[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

[2] Washington Politicians Hammer Out Agreement On Columbia Water

Washington politicians have hammered out last-minute compromise legislation over management of new water resources from the Columbia River. The new bill captured nearly every vote from both sides of the aisle last week and Gov. Chris Gregoire has promised to sign it soon. It will make legal the "no-net-loss plus" water option that has been pushed by the state's Department of Ecology for years and ends the first phase of an initiative started in 2001 by then-Gov. Gary Locke to end the gridlock over the issuance of new water rights for the Columbia River.

The bill calls for two-thirds of any new water supplies developed with funding from a Columbia Basin water supply account to be reserved for out-of stream uses like agriculture or municipal water supplies, and one-third to go in the state's water rights trust program to enhance instream flows for fish. The 2/3-1/3 rule will not apply to transfers of existing water rights.

A $200 million account will be created to fund studies ($132 million) and pay for conservation projects ($68 million) over the next 10 years

Not everybody was satisfied with the results.

"It codifies the no-net-loss plus option," said Darryll Olsen, who works with the Columbia-Snake Irrigators Association. He said it means that non-measurable impacts to fish from small changes in flow is now embedded in official state policy, even though federal scientists have found flow/survival relationships weak and inconsistent, with water temperature likely a much more important factor in fish survival.

The legislation also calls for voluntary agreements between user groups and the DOE to establish conditions under which the withdrawn water can be approved. These agreements will be based on conserved water that shall be allocated in a way that ensures it is provided for out-of-stream uses, while no reduction in Columbia mainstem flows occurs from the new appropriation.

However, John Stuhlmiller, assistant director of public relations for the Washington State Farm Bureau, said the bill doesn't include the "no-net-loss" language, but only says these new water agreements must be structured to ensure there are no negative impacts to flows in July and August.

Stuhlmiller said the bill also keeps any new water rights developed by agreement in the area where the parties are located, to keep benefits local. He said some agricultural users in Northeast Washington were concerned that conservation efforts they developed might be siphoned off by municipalities like the Quad Cities area downstream.

He also said the bill calls for an inventory of water uses, an element pushed by environmental groups.

The bill focuses on using some of the conserved water to replace deep well irrigation in the Odessa area, where the aquifer is rapidly diminishing, with $6 million dedicated to that end and another $10 million for immediate studies and development of water conservation projects.

The bill also calls for the Department of Ecology to develop water supplies for municipalities with pending applications, along with creating new, uninterruptible supplies for junior water rights holders on the Columbia mainstem and for towns, residential, industrial and agricultural uses.

The legislation tasks DOE to monitor and evaluate the new water for instream uses and to submit a report every two years on the status of the program and a review of its overall effectiveness every 10 years.

But just where will most new water come from?

That's still in the works and will probably be for many years to come. Insiders say only a modest amount will come from conservation efforts. Previous talks have focused on getting another foot of elevation out of Lake Roosevelt, possibly buying some non-treaty storage from Canada, or developing huge new storage reservoirs near Chief Joseph Dam and in the Yakima Basin that could cost up to $8 billion or more.

The Farm Bureau's Stuhlmiller said the legislature still has to vote for the bonding authority to come up with the $200 million for the next 10 years. But right now, legislators had a more immediate problem, and were scrambling to fix the water bill since it was discovered the $2 million operating budget for DOE's work in these areas for the coming year had been inadvertently left out. -B. R.

[3] Region Creates One Of World's Biggest Bird Feeders

The survival benefits to salmonids from moving a colony of Caspian terns further down the Columbia River may have been lost because the lower estuary cormorant population has doubled in the past few years, according to researchers from Oregon State University and Real Time Research of Bend, Ore.

In a draft report available on their web site, the researchers say that the largest cormorant colony in North America now inhabits East Sand Island, about 12,500 pairs of double-crested cormorants, along with about 8,800 pairs of terns. Together, the terns and cormorants consume about 10 million smolts annually.

The transplanted terns, about the same sized-colony as once hung out at Rice Island further upstream, now eat an estimated 3.6 million juvenile salmonids at their new nesting grounds on East Sand Island. That's 9 million less salmonids than they consumed in 1998 at the other location, according to the study, which was released in early February.

And though cormorants do have a varied diet, juvenile salmonids only make up about 5 percent of it, and their sheer numbers have made total consumption by the two species similar to the numbers consumed by the terns alone in 1998.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already developed a plan that calls for moving two-thirds of the East Sand tern colony to other West Coast sites. And with cormorant numbers still expanding into the "foreseeable future," researchers are studying the feasibility of relocating some of the cormorants as well.

Through a combination of tactics that included blaring loudspeakers and habitat modification, the scientists were highly successful at relocating the terns to a place where their diet focused less on salmonids. Before the move, it was estimated that the tern colony consumed about 13 percent of the nearly 100 million smolts migrating past in the spring of 1998.

More than 36,000 PIT tags from juvenile salmonids were recovered from the colony at Rice Island. It showed that nearly 14 percent of all the PIT-tagged steelhead detected at Bonneville Dam ended up in a tern that year.

Recent PIT tag detections at East Sand Island show that in 2005 the terns consumed about 11 percent of the hatchery steelhead and 8 percent of the wild steelhead passing though the estuary, with less than a 2 percent impact on spring chinook. The birds nailed about 6 percent of the hatchery coho and .6 percent of the wild coho passing by.

By actually observing bill loads from nesting terns, the report says about 23 percent of their diet was made up of salmonids, while most consisted of sardines, herring, shad, anchovies, smelt and surfperch. About 42 percent of the juvenile salmonids consumed by the terns were hatchery coho, about 27 percent were spring chinook, 20 percent were steelhead, 10 percent fall chinook, and 1 percent were sockeye.

Upriver, the terns are even more of a problem for salmonids migrating down the Snake River, because they make up about 65 percent of the terns' diet. Nearly 500 nesting pairs at Crescent Island, near the confluence of the Snake and Columbia, chomped an estimated 440,000 smolts in 2005, mainly steelhead. And it gets worse in low-flow years like 2004 and 2005, says the report.

The researchers say PIT tag recoveries at Crescent Island show that 2004 was especially bad for steelhead, since about one-third of them were picked off by the terns. In 2005, predation on migrating steelhead was about half that. Luckily, about 95 percent of these steelhead were transported in barges in those years.

However, BiOp judge James Redden has ordered more spill this coming spring, which would reduce the number of steelhead that will be barged. Luckily, there is little habitat available for the Crescent Island tern colony to increase in size.

A nearby cormorant colony (300 pairs) picked off fair numbers of salmonids early in the 2005 migrating season, said the researchers, consuming about one-quarter of the number of smolts that the tern colony had eaten.

Investigators also found that the 500 pairs of white pelicans didn't seem very interested in eating salmonids. Only 600 PIT tags were counted in their nesting area, compared to 16,000 tags counted at the tern colony and 4,100 at the cormorant colony.

The cost of dealing with the birds is increasing. For the 2007-09 budget, nearly $2.5 million has been proposed for research in BPA's fish and wildlife program, with another $4 million projected in shared-cost proposals in the 2007 budget for more monitoring and creating new nesting habitat for terns at other West Coast sites.

If agencies decide that cormorants must be removed to relieve predation on ESA-listed salmonids, then another EIS must be completed. -B. R.

[4] Waldo Hired To Ride Herd On Hatchery, Harvest Review

NOAA Fisheries announced Feb. 13 that Seattle attorney Jim Waldo will lead a collaborative review of hatcheries and harvest that affects the recovery of ESA stocks in the Columbia Basin, a new initiative announced last month by James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council for Environmental Quality.

"Our goal is to do everything we can to make sure that all the region's salmon-related activities are aiding in the recovery of our wild salmon stocks," said NOAA Fisheries' regional administrator Bob Lohn.

The reform effort led by Waldo will get input from agency and tribal fish managers to help identify hatchery programs that aren't contributing to salmon recovery. An initial progress report is due Mar. 31. Waldo was contracted for one year for $100,000, said NOAA Fisheries spokesman Brian Gorman, and the initial focus will be on hatcheries, but that it's impossible to deal with hatcheries without looking at harvest factors as well.

For the past five years, Waldo has been one of the lead facilitators in the effort to reform hatchery practices in Puget Sound and coastal Washington and he facilitated another review of hatcheries charged with reporting its findings to Congress. -B. R.

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