[1] Scientists Tell FPC To Dump Upriver/Downriver Comparisons
An independent review of the latest PIT-tag survival study from the Fish Passage Center has garnered some positive comments, though scientists who looked at it have recommended gutting one of its major elements--the upriver/downriver stock comparison--because of the many confounding factors in the analysis.
The joint report was released last week by the Independent Scientific Advisory Board, which looks at general questions involved in salmon recovery science, and the Independent Scientific Review Panel, which judges the scientific merit of proposals in BPA's F&W program.
The report was conducted in response to questions from the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The council wanted an updated review before they OK any future funding for the 10-year-old FPC project, called the Comparative Survival Study (CSS).
Though the review authors said the CSS represents "a successful implementation of a large-scale tagging program," they took issue with the study's complicated analysis that related fish travel times, survival and instantaneous mortality rates to environmental variables like water travel time, spill, and Julian day.
"It would appear that that a concerted effort at developing more parsimonious models is necessary," they said, noting that the CSS report came up short on explaining assumptions and uncertainties.
The reviewers echoed earlier criticism from both NOAA Fisheries and BPA that called the comparison between Snake River and John Day stocks bogus, but they said it in a much nicer way.
"The observation that SARs [smolt-to adult returns] for wild chinook were only one-quarter that of similar downriver populations that migrated through fewer dams does not provide proof that the hydrosystem is responsible for this SAR difference; there are myriad alternative possible explanations," said the reviewers. "The comparisons are weak because of the limited number of sites compared and the multitude of confounding variables."
The reviewers also mentioned their own report from earlier this year that advised against trying to measure absolute latent mortality, which is a large part of the FPC's analysis of upriver/downriver productivity. The ISAB's April report said the focus should be on the total mortality of inriver migrants and transported fish.
In previous annual reviews, the independent panels had recommended that the CSS project incorporate more downriver sites in its analysis. Now they doubt if there are enough of them available to make a meaningful comparison.
The CSS project began 10 years ago, after the original ISAB gave it a provisional thumbs up in 1997. At that time, FPC sponsors planned to use downriver stocks as "controls." The science board's report said the proposal needed "substantial revision" before it could achieve enough scientific rigor for the scientists to endorse it as the basis for a long-term study.
But over the years, the study has continued, marked by steady controversy, but enough positive feedback from scientific review has kept it going. At one point, sponsors dumped two downriver hatchery stocks in the study because of such poor returns. They cited disease problems as the main culprit.
The FPC's report said that Snake River hatchery spring chinook and both wild and hatchery Snake steelhead show some benefits from being transported, but that wild chinook had no net benefit.
However, the reviewers said sample sizes for wild chinook were too small to draw any conclusions.
The ISAB did say that overall SARs for most groups of fish weren't sufficient for stock persistence, and far short of the NPCC's 2-percent minimum recovery objectives, but they noted that these goals may be revised soon and will likely be "more tailored to individual ESUs."
The reviewers did mention that these PIT-tag SARs are likely quite lower than those of the untagged populations in general, but they don't call for pulling the plug on the study.
"The assumption that tagged fish are typical of the untagged fish in their respective cohorts is difficult to test in any empirical fashion and is a bit worrisome," they said.
In earlier comments to critics, the CSS Oversight Committee supported continuation of the project. It acknowledged that Snake hatchery fish were helped more by transportation and showed relatively lower levels of differential mortality than wild stocks, but annual SARs between wild and hatchery stocks were highly correlated.
"In view of this high correlation," said the committee, "continuing the CSS time series of hatchery SARs will be important to augment wild chinook SAR information following future years of low escapements, in addition to providing valuable management information for the specific hatcheries."
But NMFS had said the same information could be gleaned from much smaller numbers of PIT-tagged fish or simply by comparing adult returns of clipped (hatchery) fish to unclipped fish. Their earlier analysis found that PIT-tagged wild fish returns were only about 60 percent of untagged fish, which made them question the CSS results claiming that Snake River wild chinook returns aren't meeting the 2-percent return-rate goals for the region.
The feds said fish size and estuary timing likely play important roles in survival. The feds also took issue with the report's conclusion that by using flows to reduce the travel time of certain stocks such as steelhead through the hydro system, mortality would go down by 5.6 percent.
The report's analysis that correlates survival with water particle travel time "is a classic example of a 'spurious correlation,'" according to the feds.
The FPC response said that NMFS had "mischaracterized the work," and that fish travel time is a function of other variables as well as water-particle travel time, which include average-percent spill and Julian day.
The ISAB/ISRP reviewers have tried to stay above the fray, noting that they "only briefly reviewed the comments from others on the CSS report in the context of our chapter reviews."
They added, "We do not address the comments point by point, and we did not re-analyze any of the CSS or commenters' specific data analyses due to the short time available for our review."
The ISRP side of the review says that the CSS project should be modified to reduce tagging efforts in the Columbia River called for in its upriver/downriver comparison because it doesn't satisfy scientific criteria.
But both groups of scientists agreed future work should investigate why PIT-tagged Snake River wild spring chinook have lower SARs than unmarked fish, and why the Snake wild spring chinook don't seem to benefit from barging.
They also recommended CSS parties submit their central results in a paper to a peer-reviewed publication.
Tony Grover, who heads the NPCC's F&W division, told NW Fishletter that his staff will recommend to Council members that all PIT-tag efforts associated with the upriver/downriver analysis not be funded in the future. However, he said if some of the tagging can be shown to be useful in other work, it should continue. -Bill Rudolph
[2] Feds Want Fish Projects To Include Survival Targets
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council will play a major role in implementing the next hydro BiOp, Bob Lohn, regional NOAA Fisheries administrator, told the council at its Nov. 14 meeting.
But Lohn cautioned that BPA-funded habitat projects that focus on estuary and tributary improvements will need more scrutiny to ensure improved survival of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead.
With 73 "reasonable and prudent actions," some containing hundreds of elements, Lohn said the job of selecting, identifying and working through those projects "is a hugely valuable activity and it's one the council has historically provided for all of us."
BPA's Sarah McNary told the council that the new BiOp's projects target factors that are limiting for specific fish populations, but will need an additional layer of review to develop a "benefit analysis" that relates improvement in habitat quality to a survival change at each specific population level.
The current screening of F&W program proposals includes a scientific review by an independent board of scientists, who judge the merit of each project, but there is no quantitative assessment of future fish benefits.
Washington council member Larry Cassidy asked McNary if the feds were calling for another process in addition to the science screening that F&W proposals now undergo with the ISRP.
McNary's answer was vague. She said the quantification analysis would be completed before the council made its final review and recommendations to BPA.
Cassidy told her that figuring out how many fish return per mile of habitat was an issue he has wrestled with for nine and a half years.
Montana council member Rhonda Whiting said more review would add more bureaucracy and count as a major change to the current F&W program, which is just starting a yearlong amendment process.
The added review is needed to hold the action agencies accountable for achieving a certain level of benefit during the 10-year time frame of the BiOp, Lohn said
However, he said, the means by which the benefit is assessed is not something his agency intends to proscribe, adding, "our general view, speaking on behalf of NOAA, is to use existing institutions and processes as much as possible."
But that didn't help to clarify the issue.
Council spokesman John Harrison said NWCC staffers were not sure what it means for the future, whether the ISRP could perform the analysis of these proposals or if another process will have to be generated.
The biological assessment that the action agencies--BPA, BuRec, and Corps of Engineers--released in August, which morphed into the draft BiOp, released Oct. 31, did include some estimates of survival improvements developed by participants in the habitat workgroup of the BiOp remand process.
Noting that time was limited, they agreed they didn't have the luxury of using complicated computer models such as EDT or Shiraz to help them, and so they gathered input from state, tribal and federal biologists, along with project sponsors and a large amount of "best professional judgment" from local biologists.
The group also assumed that a certain percentage improvement in habitat quality translated into a similar improvement in egg-to-smolt survival.
As an example, the analysis found that upper Columbia spring chinook numbers in the Methow River have been boosted by 2 percent since 2000 from habitat restoration efforts and that could go up another 6 percent by 2017.
Meanwhile, in the nearby Entiat River, it found a similar 2-percent gain since 2000, but that could jump another 22 percent if all prospective actions were completed by 2017.
The action agencies' analysis noted that it was not formally endorsed by the remand workgroup and that "some critics did not endorse a numerical approach to expressing habitat functionality and potential improvements."
Lohn also addressed the other 'H's, and used the podium to lock horns with critics who have said, in some cases, since there is less spill in the new BiOp, "therefore it couldn't be good." They wanted to see more spill and more flow.
"The reality is that within the Columbia Basin," Lohn said, "the water that is available to be programmed for fish has been entirely used. If you see an unused reservoir, a couple of MAF that are hanging around some place, we'd love to know about it. But short of making more water, we feel like we tried to optimize the available water."
As for high levels of spill, Lohn said a decade ago, in some circumstances, that strategy was the best the region could offer. But the new technology that has brought removable spillway weirs and other forms of surface passage has changed all that.
He said the region shouldn't be penalized for being able to pass fish faster at dams with fewer injuries using less spill than in days of yore.
As for hatcheries, he pointed out that each of the 186 hatchery programs is being reviewed to make sure it doesn't impede ESA fish recovery efforts.
Current harvest levels were used in the hydro BiOp's baseline analysis, Lohn said, and a new BiOp for harvest will be written next year.
"We've also kept an eye on future U.S. v. Oregon negotiations," he said. "We're well aware of them, and that the opinion as written will accommodate the future U.S. v. Oregon agreement. At least the one that has been tentatively reached, with what I would call a relatively minor exception, which is under discussion," he said.
The parties to the agreement have been very conscious about maximizing opportunities for harvest while, "if possible, improving conservation benefits for listed stocks," Lohn said. The next agreement, he said, will contain elements that are significantly better for listed fish.
He said he didn't think that James Redden, the federal BiOp judge, was especially interested in just another analysis, but is looking for agreement over a new BiOp by all the parties.
Though he admitted that it will probably be litigated, Lohn said what matters most to the region is having an action plan that doesn't focus on planning or on the divisions between the different parties.
Rather, the plan should focus on the large areas where agreement has been reached to protect salmon, their watersheds, "and the underlying habitat, which benefits far more than salmon."
A review of the draft BiOp is slated for Dec. 12 in Judge Redden's courtroom. -B. R.
[3] Columbia River Sea Lions And Birds May Soon Be On The Run
Federal agencies are moving ahead with plans to remove ESA-fish munching birds and sea lions from the lower Columbia River, an effort the draft BiOp says will help all ESA-listed stocks.
The Corps of Engineers announced Nov. 5 it had extended the public comment period for the first phase of a program to move Caspian terns from an island near the mouth of the river to a reservoir (Fern Ridge Lake) near Eugene Ore., where a nesting site should be completed by early 2008. The Corps plans to build a one-acre island for the terns.
It's one of six locations--three in Oregon and three at the San Francisco Bay--where the Corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will try to transplant the tern population. The lower Columbia population, with its proximity to one of the world's largest bird feeders (the Basin's hatchery program), has grown into the world's largest breeding population of the species, around 9,000 pairs.
The new plan even has the blessing of the Audubon Society. Bird lovers sued the agencies over the government's earlier attempts to move the birds.
"The expanded range of nesting grounds also will provide a diet of fewer Columbia River salmon and support our continued efforts to restore ESA-listed fish in the basin," said Thomas O'Donovan, the Corps' Portland District engineer.
The terns were discovered to eat millions of juvenile salmon and mostly hatchery steelhead after PIT-tags were found on the original nesting grounds farther upriver at Rice Island.
By 2001, the Corps had successfully moved the colony downriver to East Sand Island, where it was thought the birds would have a wider choice of fish species in their diet, thereby lessening their impact on salmon.
Nevertheless, they still consume about 5 million smolts annually, about half what they ate in their upriver location.
However, further research has shown that cormorant consumption of juvenile salmonids near the mouth of the river is comparable to the terns' intake. More research on cormorants is also planned to determine whether they should be managed as well.
The cormorant colony on East Sand Island has grown by nearly 300 percent since 1997, and though smolts make up a small portion of their diet, their sheer numbers have led to a higher overall impact on young salmon and steelhead than from the terns.
An alternative in the tern Environmental Impact Statement that called for the lethal removal of many of the birds was rejected by the Corps, but such drastic action may be used in the future to reduce predation on adult salmon by sea lions near Bonneville Dam.
A task force convened by NOAA Fisheries under the Marine Mammal Protection Act met for six full days this fall and nearly reached consensus (17-1) on a recommendation for approving the Idaho, Oregon and Washington application to lethally remove sea lions. The group did reach consensus on a non-lethal approach to addressing the sea lion problem.
The lone dissenter to the lethal action represents the Humane Society, and did not agree that the sea lions were having a "significant negative impact" on the recovery of ESA-listed fish in the Columbia Basin.
The Corps has estimated that sea lions near the dam consumed about 3 percent of last year's spring chinook run.
Ten members of the task force preferred a lethal alternative aimed at reducing salmon predation to a rolling average of 1 percent within 6 years. Seven members preferred another lethal alternative that would have reduced predation 0.5 percent in the observation area below Bonneville Dam.
If NMFS approves the application for lethal removal of some sea lions, the Marine Mammal Act requires the task force to evaluate the effectiveness of the permitted lethal taking or alternative actions.
If these actions are judged to be ineffective, the task force will be reconvened to recommend additional actions. -B. R.
[4] CBFWA Asks For Millions More To Meet Critical Needs
Columbia Basin fish and wildlife managers say that funds unspent by BPA for the last two years of its fish and wildlife program should go to pay for "unmet and critical needs" for various projects submitted in the 2007 budget process.
CBFWA members outlined their concerns in a Nov. 21 letter to both BPA and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries abstained to the letter.
The managers called on BPA and NPCC to collaborate with the agencies and tribes through CBFWA to funds those needs. They said some could be met with existing funds but an additional $28 million over the next two years may be needed.
CBFWA members identified 107 different projects with insufficient funding--about $25 million short in FY 08 and $31 million short in FY 09. They said two categories contained most of the shortfalls-- interim operational agreements ($7.2 million in 08) and monitoring and evaluation ($9.5 million in 08).
The interim agreements refer to deals made between BPA and some tribes to fund projects that did not make the cut in the NPCC budget process. BPA spent $3 million to pay for those projects, bypassing the Council itself, in order to secure tribal support for 2007 hydro operations. But CBFWA now wants more support for these "23 critical and essential projects," another $7.2 million in 2008 and $8.9 million in 2009.
CBWFA says more millions would be needed to boost funding for projects associated with premature in-lieu funding decisions.
The fish and wildlife agency has found its new budget chutzpa from a recent Ninth Circuit Court decision regarding BPA's 2000 rate case (Golden Northwest Aluminum v. BPA) that was decided last May. In their ruling, the Niners reiterated what they had found in an earlier decision (NW Resource Information Center) that BPA must "give substantial weight" to the analyses of fish and wildlife managers because they possess "unique experience and expertise." In that case, the court said BPA disregarded F&W managers' analysis that estimated the power agency had underestimated annual costs of its F&W program by $300 million a year.
In a letter to CBFWA members included in the Nov. 21 missive, CBFWA staffers said BPA's reopening of its rate case "presents an opportunity for the fish and wildlife managers to provide BPA with a recommended budget and supporting evidence to amend the funding level during this rate period for FY 08-09.
BPA spokesman Scott Sims said his agency is reviewing the CBFWA letter and plans a response, though it may take a few weeks. He said the fish and wildlife agencies would also have a chance to discuss their fiscal needs for the next budget period through the public venue process of the new rate case proceedings. -B. R.
[5] Science Panel Named To Help Puget Sound Rehab Effort
A panel of scientists has been chosen by the leadership council of the Puget Sound Partnership in its efforts to develop an action plan for restoring regional waters, whose job will now include overseeing the salmon recovery plan developed for the 14 watersheds represented in the Shared Salmon Strategy, which is slated to shut down at the end of the year.
The Shared Strategy's Puget Sound Recovery Council may stay together to advise the PSP leadership in the fish recovery effort, according to comments posted on the Shared Strategy's website by its executive director, Jim Kramer.
Other duties for the new panel include guiding the implementation and coordination of a Puget Sound assessment and monitoring program and providing oversight of a process for soliciting, assigning priorities and funding research and modeling projects.
"Some of the state's top scientists are now on board to help ensure this effort is a success," said David Dicks, executive director of the Puget Sound Partnership. "Their expertise and input is critical to developing a restoration plan that is grounded in good science."
The panel was chosen from a pool of candidates selected by the Washington State Academy of Sciences, whose main job is to answer questions from the governor or the legislature.
The members include: Joel Baker, environmental science professor at the Tacoma branch of the University of Washington; Guy Gelfenbaum, an oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey; Robert Johnston, senior scientist with the U.S. Navy; Jan Newton, University of Washington, principal oceanographer at UW's Applied Physics Laboratory; Timothy Quinn, WDFW's chief scientist of the WDFW's habitat program since 1999; Frank Shipley, a western regional biologist with U.S. Geological Survey; John Stark, Washington State University professor and scientist; Usha Varanasi, science and research director of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center; and Katharine Wellman, a marine environmental economist with Northern Economics, Inc. -B. R.
[6] Whale Scientists Endorse Snake River Dam Removal
Six long-time whale researchers have sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries knocking the newest draft hydro BiOp for the Columbia and Snake rivers, arguing that it's still not enough to produce self-sustaining runs of salmon, runs that would be large enough to provide a healthy food resource for resident orca populations in the Northwest.
Both the resident orca population (about 90 individuals) and most Snake and Columbia salmon runs are listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The researchers called on the federal agency "to follow the science" and remove the four dams on the lower Snake.
But Donna Darm, assistant regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries and head of the area's Protected Resources Division, said there is no evidence that the resident orcas from Puget Sound eat salmon from the Snake River, though some whales from the group have been sighted off the mouth of the Columbia at certain times of the year, mainly in early spring.
The researchers' letter, which was cc'd to members of Congress and West Coast governors, also claimed that removing the dams would substantially increase spawning habitat for fall chinook in the lower Snake, and "greatly increase the availability of a critical food source for endangered Southern Resident killer whales, particularly chinook salmon during the winter months."
The letter likely overstated the benefits for fall chinook from breaching since three-quarters of the fall population's spawning grounds were blocked by Idaho Power's Hells Canyon complex; few ever spawned in the lower Snake (NMFS Status Review, 1991). Plus, there's little evidence that the Snake fall chinook spend the winter off the coasts of Washington and BC. There is more data that shows lower Columbia tule stocks, who spawn below the hydro system, do forage in these waters during the winter and early spring.
However, Darm said her office would likely reintroduce the notion of including the whales' range in the critical habitat designations in the final hydro BiOp. She said there was general agreement that it should be included, but a time squeeze prevented it from getting into the draft BiOp released by NMFS on Oct. 31.
She said federal researchers are just now putting together more information about what the whales eat in the ocean. The resident orca pods spend most of their time foraging in the San Juan Islands, Puget Sound and southern Georgia Strait, but they have been sighted as far north as the Queen Charlotte Islands and as far south as the central California coast. The resident orcas seem to be finicky eaters compared to the ocean roaming non-resident orcas--they prefer chinook salmon above all else, but feast on chum after chinook runs are over, and turn their noses up at marine mammals like sea lions and seals, a main part of the non-resident orca diet.
"Not only are salmon from the Columbia River an important historic food source, recovered abundant salmon in this river are an indispensable requirement for the future recovery of Southern Residents," said Dr. David Bain, one of the signatories, in a Nov. 20 press release from the conservation coalition Save Our Wild Salmon. Bain is a killer whale biologist at Friday Harbor Labs operated by the University of Washington. None of the signatories to the letter work for federal agencies, but some have done consulting work for NOAA Fisheries said agency spokesperson Brian Gorman.
Just yesterday, the conservation coalition issued another press release, announcing that more than a hundred Northwest chefs and "food professionals" have signed a letter targeting removal of the lower Snake dams. "People enjoy coming to the table and being able to identify not only where their fish came from, but how it was harvested and sometimes even the name of the fisher," said Chris Keff, Chef and Owner of Seattle's Flying Fish restaurant. "Although this demand is rising, our salmon fishery is collapsing and only a long-term commitment to protecting and restoring salmon habitat will ensure that wild Pacific salmon continue to grace our table."
Keff's comments don't gibe with reality. Though the Washington commercial troll fleet has dwindled over the years, mostly from reduced coho catches, serious fishers have moved to more productive fishing grounds in Southeast Alaska, where they still catch plenty of Columbia River chinook to satisfy fresh markets, with dock prices better than $3 a pound. Recent genetic analyses of catches show that Columbia chinook make up about 25 percent of the total harvest in the troll fishery (265,000 in 2007) there and many of them come from hatcheries. About 30 percent to 40 percent of the spring troll fishery off Vancouver Island is made up of Columbia-bound fish as well. -B. R.
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