[5] Power Council OK's New Supplementation Effort For Grande Ronde, But Questions Remain

Despite continuing concern by scientists whether the strategy really works or not, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council voted 5-3 last month to approve more than $16 million to fund new facilities and upgrades to supplement ESA-listed spring chinook stocks in Northeast Oregon's Imnaha and Grande Ronde rivers.

The upgrade and new facility is expected to add another 500,000 smolts a year to the ESA-listed spring chinook run in the Snake River, and depending on conditions downriver, from 40 to 4,000 more returning adults every year. Co-sponsors include the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department.

In a May 9 press release after the vote, Council chair Tom Karier called it a crucial opportunity to significantly reduce the risk to an endangered species, but just a few days ago, the independent science panel that reviews F&W proposals for scientific merit questioned the value of the project and whether adding hatchery fish to the wild run would really work.

"While not unique to this proposal or NEOH in general," said the June 2 ISRP [Independent Scientific Review Panel] review, "a repeated theme throughout the Columbia Basin is how supplementation could achieve restoration goals without creating other problems and risk."

The panel said the proposal sponsors had pointed out that the fish declines were mainly caused by downstream variables and mortality, but they didn't show how supplementation "can overcome such downriver effects."

The ISRP review said, in a separate review, it had judged that a new production facility was not warranted until data and evaluation showed that supplementation could really help to rebuild wild populations. "It is uncertain where gains will come from as the downstream effects are expected to hit released fish as well."

At last month's Council meeting, NOAA Fisheries' Rob Jones said his agency supported the NEOH project because it could help preserve the spring chinook run until their productivity improved, and after that, could help the run become self-sustaining. Jones also said the project would help meet federal compensation obligations from dam construction and operations.

But BPA wants to get that in writing--to make sure the $16 million gets the proper credit before it spends the money--credit in the next hydro BiOp for adding more fish to a listed run.

Bob Austin, BPA Fish and Wildlife division's deputy director, said when BiOp credit is acknowledged and a water supply permit is received for the project, his agency will pay for it. As for the ISRP concerns over the value of supplementation itself, Austin said those will be addressed as well.

BPA has already spent more than $9 million since 1987 on various planning exercises for the prospective hatchery in NE Oregon while co-managers struggled to develop a production strategy that satisfied requirements for the ESA, Oregon's wild fish policy, the Lower Snake Compensation Plan, and treaty requirements through the U.S. v. Oregon process.

The project's progress was further delayed after the U.S. Forest Service made a preliminary determination that the proposed facility on the Imnaha River would adversely affect the free-flowing river after a consultation under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

By January 2004, the sponsors re-tooled their project by jettisoning the proposed Imnaha rearing facility and decided to raise half the Imnaha stock at a new facility on the Lostine River and the other half at a modified Lookingglass Hatchery. -B. R.

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