[2] Power Council Prepares To Open F&W Amendment Process

State agencies briefed the Northwest Power and Conservation Council last month on the upcoming process to revise the Columbia Basin's fish and wildlife program. BPA pays more than $140 million annually for the program, and its costs are likely to rise this year.

In a memo to members, council staffers pointed out that the fish bill may go up "significantly" this time around, driven by the new hydro and upper Snake BiOps, a hatchery review process, and "possible long-term settlements between BPA and some of the basin's fish and wildlife management entities."

The settlements referred to are prospective 10-year MOUs with states and tribes that BPA is currently involved with as part of the new hydro BiOp process. Rumors are flying about how much they may add to future F&W costs. Some say these agreements could double current direct spending.

WDFW's Bill Tweit spoke for the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, the umbrella group of state, federal and tribal agencies that deal with salmon recovery actions in the region.

He said that CBFWA would work to develop its own "gap analysis" to determine the difference between current fish and wildlife populations and their recovered status in the future. Tweit said that will help CBFWA members develop "targeted" proposals to identify commonly agreed-upon gaps and objectives, so that "priority threats" can be addressed to narrow or remove those gaps.

"As well," Tweit told the council, "we note that this gap analysis should help inform the extent of Bonneville's obligation to the program."

But his presentation didn't describe how CBFWA members propose to analyze these gaps. According to documents posted on CBFWA's Web site, it will try to use a tool called the AHA model, developed by regional consultant Lars Mobrand.

Mobrand led the development of the EDT (Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment) method, which has been used extensively in the council's subbasin planning process to determine limiting factors and potential fish productivity in many of the subbasin plans developed under the aegis of the council.

According to one regional biologist very familiar with the AHA [All H Analyzer] tool, it was developed to look at effects on returning fish numbers in particular subbasins from different combinations of hatchery and harvest actions, and was never intended to produce quantitative goals for any kind of gap analysis. He said the inputs are very simple and not meant to be used to develop potential fish numbers.

But an Aug. 31 CBFWA committee memo says some members want to define BPA's obligation by simply running the model with "dams in, dams out" scenarios that hold other inputs steady.

The committee also wants to use the model to "evaluate and prioritize strategies by comparing population responses among strategies to recover/restore populations," including habitat improvements.

The memo says the tool could be used to allow co-managers "to evaluate various scenarios and get an 'order of magnitude' expected response."

The AHA tool was originally developed in Puget Sound as a hatchery-planning tool to aid in reforming artificial propagation facilities to reduce adverse impacts of hatchery fish on natural spawners. In 2005, the Council was briefed by then-staffer staffer Bruce Suzumoto (Now NMFS regional assistant administrator) on the AHA tool, which included a "fitness factor" for hatchery fish that spawn in the wild to address whether such strays are helping or hindering the overall recovery effort, and whether current and projected harvest rates will significantly impede recovery efforts.

At the time, Rob Walton, NOAA Fisheries assistant regional administrator for salmon recovery, was on hand to support the new tool, noting that it was undergoing scientific review by NOAA scientists.

The tool has since been employed to help complete the ongoing review of Columbia Basin hatcheries, and was characterized by the consultants who developed it as a way "to explore the implications of alternative ways to balance these four major areas (4 H's) of management control over abundance and persistence of salmon populations." They said AHA did not make decisions or judge the correctness of management policies, but that "it simply illustrates the implication of alternative ways of balancing the four "H"s so that informed decisions can be made." [AHA User Guide, June 2005 Draft]

Bob Austin, BPA's deputy director for fish and wildlife, said judging from what he knew of the AHA tool, using AHA to define BPA's obligation would be an inappropriate use of the model.

CBFWA has already signed a contract with consultants Mobrand-Jones and Stokes to conduct a series of workshops on how to use the All-H model. The first one was scheduled for Oct. 30-31 in Boise to deal with Idaho fish populations.

Critics say that to get a more balanced view from the AHA model, it should be run with each H taken out at a time, leaving the others intact, rather than simply focusing on the hydro H, as will be done in these workshops.

It was reported that attendees of the Boise workshop were willing to run the model without the hydro and hatchery functions, but were not ready to look at results when all harvests were removed from the analysis.-B. R.

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