[1] More Salmon Scrutiny Planned By Northwest Congressmen
Three Northwest congressmen finished their third round of hearings yesterday in Pendleton, Oregon. To gather information on the survival of returning adult salmon and steelhead, Brian Baird (D-Wash.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) had already heard from stakeholders and fish agency personnel in October meetings in Vancouver and Tacoma. The fourth and last meeting is slated for Astoria in a couple of weeks.
The earlier hearings focused on harvest issues related to ESA stocks, an issue even more contentious after a Jan. 25 White House announcement that the Bush administration would like to reduce harvests and weed out hatcheries that have adverse effects on listed stocks.
The harvest message, delivered by James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was partly in response to emerging lawsuits by a coalition of fishing and conservation groups who are questioning the government's current harvest policy regarding listed fish in both the Columbia Basin and Puget Sound.
Connaughton's statement came the same day as the coalition's announcement of a lawsuit.
"Harvest rates on chinook from key Puget Sound rivers are too high for the salmon to recover," said Gary Loomis, President of the Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance. "The RMP does not satisfy the ESA or the 4(d)-Rule standards. NOAA Fisheries acknowledges as much, but approved the harvest plan anyway."
The coalition said that harvest rates have come down in recent years, but they are still too high for some listed stocks, varying from 22 percent to 76 percent for different populations. With costs for improving Puget Sound habitat pegged at $150 million a year for the next ten years of a 50-year plan, they contend that many scientists both "in and out of government" say that harvest rates must come down to consistently achieve spawning levels of listed fish populations that would conserve genetic, geographic, and life-history diversity as much as possible.
The same groups have already sued the government over the inriver Columbia harvest, and have called for reinitiating consultation over the U.S./Canadian agreement that allows British Columbia fishermen--principally the commercial troll fishery off Vancouver Island--to intercept large numbers of listed fish from the Lower 48. The groups say that recent DNA analyses show over 90 percent of the chinook caught off Vancouver Island are bound for U.S. waters.
But the coalition is not trying to pick a fight with the region's tribes over their own fisheries, which take half of the harvestable "surplus" of salmon.
"We don't see any necessary conflict between treaty fishing rights and reducing the impact of harvest," said Kurt Beardslee, executive director of Washington Trout, a party to the latest lawsuit. "While you might consider voluntary, incentive-based changes in tribal fishing gear or methods," Beardslee said, "less intensive, more selective non-Tribal fisheries would reduce impacts significantly while potentially creating more opportunity to harvest hatchery stocks and other healthier species."
But the federal government's latest announcement doesn't discriminate between tribal and non-tribal fishers. After CEQ chair Connaughton's remarks last month, NOAA regional administrator Bob Lohn told NW Fishletter that if the government's analysis finds harvest rates too high in the Columbia River and elsewhere, then it is up to the co-managers to reduce the overall effects of harvests. The co-managers should also apportion the harvest shares through current management processes, Lohn said, like is done in the ongoing U.S. vs. Oregon process that governs harvests in the Columbia.
Billy Frank, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, countered the latest call for cutting harvests at the same Salmon 2100 Conference where CEQ chair Connaughton made the controversial announcement. If all harvesters were closed down, Frank said "you wouldn't get any more fish back."
NWIFC's legislative policy analyst Steve Robinson told NW Fishletter last week that Frank's remarks reflected the commission's position that available spawning and rearing habitat is limiting population growth in many places.
"Cutting back on harvest even more might increase the number of fish in a given system," said Robinson, "but the primary problem that we're facing is the lack of available habitat for spawning and rearing, due largely the continued development of housing, condominiums, buildings, shopping centers, roads, the hardening of the banks and the degradation of the watershed through pollution. Harvest has been very responsive to the needs of the fish."
However, NOAA's Lohn had already put everyone on notice that cuts may be coming, especially the Canadians, who have shifted their own summer fishing seasons off Vancouver Island to target fewer coho and chinook from their own weak stocks. According to Lohn, the Canadians have been expending more harvest effort in the early spring and late summer, which has had the effect of targeting more U.S. fish than in previous years.
The latest chinook report from the Pacific Salmon Commission shows that during 2004, the fishery off the west coast of Vancouver Island was closed altogether from May 17 to Sept. 16, but between April 1 and the middle of May, the troll fleet had caught more than 100,000 chinook, about two-thirds of their landed catch for the entire season.
A recent DNA analysis of the Canadian catch estimates that about 2,500 Snake River fall chinook were caught by B.C. fishers off Vancouver Island in 2004, nearly 12 percent of the number that made it back to the Snake that year. It also showed that Puget Sound chinook made up about 19% of their catch.
But just how accurate are those numbers? NOAA scientist Dell Simmons said the DNA analysis has been re-worked because its initial findings, reported at a Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting last July, were flawed. According to Simmons, the coded-wire tag data had been misinterpreted. Simmons said the stock compositions don't change too much in the revision, but another category of chinook had to be added to the analysis, "unknown mass-marked hatchery fish." He said the new group made up about 12 percent of the catch off Vancouver Island, and they are likely fish from southern US hatcheries, probably lower Columbia tules.
Simmons said the CWT data is up-to-date, as well. At last week's annual meeting of the Pacific Salmon Commission, he that Canadians stated they are not storing two years' worth of fish heads in freezers as some other biologists had accused them of, which they said was frustrating their efforts at timely analysis of the harvests.
The latest exploitation rate analysis by the Pacific Salmon Commission shows that in 2003, the Canadian portion of the catch of fall chinook headed for the Snake has gone way down, from nearly 34 percent (1988-1994) to only about 12 percent.
The Alaskan share has climbed from about 7 percent to 21 percent. US net fisheries (treaty and non-treaty) in the Columbia River accounted for 35 percent of the catch in 2003, with another 32 percent about evenly split between US troll and sport fisheries. The PSC analysis also estimated that about 77 percent of the fall run made it back to its home grounds in 2003. From 1988 to 1994, escapement levels averaged 48 percent.
The commercial trollers off Vancouver Island caught only about 3 percent of the Snake fall chinook catch in 2003, much less than their 1988-1994 average of 24 percent. But the report does show that earlier fishing periods by the Canadians has bumped up their catch of some listed Puget Sound and Willamette River chinook stocks.
Simmons said analysts need a few more years' worth of data, but it looks like harvest impacts may be significantly changing.
However, the government seems to be sending out mixed messages on the hot topic. The Justice Department filed motions last week in Seattle District Court to dismiss two lawsuits by the Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance that are trying to reduce the sport and commercial interception of listed US stocks in both countries. -Bill Rudolph
The following links were mentioned in this story:
NW Fishletter 204, Oct. 24, 2005
NW Fishletter 209, Jan.31, 2006
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