because its analyses are incomplete and don't "fully support" the findings in the Comparative Survival Study's executive summary.
1997: CHANGE IN OCEAN CURRENT MAY SIGNAL SHIFT TO COLDER, WETTER, CLIMATE REGIME
Three Northwest scientists have just submitted a paper that says a change in ocean currents is a sign that we may be looking at 20 years of colder, wetter weather. "Locally," they write, "with costly decisions with regard to altering operations of, or removing Columbia River dams being imminent, we urge decision makers to consider newly acquired information on the potential for a climate shift." They say that the most recent phase, which began in 1977, "appears to be one of the longest in the past five centuries. The switch, if it has not already occurred, is imminent."
2001: 27,000-FISH DAY AT BONNEVILLE DAM!
Harvest managers who had originally thought this year's record spring chinook run was peaking early got a big surprise. After counting more than 17,000 chinook on April 13, they were prepared to settle in with their original spring forecast of 364,000. But the April 18 daily count climbed to 27,000--bringing the total to nearly 226,000 fish by then--about 10 times the 10-year average. Harvest managers soon revised their estimate up to 440,000 fish, a move that gave both tribal harvesters and sports fishermen another crack at the run.
1999: 200 SCIENTISTS TELL CLINTON TO BREACH THE DAMS
More than 200 fish scientists sent a letter to President Clinton last week that called for breaching lower Snake River dams to recover endangered runs of salmon and steelhead. Otherwise, they say, the fish will go extinct over the next 30 years. Their recommendation comes several months ahead of any official word on the subject by the Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with studying fish recovery alternatives, including breaching.
2005: 'SPEECHING' WON'T AVOID BREACHING THE DAMS, BIOP JUDGE WARNS
Federal District Court Judge James Redden issued his final remand order of the 2004 BiOp on Oct. 7, warning that breaching the four dams on the Lower Snake River would become a possibility if the final remand is not successful. The mention of breaching surprised some attorneys, because it wasn't included in the draft order the Judge sent out earlier in the week.
2003: QUESTIONS RAISED OVER SALMON/PCB STUDY
A July 30 report that said farmed salmon contain five to 10 times as much PCBs as wild salmon has created a worldwide stir over health concerns. But now that more than 75 versions of the fish story have appeared, ranging from the New York Times to the BBC and even showing up on web-based news sites in Saudi Arabia, it seems likely the major media have been duped once again.
2005: MORE PCBS SHOW IN PUGET SOUND CHINOOK THAN OTHER STOCKS
New research has reinforced earlier findings that showed Puget Sound salmon contain more PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) than other wild salmon on the West Coast. The latest results show that Sound chinook contain nearly three times as many PCBs as chinook from northern BC or Alaska, with levels in the Sound's resident chinook even higher.
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THE ARCHIVE :: Previous NW Fishletter issues and supporting documents.
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