[3] Upper Columbia Recovery Plan Released For Comment
A $154-million, 10-year proposed recovery plan for ESA-listed chinook and steelhead for the Upper Columbia region was finally released at the end of September for a 60-day public comment period.
It's been coming out in bits and pieces over the past two years. One portion came out nearly two years ago, but it didn't include any specific recovery actions. Now a detailed product has been delivered to the public, and it's already been given the once-over by NOAA Fisheries after a long struggle by local entities to complete it under the aegis of the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board. The board, made up of representatives from Chelan, Douglas and Okanogan County, and the Yakama Nation and the Confederated Colville Tribes, coordinated the effort, soliciting input from watershed and farm groups, and other interested parties.
It's mercifully much shorter than the 2000-page lower Columbia plan-it's less than one-fourth the size of that document, which deals only with the Washington side of the river and is still waiting for a price tag to be attached.
With the plan in place, NOAA Fisheries has judged that it will take about 10 to 30 years to recover the listed spring chinook in the Upper Columbia region with a minimum goal of 4,500 naturally produced spawners as one of several recovery criteria, with more specific goals for the Wenatchee, Entiat and Methow populations.
About 1,600 natural-origin spawners were estimated to have returned to the Upper Columbia in 2002, considerably better than the less than 300 fish returning in 1999 when the ESU hit the endangered species list. In 1995, the return was under a hundred fish.
Along with other criteria for recovery, listed steelhead will have a minimum goal of 3,000 spawners among four local populations. In 2002, it was estimated that about 3,000 natural-origin steelhead returned to the Upper Columbia. In 1996, the year before they were listed, about 600 returned.
The upper Methow goes dry in many average water-years.
(Photo courtesy Steve Devin)
The feds will no doubt hear more from residents of Okanogan County, where the county farm bureau has complained mightily during the years-long process. Some locals are still worried about possible infringements to private property rights as the implementation shapes up. And the plan includes the battle-scarred Methow River drainage, where NOAA Fisheries battled local water users for years to add more flows for fish by modernizing leaky irrigation ditches.
With 12 hatcheries in the region, the plan's $154-million budget includes the expense of operating them, which makes up about one-third of the recovery plan's cost over the next 10 years. But one of the recommendations for each distressed stock is to reduce the numbers of hatchery fish on spawning grounds to boost fitness of wild spawners. There is no mention of possibly curtailing hatchery production, since it is part of the mitigation effort to make up for Grand Coulee forever blocking the Columbia to migrating salmon.
The plan repeats what former Douglas Country senior natural resources planner Chuck Jones told NW Fishletter in early 2005--that habitat improvements by themselves aren't going to recover these stocks. Now a consultant, but still working on the issues, Jones said some costs still need to be plugged into the plan, one reason why they are considerably lower than other plans in the works.
Nobody expects everything in the plan to be implemented--even the planners admitted that. But they said the $154-million estimate over 10 years is still a lowball estimate, since it doesn't include the costs to Mid-Columbia PUDs, which, they say, far exceed $100 million for implementing their habitat conservation plans. The estimate also leaves out other costs for improving survivals at mainstem federal dams and in the estuary.
Using the EDT [Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment] analysis tool developed by regional consultant Lars Mobrand, the planners examined potential costs and benefits, and found that fish benefits tapered off considerably after the first third of the plan was implemented. With the habitat plan implemented at one-third "intensity," it was estimated that spring chinook numbers could increase 3 percent to 25 percent. At 100-percent intensity, the estimate was a 3 percent to 36-percent benefit in fish numbers.
Without any empirical data to back them up, the planners suggested that hatchery improvements could achieve a 3-percent to 5-percent increase in naturally produced spring chinook and steelhead in the Wenatchee-Entiat stocks, and a 5-percent to 10-percent improvement for salmonids in the Methow and Okanogan.
Using another tool developed by the EDT folks called the "All-H Analyzer," they said preliminary results suggested that hatcheries may play a big role in the fitness of naturally produced chinook and steelhead. They said wild spawners would probably benefit by reducing the numbers of hatchery fish on spawning grounds "through removal at collection points or selective harvest."
The plan also estimated a 10-percent boost in productivity of spring chinook if all harvest (mostly in the lower Columbia) stopped, but they said wild steelhead numbers might actually decrease, since a reduced harvest could swamp spawning grounds with hatchery steelhead.
The plan estimated up to a 50-percent improvement in productivity for juvenile chinook and 40 percent for steelhead after improvements are made at PUD projects and federal mainstem dams.
Although mitigation hatcheries are securely funded, the plan says such funds "fall well short" of paying for the entire program. Help will be needed from the state's salmon recovery funding board, PUDs, BPA's fish and wildlife program, the federal hydro BiOp, and more money from the state legislature to boost agency budgets, the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund, federal appropriations from Congress, local government mechanisms through state appropriations, other NGO funding, and voluntary public and private partnerships.
But the plan says every dollar spent on salmon recovery will generate thousands more for local, state, federal and tribal economies. "Importantly," says the document, "the general model for viewing costs versus benefits must be viewed in terms of long-term benefits derived from short-term costs."
But some local residents feel that the plan has less to do with developing a realistic road map to recover local stocks and more to do with satisfying the federal judge who is overseeing the development of the next hydro BiOp in the mainstem Columbia and Snake. Darlene Hajny of the Okanogan County Farm Bureau said her group feels they are just pawns in the big game, and pointed to comments in a local citizens' coalition August newsletter as a accurate portrayal of their feelings.
"The Upper Columbia fish recovery plan has been hijacked," says the newsletter. "It is now part of the BiOp Remand negotiation process, to develop a court-ordered 'jeopardy analysis,' which goes beyond ESA. The Upper Columbia plan is now being used as a poster-child, to placate Judge Redden and a bevy of litigation-filing environmentalists. NMFS hopes these proposed changes, actions, off-site mitigations, and implementation of the Upper Columbia plan will be enough. We're afraid it's too much!" -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
Okanogan August 2006 Newsletter
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