[1] Proposed 2008 Hydro Operations May Short Spring Chinook Survival
The deal offered to BiOp plaintiffs by federal attorneys last December may contain one huge glitch.
The offer to repeat last year's hydro operations in 2008 in return for a promise that enviros won't file any motions to change operations this year isn't likely to preserve the "spread-the-risk" policy between transported and inriver migrating spring chinook.
In fact, if things go like last year, only 25 percent of the spring chinook would be barged at all, whereas all recent BiOp mandates have called for a 50-50 split.
With up-to-date research showing overall survival benefits from barging for both wild and hatchery stocks of both species, the offer could end up killing a lot of fish, all because the feds said they didn't have the manpower to handle a preliminary injunction and keep the new BiOp on schedule. Federal scientists reported last fall that juvenile wild spring chinook that were barged in 2004 returned at nearly five times the rate of inriver migrants.
It didn't seem like much of an issue last summer when preliminary estimates of barged and inriver percentages were floated at a science/policy exchange in Portland sponsored by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. NOAA Fisheries scientist Steve Smith reported that about 47 percent of the non-PIT-tagged spring chinook (most of the run) were transported from lower Snake dams, along with 67 percent of the non-tagged steelhead.
But later, the numbers were firmed up and released at a Nov. 28 "lessons learned" review by the technical team that manages week-to-week hydro operations. By then, the percentage of non-tagged, barged spring chinook had dropped significantly -- to 24 percent, and barged non-tagged steelhead was estimated at only 33 percent.
The reasons for so few fish being transported?
At the review, NOAA scientists said it was hard to estimate the non-tagged percentages, but transportation started late in 2007, May 1, when many young chinook had already passed the dams. The scientists said 57 percent of the wild chinook had passed Lower Granite Dam by May 1, along with 24 percent of the steelhead. Also, higher spill levels at Little Goose and Lower Monumental dams meant that fewer smolts were bypassed and barged at those collector dams.
Those estimates have changed a little since then. Ritchie Graves, acting branch chief for NOAA Fisheries' Portland-based FCRPS group, told NW Fishletter that the latest estimates of the 2007 transport percentage are 25 percent for non-tagged spring chinook and 41 percent for the non-tagged steelhead.
He said the agency expects more Snake spring chinook and steelhead to be barged than last year, "but not as many as in the past."
In some years, especially before the super-efficient spillway weir was installed at Lower Granite, more than 90 percent of the fish were sometimes barged.
Graves also said that recent data has shown that as flows rise in the Snake, it seems that spring chinook find dam bypass systems more quickly than steelhead, who seem to spend more time hunting for the spillway weir and passing the dam via that route. With higher flows expected this year, he said, it's likely more chinook will end up in barges than last year.
Bob Lohn, NOAA Fisheries regional administrator, told NW Fishletter that rolling over the 2007 operations was the "most palliative" way to get through this year, and that the action agencies also agreed.
He did confirm that the number of spring chinook that would be barged his spring would be "about the same" as last year's 25 percent.
"It represents an acceptable way to get through 2008 operations, though we would not recommend it as a long-term operation," he said.
Before last December's offer to roll over 2007 operations was made in BiOp Judge James Redden's court, some parties to the litigation were concerned about the potential shortchanging of barged fish. They say they were assured by federal attorneys that agency scientists had found their low estimates were inaccurate and nothing to worry about.
But at the Feb. 20 status conference to discuss rollover issues, the barging question never came up. -Bill Rudolph
[Feb. 28 update: The IT met Feb. 28 and agencies stuck to their no spill decision. At that point, Oregon representative Ron Boyce asked that the issue be raised to the federal executive level—the highest policy rung. He said his governor’s office supported the move. Others speculated there might not be enough time for the agency heads to meet before the fish were to be released in early March.]
[2] BiOp Judge Nixes Call To Boost Bonneville Spill
On Feb. 22, U.S. District Court Judge James Redden upheld a plan to roll over 2007 hydro operations for ESA-listed fish for this year.
Last December, federal attorneys offered the rollover deal to plaintiffs in the ongoing BiOp litigation, contingent on plaintiffs agreeing not to file a motion to change 2008 operations. The feds said they were strapped for manpower and doubted they could meet the deadline for writing the new BiOp if they had to deal with a motion for changing hydro operations at the same time.
But plaintiffs, led by the state of Oregon, argued that one item still needed to be changed. At a Feb. 20 status conference, they argued that a dissolved gas monitor below Bonneville Dam was not reliable and should not be used to gauge the amount of dissolved gas created by the spill at the dam.
They cited a Feb. 19 analysis by the Fish Passage Center that estimated another 800 Kaf of spring and summer spill at Bonneville could be used to help pass fish without any harmful effects from dissolved gas downriver.
But federal attorney Coby Howell argued that the plaintiffs had presented no evidence of biological benefits to fish from added spill. The Corps of Engineers has previously found that spill was not the best way to route smolts past the dam, but that the newer modification called the corner collector provided essentially 100-percent survival.
Judge Redden agreed with the feds, saying, "There was no convincing argument that the use of the Camas/Washougal gauge would significantly reduce the likelihood of survival of listed species migrating over Bonneville Dam."
He said in his Feb. 22 decision letter that he wasn't persuaded that "tweaking" the spill operations would provide any measurable benefit to fish.
The added spill would have amounted to about a 6-kcfs increase during the summer period, about a 5-percent boost, and would have cost BPA about $3 million.
The judge also denied a request by the state of Montana and the Kootenai Tribe to implement an action designed to flatten flows from the state's largest reservoirs to aid resident fish. The action will be included in the new BiOp slated for release May 5.
The judge said he was sympathetic, but wasn't convinced that the change in reservoir operations was necessary to prevent irreparable harm to the species.
However, granting their request would result in the "piecemeal implementation" of the new BiOp, which "has yet to be finalized, challenged, or subject to judicial review." -B. R.
[3] Fight Brews Over Upcoming Spring Harvest
With nearly 270,000 upriver spring chinook expected to show up in the Columbia River, sport and commercial fishermen have been sparring all winter over the shape of the upcoming season. It could be one of the biggest returns since Bonneville Dam was built in 1938.
However, in one sense, it's a big fight over practically nothing. Due to ESA concerns, the non-treaty fishers are allocated only two percent of the upriver run, and the issue is complicated by low expectations for spring chinook returns on the Willamette River, where only 34,000 are expected. If the return is that low, then it will be one of the lowest on record.
To complicate things even more, the fisheries agencies in Washington and Oregon have decided to take different approaches to managing the spring fisheries this year.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted Feb. 8 to give the sporties a little more of the spring chinook pie. They were allocated 65 percent of the wild fish impacts, and the gillnetters 35 percent. Previously, the allocation was more equal, with 57 percent sport and 43 percent commercial.
"This was a tough decision, because the spring chinook fishery is important to both sport and commercial fishers," said Jerry Gutzwiler, chair of the state's F&W commission, in a press release. The commission voted 5-3 in favor, with one abstention, while the previous week it had been deadlocked at 4-4, with one member absent.
Despite relatively small catches, commercial gillnetters have found the niche fishery especially lucrative, with dock prices running above $5 a pound.
But sportfishers, since they can only keep fin-clipped salmon, claim the moral high ground. They are getting a boost from a national sports-based group with new chapters in Washington and Oregon called the Coastal Conservation Association, which has made getting rid of gillnets their highest priority because the nets are not selective. So far, they are only after non-Indian nets.
The sports side does have less impact on listed stocks, according to fisheries biologists, who estimate that one wild chinook dies for every ten that are unhooked.
Commercial gillnetters have started using tangle nets to reduce their impacts on ESA fish, but releasing and resuscitating a wild chinook only seems to keep the fish alive about 60 percent of the time.
At a heated meeting in Oregon, where sports and commercial segments recently met head to head, Oregon commissioners took a different approach.
To protect the Willamette springers, they voted to keep both sport and commercial fishers off the Columbia below the Interstate 5 bridge at Portland, but let them both fish in the river from the bridge to Bonneville Dam. They also kept the old 57/43 allocation in place.
Their plan is aiming for a longer sport season (to April 30) and a 6,000-fish harvest for commercials.
However, the two states will have to come up with a compromise before the fish begin to show. They were slated to meet Feb. 15 to iron out their differences (see Story 4).
Tribal fishers above Bonneville Dam have stayed out of the fray. Since they are allocated impacts to ESA stocks based on a sliding scale, this year's expected blockbuster means they will be entitled to 10 percent of the upriver run. -B. R.
[4] Spring Harvest Adjusted To Help Weak Willamette Run
Washington and Oregon harvest managers have reached a compromise over how to keep their recreational anglers and commercial gillnetters relatively happy, while reducing impacts on a spring chinook run in the Willamette River that's expected to be the among the lowest in many years.
Luckily, the spring run for upriver Columbia chinook is likely to be huge -- it's expected to be the third largest at Bonneville Dam since 1938. This is why the managers have decided to move all commercial gillnetting in the mainstem far upriver from their typical areas, away from the Willamette run.
"This year's fishing seasons are designed to give anglers an opportunity to take advantage of strong returns of chinook bound for upriver hatcheries, while protecting weak Willamette River stocks," said Cindy LeFleur, WDFW's Columbia River policy coordinator. "Like anglers, fishing seasons have to be responsive to changing conditions."
It's an about-face from previous management actions that allowed commercials fishing in the lower Columbia to target Willamette chinook in order to reduce impacts in upriver Columbia chinook. Managers kept track of differing proportions of the two runs by test fishing.
But after a Feb. 15 hearing between the two states, managers decided that commercial fishing -- other than the off-channel select-area harvest effort -- will be restricted to an area in the Columbia above the Willamette mouth from the Hayden Island power lines (west towers) upstream to the upper commercial fishing deadline at Beacon Rock.
It is planned to occur on Tuesdays between March 25 and April 29 with a goal of 5,200 hatchery chinook. The gillnetters must use tools like onboard recovery boxes to help revive any wild ESA-listed fish before returning them to the river, a practice that has had only limited success in the past.
Managers estimate a whopping 40 percent post-release mortality for wild chinook and 30 percent for steelhead when large mesh nets are used. When fishers use much smaller mesh tangle nets, they expect chinook mortality to be cut by about 50 percent.
Recreational fishers got a severely limited spring season in the lower Columbia, a mere 12 days, but they have been allocated 100 percent of the harvestable surplus of the Willamette spring hatchery run's 6,000 fish, out of an expected return of 29,000.
It's a much rosier scenario in the Columbia, where harvest managers hope to keep sportfishing open between Hayden Island to Bonneville Dam, from the middle of March until the end of April. They have reduced the bag limit to one hatchery chinook a day.
There is some potential for both gillnetters and sporties to be out fishing in the same area at the same time. However, managers will also open the river between Bonneville Dam and six miles below The Dalles to bank fishing until May 10.
Both states agreed on another compromise to peel back a little of the gillnetters' share of the 2-percent impact on listed upriver spring chinook allotted to non-Indian fishers. Recreational fishers will now get 61 percent and the gillnetters 39 percent. Before, it was 57/43.
The expected bounty in the Columbia translates into a significant boost for tribal fishers above Bonneville Dam. They will be allowed a 10-percent impact on the upriver run, up from last year's 7 percent.
A 269,000-fish estimate for the upriver Columbia run means the tribes' increased share should be more than twice the number of chinook that sea lions ate at the dam last year.
As of last week, NOAA Fisheries was still working on a plan that may allow up to 30 or so sea lions to be lethally removed in order to reduce marine mammal predation on the spring run. -B. R.
[5] Agencies Say No To Spring Creek Hatchery Spill
The Corps of Engineers said yesterday that it will satisfy most parts of a request by salmon managers to help Spring Creek hatchery fish over Bonneville Dam in early March, but it won't implement a key element -- four days of spill.
It's a big difference from years past, when dam operators spilled for 10 days to get the fish downriver. But that was before the region spent $200 million on better ways to get the fish past the dam and its turbines -- first with the juvenile bypass system, then the corner collector at Powerhouse 2.
At the Feb. 27 meeting of the Technical Management Team, the state of Oregon contested the Corps' decision and raised the issue to the policy level of the Implementation Team, which plans to meet Feb. 28. However, the feds aren't expected to change their minds.
Fish managers wanted 100 kcfs spill to help speed more than 7 million fall chinook smolts past the dam. They say the early releases from the USFWS hatchery upstream from Bonneville Dam provide nearly half of the adults that return to the facility and provide much of the harvest opportunity for both ocean and inriver fisheries.
Cindy LeFleur, WDFW's TMT representative, said the fall chinook are "an important fish to protect."
But Action Agencies were not impressed by an analysis of adult returns cited by fish managers. The study, posted on the Fish Passage Center's website, said results were not "statistically significant," but estimated an 18-percent benefit in adult returns for fish that passed the dam via spill rather than the expensive ($55 million) corner collector at Bonneville's Powerhouse 2, built a few years ago, which Action Agencies consider the best way to pass fish at the dams. They estimate its spring chinook survival at around 100 percent, with spillway passage the least benign route, about 96 percent survival.
The smolt-to adult-return rate estimated from the corner collector release was .10 percent and .118 percent from the spilled fish.
The analysis was based on results from one year of jack returns, and two years of adult returns from the 2004 releases from Spring Creek hatchery. But the analysis is heavily affected by the jack count, though miniscule. Six jacks returned from the spilled group, and none returned from the corner collector route. In following years, SARS have been nearly equal.
BPA representative Tony Norris said the spill would have cost about $2 million, and his agency couldn't see doing it, given the statistically insignificant results of the analysis.
However, USFWS staffers say that the benefits would have been more pronounced if the Corps had actually spilled the 50 kcfs as promised in 2004. A calibration problem at the dam led to only 25 kcfs being spilled for the test.
However, in the end, the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't even sign on to the official request for this year's Spring Creek spill. It was reported that USFWS regional director Ren Lohoefener, after meeting with other agency execs, decided his agency would not submit a request, but might sign on to one, if NOAA Fisheries signed on.
But NOAA Fisheries spokesman Paul Wagner told TMT members at the Feb. 27 meeting that his agency was not supporting the request. Though his agency agrees that spill is generally a better way to get fish past dams, the corner collector was adequate for passing the fall chinook, since predation is low at that time of year. He noted that the population is unlisted and used for fisheries enhancement. Actually, the hatchery stock is listed, but it is exempt from ESA take provisions because all are marked for harvest.
The Corps left open the possibility that it may study the issue in the future, but it's unlikely the study design will mimic that of the 2004 effort. Critics have pointed out that since the fish are released from the hatchery way upstream of the dam, researchers cannot even be sure which passage route they have taken to pass the dam.
There is also a process in place to reprogram the fall chinook production to a facility below the dam, which would make the March spill action unnecessary. But it has been in the works for years and little progress has been made. It's part of a larger process in the US v. Oregon negotiations.
WDFW's LeFLeur said, in the meantime, "We need to be sure we've got these fish to support our fisheries." She said BPA may think it's an expensive operation, "but it's an expensive operation for fisheries that don't have these fish to harvest."
In 2002, before the collector was in place, Corps of Engineers' biologists reported that spilling would boost survival from 95 percent to 96.5 percent overall. BPA spilled for three days at Bonneville that year to aid the Spring Creek release. In 2003, the March spill lasted only 36 hours, after the power agency originally said deteriorating financial conditions would keep it from spilling at all. Even then, BPA figured the spill would cost $3,000 for every extra adult fall chinook created by the effort.
Last year, fish managers asked for four days of 75 kcfs spill, but were turned down. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wasn't a signatory to that spill request either. Mid-level USFWS staffers who had lobbied for more spill were overruled by higher ups in Portland.
Other agencies that supported this year's request included fish agencies from Idaho, Oregon and Washington, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and the Nez Perce Tribe.
The state of Oregon has asked the spill issue be elevated to Implementation Team's policy level for further discussion. The same situation occurred last year, but Action Agencies stuck to their guns then and are expected to do the same later this week. -B. R.
[6] 92 Members Of Congress Say Feds' Columbia Salmon Plan Needs More Work
Nearly a hundred members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter to NOAA head Conrad Lautenbaucher that says the feds' new salmon plan doesn't go far enough. Since it doesn't study removing any Snake River dams, they said the new hydro BiOp should contain "a suite of measures, short of dam removal" that would give ESA-listed fish "safer" inriver migration conditions.
They said the plan needs a more proactive stance in the face of climate change, and since it's going to cost another $7 billion to $8 billion on top of the $7 billion already spent, it shouldn't contain measures "that appear to fall drastically short of what's necessary to protect and restore these species."
They called on Lautenbaucher to produce a bolder and more comprehensive plan. But conspicuously absent from the signatories are most members from the Northwest delegation. Only Washington's Jim McDermott (D), Oregon's Earl Blumenauer (D) and Darlene Hooley (D) signed the letter.
Rep. Blumenauer and Thomas Petri (D-WI) led the effort. "This is the third biological opinion under consideration by the region since 2000, and we can't afford not to get it right," Blumenauer said in a press release distributed by the Save Our Wild Salmon coalition. "The potential impacts of global warming on endangered Northwest salmon make this task even more critical. I hope the administration will seriously consider the suggestions in our letter."
"In signing this letter, Congress is sending a strong message to NOAA Fisheries that all salmon recovery options must be considered, including alternatives that the agencies have ignored until now, despite their sound scientific basis and economic viability," said Autumn Hanna, Senior Program Director for Taxpayers for Common Sense. "With more than $7 billion in taxpayer dollars already spent and salmon still in decline, we must target our resources to the most cost-effective, scientifically credible recovery solutions."
The letter is also supported by American Rivers, Idaho Rivers United, Earthjustice, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club.
But it's unlikely that the federal agency in charge of writing the new BiOp, due now May 5, will change course much from the draft released in December. NOAA Fisheries' regional administrator Bob Lohn has said his staff will not study dam breaching because his agency has no authority to breach them, so it is an "action not reasonably certain to occur," one of the main reasons a federal judge threw out the agency's salmon plan in 2000, that has led to the government's second and third tries at developing a defensible plan for operating federal dams and improving salmon and steelhead stocks in the Columbia Basin.
The politicians' venting on salmon is getting to be a tradition. In Oct. 2004, 52 members of Congress, including McDermott and Peter DeFazio (D-OR), sent a letter to President Bush that said the draft BiOp "does not ensure self-sustaining harvestable populations by relying on legal technicalities to justify not having to fully mitigate for the operation of the hydro system." They urged Bush to direct the agencies to revise the draft to ensure "significant recovery" of the basin's fish runs. -B.R.
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