[1] Draft Hydro BiOp Nearly Ready For Prime Time
The draft hydro BiOp being written by NOAA Fisheries was expected to be circulating among federal action agency staffers by last Friday, according to sources familiar with the situation. Details were sketchy, but BPA was reportedly still in talks with some states and tribes over possibly adding more items to its latest plan for recovering ESA-listed salmon and steelhead throughout the Columbia Basin.
The BiOp is not scheduled to go public until Oct. 31, the latest product of a lengthy remand process that began when U.S. District Judge James Redden threw out the 2000 BiOp in May 2003.
This time around, the action agencies--BPA, Bureau of Reclamation and Corps of Engineers--probably won't have to worry whether NOAA Fisheries decides if Columbia and Snake dam operations jeopardize the ESA-listed stocks. They have already acknowledged it even though they also concede they can't separate fish mortality caused by the dams from natural mortality factors.
To impress the judge, they have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve hydro passage, hatcheries and habitat for the benefit of the fish--hoping to fill estimated survival gaps needed to recover the fish.
It's a far cry from a few years ago, when fish runs had rebounded and the feds were telling the judge they could probably cut fish conservation measures in their next BiOp.
The latest salmon plan harks back to the 2000 BiOp, with its 199 separate actions designed to help fish. But the new one tries to show Redden most of these measures are "reasonably certain to occur," one of the main reasons he tossed out the old BiOp, and the 2004 BiOp as well.
However, NOAA Fisheries may do some serious tweaking before the new BiOp is released. And that may involve changing hydro operations OK'd by the judge. The feds said their latest analyses show the judge's spill order may benefit wild Snake River spring chinook, but harm wild steelhead.
By reducing spill at lower Snake dams in May and early June, more steelhead will be routed into barges for a free ride past the hydro system. After collecting years of survival data, NMFS has found that barged steelhead survive to adulthood at about twice the rate of the in-river migrators.
The salmon plan put together by action agencies admittedly shortchanges overall steelhead life-cycle survival by about 12 percent, because it basically follows a spill regime ordered by Redden two years ago. Another question has arisen about steelhead harvest rates used in the analysis possibly being too low.
In December 2005, Redden ruled the feds must keep boosted spill levels throughout June, instead of following their plan to switch over to a maxed-out barging policy later in April, when the overall survival of transported fish usually eclipses that of in-river migrators.
The feds had estimated a 16-percent boost in returns of wild chinook, and nearly 25 percent more wild steelhead from their proposed change in dam operations compared to the 2004 BiOp mandates, which mirrored the 2000 BiOp. The feds had estimated the spring spill proposal by plaintiff environmental and fishing groups would actually reduce wild chinook and steelhead returns by a couple of percentage points, compared to the 2004 BiOp.
But Redden was swayed by arguments from the plaintiffs. He said the differences reflected continuing uncertainty about the relative benefits of barging and in-river passage. He called the feds' late spring max-barging proposal a "radical departure" from their "spread-the-risk" philosophy and "not justified in light of the best available science."
The newest survival estimations, using the NMFS COMPASS model, have produced results that predict the judge's spill regime (along with the later barging) will produce an overall loss for adult steelhead numbers compared to previous operations. The model is still criticized by some state and tribal agency folks, but it has been reviewed positively by the independent science board used to weigh in on controversial questions of salmon science.
The new draft BiOp is also expected to embrace many other aspects of the action agencies' salmon plan finalized in early September, which called for many actions besides hydro improvements to better the lot of ESA-listed stocks.
The draft includes a long list of hatchery supplementation projects, as part of a $34-million effort over the next two years to improve hatcheries, along with another $4 million to pay for operations after modifications are done.
The plan also includes an ambitious program of improvements to tributary and estuary habitat that is expected to cost more than $450 million by 2017. However, the bill may add up to a lot more, with memoranda of agreement still under development with individual tribes in the basin, and other talks with some states continuing.
Oregon reportedly is still holding out for the possibility of more study for a John Day drawdown, and some tribes want some sort of "dam breaching" language concerning lower Snake dams added to the BiOp, in case fish populations don't respond to the hundreds of millions that will be spent on recovery efforts over the next 10 years.
Some utility folks are clearly worried about the situation. At this point, said one, "We really have no idea how much it is going to cost."
"It's all marketing from here on out," said another. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Upper Columbia Recovery Plan Finally Finished
The federal government has finally completed its recovery plan for upper Columbia spring chinook, steelhead, and bull trout, with just as much uncertainty and twice the price tag of a draft proposal released last year. Last year's admittedly lowball cost-estimate of $154 million (including hatchery costs) for the next 10 years has been increased to $296 million (excluding hatchery costs) for all recovery-related spending by all agencies, including tribes, local, state and federal governments.
The document says the stocks could be recovered in the next 10- to 30-year period if all the recommendations are followed. A minimum recovery goal for spring chinook is 4,500 naturally produced spawners, with more specific goals for the Wenatchee, Entiat and Methow populations.
About 1,600 natural-origin spring chinook 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.
However, the plan is totally voluntary, and it readily acknowledges that it will take more than simply improving upper-C habitat to restore the stocks, but that it will take big improvements in other H's as well.
And big questions remain about how to pay for it. With more than 400 actions in the plan, NMFS said (in a response to written comments) that "funding for many of the projects is a concern." Noting that funding may often have to be secured on an annual basis, they said some important items may not get any money. With the mid-Columbia PUDs already ponying up millions to pay for habitat conservation plans, NMFS still expects the utilities, along with state and federal agencies to pay for projects ranked high by watershed action teams and the regional technical team.
In the draft plan released last year, the planners examined potential costs and benefits. Using the EDT [Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment] analysis tool developed by regional consultant Lars Mobrand, they 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- 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- to 5-percent increase in naturally produced spring chinook and steelhead in the Wenatchee-Entiat stocks, and a 5- 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 draft 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.
And it 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.
The final plan rejected advice from a technical recovery team that called for meeting abundance/productivity criteria for chinook and steelhead populations that estimated extinction risk at only 1 percent over the next 100 years. Instead, recovery planners decided that a 5-percent extinction risk for most populations was good enough for government work.
In its Oct. 9 Federal Register notice, NMFS said it didn't think it is possible "at this time" to know how much more effort it would take to go from the 95 percent to the 99 percent level of persistence. But the agency said it would take another look at the stocks' status within five years to see if the recovery criteria are still appropriate, or if modifications are necessary.
The feds stressed the bottoms-up approach of the plan. "The contributions at the local level have been particularly gratifying," said regional NOAA Fisheries administrator Bob Lohn. "Local governments, watershed councils, land owners, environmental groups and others were all enormously helpful in creating this plan with their thoughtful and constructive comments throughout the process."
The plan was turned over to the feds in 2005 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.
Most of the salmon decline was blamed on habitat destruction, dam operations and adverse hatchery impacts. However, from information collected by the Bureau of Reclamation in the 1940s, it was learned that many tributary runs had been wiped out long before Grand Coulee Dam was built on the mainstem Columbia.
One of the more controversial elements in the plan relies on some hatcheries to play an "essential role" in recovering the stocks, while working to keep many hatchery fish away from spawning grounds.
For years, NMFS has been trying to implement a policy that keeps less than five percent strays in a native population. But just what kind of native gene pool still exists in the mid-Columbia is not well-documented. Most upper Columbia chinook runs were trashed long before mainstem dams were built, according to a 1987 USFWS study by federal biologist James Mullan.
Mullan, who worked for years out of an office at the Leavenworth Hatchery, acknowledged the uncertainty of the situation. "Was the trapping of returning adult chinook at Rock Island Dam for release in other streams a salvage operation which in the long run salvaged nothing (Ricker, 1972)? In the short term, the salvage operation expedited restoration of runs in tributaries below Grand Coulee Dam. In the long term, the genetic diversity that characterized runs was presumably maintained to some unknown extent," his study said.
But in another study completed a few years later, Mullan said a later phase of hatchery propagation in the region, which began in 1969, used mostly the Carson stock, along with eggs from the Cowlitz River and the Little White Salmon and Spring Creek hatcheries in the lower Columbia, to maintain a continuing egg supply. Mullan reported that there was so much mixing at mid-Columbia hatcheries, "the original gene pool may have been significantly altered." -B. R.
[3] Judge Gives NMFS 60 Days To Finalize Oregon Coho Listing
Oregon District Court judge Garr King has upheld the July recommendation of federal magistrate Janice Stewart that found fault with the NOAA Fisheries decision not to list Oregon coastal coho for protection under the ESA. On Oct. 9, Judge King gave the agency 60 days to review the coho ESU's status and make a new decision.
In her finding, Judge Stewart agreed with environmental and fishing groups who argued that NMFS did not use the "best, available science" when it decided not to list the coho. The previous listing of the coho had serious consequences for Oregon's timber industry, who adopted a voluntary approach with the state for improving habitat. Since 2000, more than $10 million in federal spending has been funneled through the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund to pay for restoring and improving habitat for coho and other listed species on the Oregon coast.
Critics of the 2006 NMFS decision not to list argued that most of the coho stocks' big jump in numbers came from improved ocean conditions that have boosted productivity since 1999. By 1998, the population had sagged to about 40,000 wild spawners, but rebounded to 265,000 fish in 2002.
"This is a victory for good science and for Oregon's future," said Earthjustice attorney Patti Goldman, who argued for plaintiff fishing and environmental groups that NMFS policymakers didn't take the advice of their own scientists, who found fault with an ODFW analysis of the coho ESU. The policymakers had agreed with a review by ODFW biologists who found that the coastal coho stocks had reset themselves at lower viable levels than previously seen, because of adverse changes to their coastal habitat after severe winters in the 1990s.
But Goldman's argument didn't reflect the sizable minority among NMFS scientists who supported a non-listing decision. Fifty-six percent of votes by the NMFS biological review team in 2003 supported the view that the coho were likely to become endangered, principally because of the loss of freshwater habitat. But 44 percent supported the position that increasing spawner numbers since 2000 was enough evidence to show the runs were resilient enough "to bounce back from years of depressed runs."
By 2000, Oregon wild coastal coho spawners had climbed to more than 230,000, from only 30,000 in 1997, after the runs had been hammered by a combination of over-harvesting and poor ocean conditions. For the past six years, spawning numbers have been more than 100,000, higher than any year since 1971.
But Earthjustice made no mention of the large increase in coastal coho numbers since the 1990s. In an Oct. 9 press release, the group said the slight rebound in coastal coho numbers between 2001 and 2003 had prompted the state of Oregon to "prematurely" declare the ESU recovered enough to no longer need federal protection. -B. R.
[4] New Study Says Hatchery Steelhead Fitness Shows Rapid Decline In Wild
An article published in last week's Science has raised more questions about the value of using hatchery fish to boost wild fish runs. By studying several generations of steelhead that returned to Oregon's Hood River, the researchers from Oregon State University found that the fitness of hatchery steelhead that spawn in the wild is significantly reduced.
Authors Hitoshi Araki, Becky Cooper and Michael Blouin used hatchery and wild steelhead data from Hood River to reconstruct a "three-generation pedigree with microsatellite markers" to estimate that reproductive fitness was reduced by about 40 percent per generation for two generations of steelhead that spawned in the wild after beginning life at the Hood River hatchery facility. However, the results seem to contradict a 2006 paper produced by the trio that found no essential difference in the reproductive success of hatchery-origin and wild steelhead after one generation in natural surroundings.
But the authors say the earlier results "neglected the fact that captive-reared and wild individuals experience different environments as juveniles, which might affect mating behaviors, fecundity, and/or fertility. Therefore it is difficult to disentangle environmental effects from genetic effects of a difference or lack of difference in reproductive success."
So they compared the reproductive success of two types of captive-reared fish, one from two wild parents, and the other from a wild parent and a first-generation captive-reared parent, born in the same year, reared in the same hatchery and released at the same time.
They said the evolutionary mechanism causing the decline in fitness was unknown, but they "suspect that unintentional domestication selection and relaxation of natural selection, due to artificially modified and well-protected rearing environments for hatchery fish, are probably occurring." And they caution that the repeated use of captive-reared fish to supplement declining populations "should be carefully reconsidered."
Their work was funded by BPA, which has put a lot of its salmon eggs into the future of supplementation hatcheries for improving ESA-listed stocks in the Columbia, judging from its latest plan to recover ESA-listed stocks.
Ernie Brannon, retired fisheries professor from the University of Idaho, and an expert on Northwest hatcheries, told NW Fishletter in an email that the OSU researchers' work "appears as a well designed study and it required a lot of time in years to accomplish. It is interesting that all of this negative effect was linked to only half of the genome that was hatchery in origin!!"
Brannon said he was waiting to see more details of the work, which he hoped would continue. However, he cautioned that there were many things to consider before eliminating all hatchery fish. "Based on the preliminary paper, I think the issues that have to be carefully reconsidered before they are justified in making their conclusions are (1) the large variability that they got between return years, (2) the small number of fish in their samples (six categories - three years of C(W x W) and C(C xW) which can have a major influence on the analysis, (3) the assumption that their DNA markers are neutral, (4) what physical marks were employed in the C and W categories, if any, (5) the problem with the C(W x W) performance between the 1st and 2nd studies, (6) the declaration that the reduction in return success was a genetic effect, (7) the thought that their study immediately applies to all hatchery fish as a general application of their conclusions, rather than just to the Hood River hatchery study returns for the 1996 brood year releases, (8) the use of smolt to adult data rather than egg to adult data to make their analysis, (9) ignoring the reproductive potential of the naturally spawned progeny in subsequent generations of naturally spawning fish, and (10) jumping to the conclusion that use of captive reared organisms (hatchery fish) for reproduction of captive-reared progeny (supplementation) should be carefully reconsidered.
"These are red flags that suggest a biased beginning, as well as their interpretation of the references they used," said Brannon. "Even if the reduction of 40 percent in reproduction performance per captive generation was real, the fact that 95 percent of your wild fish die before migrating to sea compared to < 30 percent of hatchery fish still makes supplementation a recovery tool to put natural spawners on the spawning beds.
"It is not new that hatchery fish spawning in the wild can show lower performance than wild fish," he added, "and Araki's study really isn't showing anything different. How will the now wild progeny do in subsequent generations is the real question." -B. R.
[5] Enviro Groups Target Report Language On Upper Snake BiOp
More than a dozen environmental and fishing groups have enlisted the help of Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell to remove language in an appropriations bill they say "could threaten ongoing salmon recovery efforts while delaying real solutions to the Pacific Northwest's salmon crisis."
In a Sept. 5 letter to the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, American Rivers and 17 other groups asked Cantwell to block the Department of Interior's 2008 budget bill--introduced by beleaguered Idaho Sen. Larry Craig--that calls on the DOI to implement "without further delay" the 2005 Upper Snake River BiOp.
That BiOp was ruled illegal last year by James Redden, a federal District Court judge in Oregon, who said it suffers from the same flawed jeopardy analysis as the BiOp governing lower Snake and mainstem Columbia River hydro operations.
Upper Snake irrigation water has been a hot-button issue for Idaho politicians since American Rivers filed the litigation several years ago that led to Redden's ruling. Many Idahoans were afraid an adverse ruling would scuttle their newly minted agreement between stakeholders, agencies and the Nez Perce Tribe over Snake River water usage.
In 2005, after the water litigation heated up [American Rivers v. NOAA Fisheries], most parties to the Snake River Agreement said that calling for more water from the Upper Snake for fish needs would kill the deal. After Redden's ruling, Craig voiced his concern in a statement released by the state's congressional delegation, worrying that the decision could lead to dewatering millions of acres of irrigated land.
"We have said it before and we will say it again; let there be no mistake," Craig said at the time. "We will protect Idaho's water and the Snake River Basin Agreement at all costs. Yesterday's decision has more to do with establishing a personal judicial legacy than saving a species. This court continues to ignore the big picture and all the factors that are in play. We're not makin' biscuits here, so just adding water isn't the answer."
Cantwell sent a letter of her own to subcommittee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Sept. 19, seeking her assistance in removing Craig's language.
"Congressional intervention at this point in the proceedings would not only undermine the ongoing federal administrative and regional collaborative process, but the judicial process as well," Cantwell wrote. "In addition, it could further threaten salmon in the Columbia-Snake River Basin, and the communities that depend on them, by delaying the development of a legally enforceable BiOp to protect salmon and steelhead populations."
But the hand-wringing over Craig's language may be the precursor to more court theatrics, since the next Upper Snake BiOp is expected to call for actions nearly identical to those in the BiOp that Redden had discarded.
This is despite Redden's strong hint that he wouldn't OK a new Upper Snake BiOp that left out more water for ESA-listed fish downstream. The judge ordered that the 2005 Upper Snake BiOp stay in place during the remand, even though he didn't like it.
By storing 2 million acre-feet of water, Redden said the Bureau of Reclamation projects helped kill salmon by reducing the quality of habitat, boosting water temperatures, impacting water quality and "interrupting" juvenile migration in the river below the projects. He said that was why flow augmentation from the Upper Snake had been included in all previous FCRPS BiOps.
But the Action Agencies' new Salmon Plan released Sept. 6 calls for the same 487 kaf for downstream fish needs as did the 2005 BiOp, with one wrinkle. It recommended juggling flows compared to the last BiOp by moving more water out earlier in the season, between May and early July, instead of June to July.
In the 2005 Upper Snake BiOp, NOAA Fisheries analysts estimated that BuRec operations for storage and irrigation would reduce average spring flows in the lower Snake by 8 percent, and flows in the Columbia by 2 percent to 5 percent less than hypothetical dam operations maxed out for fish benefits.
Such conditions were expected to reduce in-river survival rates by only about 1 percent, with less than a 0.1-percent difference if transported fish were considered.
However, since then, older survival studies of fall chinook have become suspect because a large number of the fish have been found to hold over during winter periods and migrate when PIT-tag detection systems are not operating.
But in the 2005 BiOp, the feds expected increased summer flows from the Upper Snake--about 8 percent--would actually increase in-river fall chinook survival about 8 percent and overall system survival by about 4 percent.
According to the new salmon plan, NMFS staff advised the water be released earlier because newer evidence shows that most Snake River fall chinook are migrating before mid-July, with 95 percent of them past Lower Granite Dam by then. The new plan says reducing later water releases, which are warmer, may also boost the benefit to fish of cold water releases from Dworshak Reservoir during the summer period. NMFS staff recommendations are currently undergoing final review by its Northwest Fisheries Science Center. -B. R.
[6] Snake Fall Chinook Run Holds Its Own
Compared to other Columbia River fall chinook runs that are coming in much smaller than predicted, the Snake River run is doing just fine. The wild component of the Snake fall run is likely to once again reach its interim recovery level of 2,500 fish.
By Oct. 9, more than 9,100 fall chinook (hatchery and wild) had been counted at Lower Granite Dam, beating the 10-year average by nearly 25 percent.
The 8,200-plus jacks also put a positive spin on next year, as that count is more than twice the 10-year average.
The situation isn't so rosy downriver. At McNary Dam, the 50,000-fish count is only about half the 10-year average. Most are headed for Hanford Reach, traditionally the healthiest run in the entire Columbia Basin. Just a few years ago, McNary counts at this time were easily running at more than 100,000 for fall chinook.
Fall chinook counts at Bonneville Dam are also down at less than half the 10-year average. Poor ocean conditions in 2004 and 2005 may be responsible for the downturn, but fish managers are scratching their heads over why the Snake fish haven't suffered as well.
WDFW district fish biologist Glen Mendel said it's likely due to a combination of things, more juvenile releases, better smolt-to-adult return rates and possibly less interception during lower river harvest periods. He said in the past few years, the number of Snake-bound fall chinook usually makes up about 9 percent of count at McNary Dam, but this year it's more like 30 percent. -B. R.
[7] La Niña Heading Our Way
The Northwest is expected to be wetter than normal this winter as a La Niña event is shaping up in the eastern equatorial Pacific, where significant ocean cooling has taken place, according to a Sept. 24 federal update.
NOAA/National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center models show a weak-to-moderate La Niña is expected to persist through early 2008, with conditions "strengthening" over the next few months.
The update says equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures were more than 1 degree C below average between 160 degrees west and the South American coast, but still above average in the western Pacific.
A La Niña is a five-month period in a certain part of the equatorial Pacific where sea-surface temperatures are half-a-degree C below normal. The last official one occurred from September 2000 to March 2001.
Before that, a stronger La Niña took place between June 1998 and June 2000, coming off a very powerful El Niño that ended officially in March 1998.
By 1999, ocean conditions had improved drastically off the Pacific Coast, with salmon populations increasing in kind, with return rates for many salmon runs improving by an order of magnitude or more. -B. R.
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