[3] CSS Study Gets One More Year Of Funding
A controversial, long-term study of hatchery salmon survival received one more year of funding at last week's meeting of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, despite ongoing complaints from long-time critics like PNGC Power VP Scott Corwin, who said there is already enough reputable scientific review of the study to pull the plug on it altogether.
But Council members cobbled up $125,000 for participants in the Comparative Survival Study [CSS] to finish a promised 10-year review of the project by next fall, which will then be reviewed by the NPCC's independent science panel, who have found fault with some CSS methods for years. If the 10-year report passes muster, then funding will be restored next fall for the 08-09 year.
Council members took away the $704,000 task of PIT-tagging fish from CSS personnel and called for the marking to be supervised by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. In their last review, the science panel recommended tagging more salmon from lower Columbia hatcheries, but the $704,000 will only cover current tagging efforts.
The CSS has looked at PIT-tagged survivals of both transported and inriver migrating stocks from the Snake and Columbia Rivers, and has attracted its share of critics since its early days, when reviewers said the CSS analyses suffered from serious analytical shortcomings, bias, and a lack of statistical significance.
More criticism came after the original study dropped results from two lower Columbia hatcheries because of poor returns. Critics said such action showed the study's innate bias that CSS personnel were trying to prove that upriver stocks suffered higher mortality because they had passed more dams.
The ongoing study, led by Michele DeHart, director of the beleaguered Fish Passage Center, ran up against a brick wall at last month's Council meeting when some members called for ending it altogether.
DeHart and her staff have incurred the wrath of some politicians and other entities for developing metrics on fish survival that have been used by environmental and fishing groups in their litigation against the hydro BiOp. Idaho Sen. Larry Craig inserted report language in one of last year's appropriations bills that jerked BPA funding for the FPC, but an ongoing lawsuit over his action and BPA's decision to obey it is still percolating in the Ninth Circuit. Meanwhile, BPA has provided interim funding to keep the FPC in business.
Last fall, both NOAA Fisheries and BPA had serious complaints about the 2005 CSS analysis. A letter from BPA to the FPC said the upriver-downriver comparison of Chinook salmon had "been misguided from conception," noting that data from the CSS showed related stocks from nearby hatcheries didn't even show similar SARs, and that data from coded-wire tagging showed that different stocks had very different ocean migration patterns and different interception rates in the ocean.
BPA said earlier CSS comparisons confirmed this because, "Initially, the study started with multiple downriver stocks, but these hatcheries have been reduced to only the Carson NFH, when the other hatcheries had SAR values less than upriver hatcheries. If investigators eliminate all the information that does not conform to their conceptual model, as in the case of the upriver-downriver comparison, you are often left with nothing but coincidences or wishful thinking."
NOAA Fisheries scientists, in their own critique, said the CSS results skewed the benefits of barging fish. The feds said available evidence clearly showed that the benefit of transporting fish varied within each season, and was probably the result of fish size and the number transported, differences in predation rates, and changing conditions within the hydro system, estuary and near-ocean.
The feds said the FPC analysis, based on annual survival results, "provides limited information and possibly misinforms managers about how to manipulate the system to provide the greatest benefits to fish." They pointed out that the CSS analysis ignored this altogether.
The feds took issue with statements in the 2005 CSS study's executive summary that implied transportation harmed wild fish because the average SAR of transported fish was lower than that of inriver migrants. They pointed out that in 5 of 10 years, the point estimate of annual SARs for transported wild chinook was higher than inriver migrants.
They also said the CSS summary appeared biased since it concluded that transportation had little or no benefit for wild chinook, yet it neglected to mention the overall 40-percent benefit of transportation for hatchery chinook and wild steelhead. They said that adds up to tens of thousands more hatchery chinook and 5,000 to 10,000 more adult wild steelhead that would not have returned had they not been transported.
The feds said the CSS treatment of upstream and downstream stocks "seems particularly biased," and asked why more downriver hatcheries weren't used in the comparisons. Since returns to upriver hatcheries vary considerably, they wondered if that wasn't true for downriver hatcheries as well. And, the feds pointed out, Idaho's McCall hatchery had much higher SARs for several years than did the downriver facility at Carson, near Bonneville Dam.
The draft 2006 CSS report was released for public comment on Oct. 20. -B. R.
The following links were mentioned in this story:
NOAA Fisheries scientists' own critique
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