[4] Lower Columbia Tribes List Gripes Over BiOp Remand

The four lower Columbia Basin tribes say their views aren't getting much respect in the ongoing BiOp remand process, according to their comments included with the latest remand update released Feb. 2 by federal agencies.

The news is jarring, considering that less than two months ago the four tribes--the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Nez Perce--joined with the Colvilles in a one-time deal with the Bonneville Power Administration and the Corps of Engineers that will govern dam operations this year. BPA sweetened the deal by shelling out more than $5 million to fund tribal projects that had been rejected during the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's F&W funding process.

The federal agencies' status report says progress is being made, though in the most general of terms. It described a collaborative effort to develop an "ESU matrix approach," which will organize information and link actions to "ESU viability gaps," fish-speak for trying to figure out ways to improve population numbers and productivity.

Overall, the report was optimistic, though it did mention there were still areas of disagreement over the process, policy choices, the science and specific elements of the proposed action.

The tribes were blunt about the process. They said they would still work at it, hoping for changes in future products, "while maintaining a healthy degree of skepticism as to potential outcomes."

They also expressed concern "that much of the effort put into the process by non-agency collaborators has been given little recognition in the current Action Agency product," adding, "While this may be rectified in future drafts, the current posture is highly troubling."

The tribes said they were troubled that current and final products "may not bear much resemblance to solutions that the tribes contemplated at the outset of the collaboration." They also complained that the status report doesn't address their misgivings, which include a lack of clear and enforceable methods for closing survival gaps and for reversing the "trend toward extinction" of ESA-listed fish stocks.

They also worried that contributions of hatchery fish towards recovery weren't being recognized, nor were the agencies developing a clear designation of a jeopardy standard.

And they were still complaining there had not been a "definitive discussion" about the issue of latent mortality--the hypothesis that says passage through the hydro system causes fish to die later, especially fish that use turbine bypass systems, and that barged fish are even more susceptible to later mortality than those that travel inriver.

A report on the topic is expected soon by an independent science panel that heard about the subject from all sides at a workshop last December.

The tribes said they would file a separate status report before BiOp Judge James Redden to detail their concerns.

But complaints didn't come from downriver tribes alone.

The Spokane Tribe also questioned the status update, saying it didn't reflect the collaboration's products or the challenges they faced.

They felt the federal agencies' participation has "undergone a perceptible shift," a development they called troubling, and noted that the agencies are now developing draft comments that they share with other members of the policy working group. The Spokane tribe said the feds' work doesn't reflect the products missing from previous drafts, nor the substance of prior comments and discussions of them.

Meanwhile, the status report said the process is up to steps 5 and 6 of the 10-step process to complete a new BiOp by the end of July. Mainstem survival of juvenile fish has been initially assessed using the COMPASS model, which had earlier been criticized by some state, tribal and USFWS participants.

Sources said that USFWS higher-ups in Washington, D.C. told its own remand process representatives to quit complaining about it.

The report said sovereigns believed there were some key issues that still need to be included, such as ESU-level biological objectives for recovery of the stocks, including a new jeopardy standard, which NOAA Fisheries is suggesting be satisfied if a certain ESU is shown to be "trending towards recovery." -B. R.

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Federal Defendants' Fifth Remand Report

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