[1] Science Panel Questions Big-Ticket Items In BPA's Next F&W Budget
An independent science panel has raised some very big questions about the merits of many of the big-ticket items--mainly hatchery and fish supplementation programs--proposed for the next three-year funding cycle in the Bonneville Power Administration's fish and wildlife program.
In the past, many of the programs in question were funded without much controversy. But this time around, fewer than half of the 500-plus proposals the Independent Scientific Review Panel (ISRP) assessed were deemed worthy of at least partial funding.
The panel announced its review at this month's Northwest Power and Conservation Council meeting, minutes after Council members voted unanimously to authorize spending another $2.7 million to improve Idaho hatchery facilities for the Redfish Lake sockeye captive-rearing program. The vote supports an element of the last hydro BiOp that calls for doubling smolt production of the endangered sockeye population.
But it's a program the ISRP said should not be funded in the future because there is scant evidence the project has been doing any good.
Shortly before the Council voted to approve the funding request (out of the 2006 budget), Idaho's new governor, James Risch, made an appearance to plead for more sockeye money. NOAA Fisheries supported the request as well.
The ISRP has raised questions about captive broodstock programs before, a concern that that has persisted with the panel's new membership. In November 2004, the group reviewed several programs in the Columbia Basin, including the Redfish Lake project, wondering how long the captive rearing project that had been so successful at raising sockeye to adulthood could keep going before inbreeding produced deleterious effects to the stock.
Noting the few fish that returned to the lake from outmigrations (ranging from 257 in 2000, to only 11 in 2003), the panel said it was uncertain if the program was working as a "life raft" protecting the stock until downriver conditions improved enough to boost returns. Redfish Lake in Idaho is nearly 900 miles from the sea.
The panel's latest review was even more pointed. Responding to a suite of four sockeye proposals authored by IDFG, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and NOAA Fisheries (which called the project a success as a safety net and a tool for restoring the run), the ISRP tried to be tactful when it explained why the proposals ($14.2 million over the next three years) ended up in the "not fundable" category.
"The ISRP respectfully interprets these results differently," it said. "Clearly the Snake River sockeye ESU has been preserved in captivity and has not been extirpated. However, at this time it appears the ESU is extinct in the wild and reintroduction efforts have not proceeded easily or successfully. There is no reported successful full-cycle reproduction in the wild and then production of subsequent adults."
About 18 percent of the 540 proposals from 140 sponsors ended up in the "non-fundable" category after the panel judged their scientific merits. But the ISRP didn't stop there. It had plenty of questions about more than 200 other proposals, including big-ticket items such as the $31-million proposed hatchery below Chief Joseph Dam sponsored by the Colville Tribes.
While acknowledging that the proposed hatchery would, as advertised, be used to both augment harvest and supplement natural runs, the panel noted that "supplementation remains an unproven strategy for rebuilding naturally producing populations." The panel recommended that "pilot studies precede the massive construction project, which will consume a significant portion of the Fish and Wildlife Program budget without a significant level of population and natural production response."
The ISRP was also critical of the future of other supplementation efforts, and was opposed to funding three years' worth of planning ($749,000) by the Umatilla Tribes for a Walla Walla River hatchery in northeast Oregon. The ISRP said the proposal was likely a fish-farming operation that would conflict with actions to boost natural productivity of the river, especially if the Carson stock of mixed spring chinook lineage was used as the hatchery's broodstock.
And the panel still had questions on whether the supplementation effort in the Grande Ronde ($14 million over three years) that was OK'd at last month's Council meeting was warranted. But this time they wanted a better explanation for the $5.5 million in funding for the proposed monitoring and evaluation of the effort over the next three years. They called on the sponsors "to work together to provide a compelling logic path or set of evidence that it is justified in terms of benefit to the targeted populations and subbasins."
The ISRP recommended that more experiments be developed to determine the value of supplementation--whether hatchery-raised fish can really boost wild fish numbers without reducing fitness of the wild population. Outgoing ISRP member Rick Williams told Council members that this issue was "one of, if not the, critical uncertainty."
The IRSP did call for funding another three year's worth of work trying to unravel the value of supplementation of lower Snake fall chinook by identifying genetic differences between truly wild fish and those whose ancestors came from Lyons Ferry Hatchery. Most folks think the fall stock has benefited from the introduction of hatchery fish over the past decade, and redd counts are up significantly. But fish biologists are still unsure how much of a contribution that hatchery fish from Lyons Ferry are making to the wild run.
In other places, supplementation efforts have succeeded for some populations, such as the Quilcene River summer chum in the Puget Sound area. However, some restoration programs for listed stocks have a sunset clause of 12 years (three to four generations), mainly to avoid potential adverse hatchery/domestication effects. But that rule of thumb doesn't seem to be followed in the Columbia Basin. -Bill Rudolph
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Preliminary Review of FY 2007-09 Proposals for the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program
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