[2] Mixed Review For Lower Columbia Netpen Project

Mixed reviews were returned by independent scientists and economists who took close looks at a controversial project in the lower Columbia that supplements commercial harvest opportunities in areas with less impact on ESA-listed stocks.

Each review was based on evaluation reports by project sponsors.

The scientists said the project, called SAFE [Select Area Fishery Evaluation] appears "highly successful" because it provides high harvest rates with minimal impacts of listed stocks. However, the economists said costs appeared higher than estimated benefits, "with or without BPA funding."

Bonneville funds most of the netpen project, which raises chinook and coho mainly for commercial catches, although recreational fishers, especially those on the nearby ocean, also benefit.

Future BPA funding for the project--$1.8 million annually--largely depends on the evaluations by these two groups.

Bob Austin, BPA's deputy director for fish and wildlife, said his agency is fairly satisfied that the project has passed muster, though he noted that the latest evaluation questioned whether expanding the project from its current size would be either biologically beneficial or cost-effective.

The Independent Scientific Review Panel, which examines F&W proposals for scientific merit, said that fish from the SAFE project, which are hatched at lower Columbia facilities, and then raised at various sites along the lower river, match or surpass the survival rates of regular hatchery-raised salmon.

However, the panel said, the report it relied on totally lacked a statistical analyses of coded-wire tag data that is generally used to track harvests.

The panel also said it was concerned about the validity of the income generated from the fishery because the report did not verify estimates of harvested fish. Nor did the report present any convincing evidence that the current production of about 5 million smolts could be more than doubled, the panel said.

Other critical unknowns are the potential impacts of the project's large release of future fish on other fish populations during long periods of poor ocean conditions.

The members of the Independent Economic Analysis Board also had questions about methodology. They took issue with their reference report's determination of recreational harvest costs, noting that adding up recreational expenditures is an incorrect way to measure benefits.

The board said it looks like BPA is spending $1.8 million a year of the project's total $2.4 million budget to produce $49,000 in negative net economic value.

"From a regional perspective, this return doesn't make economic sense," said the IEAB, "and the report should say so. There well may be reasons in addition to the estimated NEV [Net Economic Value] for BPA to fund the SAFE project."

The economists said the report's "statement that the $2.4-million project creates $12 million in local income ignores the fact that the $2.4-million expense reduces local income somewhere else, because electricity rates are higher. And diverting some recreational fishing expenditure to the SAFE project area will cause negative income impacts elsewhere in the region."

The project sponsor report used by the IEAB estimated that the SAFE project produced nearly 14,000 chinook for recreational fishers in the estuary and ocean in 2006. But the board said catches in these areas involved higher incidental catches of ESA-listed stocks, "and this should be weighed against recreational benefits."

The report estimated that without continued BPA funding, coho releases would decrease by 15 percent and the value of the commercial coho fishery would go down by more than 90 percent, since most of the fish would have much less value as surplus hatchery spawners.

With the increase in ex-vessel fish prices in recent years, the report said the SAFE project generates about $3 million in value from all regional fisheries, two to four times the value to SAFE-area fishermen.

However, the IEAB said the economic report couldn't really produce an estimate of cost effectiveness because there aren't any "realistic and feasible" alternatives for achieving the project's objectives.

The SAFE project was nearly axed in last fall's battles over BPA's 2007-09 fish and wildlife budget. It was saved when Oregon and Washington agreed to an increased cost share, with the caveat that Washington commercial gillnetters would get more access to the Oregon side of the river.

Tod Jones, who heads the net-pen project for Clatsop County, said the Washington commercials only catch about 3 percent of the fish produced by the SAFE project. He said it would take a change by the Oregon Legislature to allow them across the state line to fish, which would take at least two years to accomplish. -B. R.

The following links were mentioned in this story:

SAFE Review 2007, ISRP and IEAB, April 11, 2007

NW Fishletter 220, Sept. 21, 2006

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