[1] BPA Buys Tribes' Support For New BiOp

BPA Administrator Steve Wright announced April 7 that the action agencies [BPA, Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation] have reached long-term settlements with four Columbia Basin tribes that would cost $900 million for 10 years' worth of more habitat restoration and hatchery improvements, while providing long-term funding certainty for many existing projects in the region's fish and wildlife program.

In return for the 200 or so new projects, three lower Columbia tribes promised not to contest the upcoming hydro BiOp, scheduled for release in early May, nor support breaching of the four lower Snake dams for the next 10 years. The agreements also allow parties to back out if there are "material" changes to BiOp-mandated hydro operations or tribal harvests.

Wright said, if implemented, these agreements would provide "substantial" fish benefits, help federal agencies meet their statutory obligations, and acknowledge the tribes' substantive role in managing fish resources and the trust and treaty relationships with the tribes.

"We believe they will provide greater long-term certainty for fish restoration funding and through reduced litigation risk increase certainty for Northwest ratepayers," Wright said.

He also said the MOAs [Memorandum of Agreement] would support the actions in the upcoming BiOp and the listed stocks' prospects for recovery. BPA will take comment on the proposed agreements through April 23.

Citing a new spirit of teamwork and trust with the tribes, Wright said, "the focus will turn to implementation, rather than litigation."

Ron Suppah, chair of the Warm Springs Tribes, said they came to the table with federal agencies as courtroom adversaries, but "leave that table as partners. We have built an aggressive plan that fixes problems wherever the fish encounter them." He said his tribes' main concern was restoration of the resource, and as part of that, "the recognition of the tribal scientists to have equal footing with their counterparts in the federal government."

Environmental groups are still expected to go after the new BiOp in court, but without most tribal support, the federal agencies feel they have a better chance that BiOp judge James Redden will OK the new prescription for dealing with ESA-listed salmon and steelhead stocks. The BiOp includes its own extensive list of proposed habitat actions and hatchery operations for improving listed fish numbers.

But most of the funding in the latest settlements will go to improve the lot of unlisted fish stocks in the Basin, including lamprey, which is being targeted for $50 million in spending to improve fish passage facilities and its freshwater habitat. At this stage, however, no one has any idea how that spending would translate into future numbers of salmon, steelhead, or lamprey.

Unlike the other three lower Columbia tribes (Yakama, Warm Springs, Umatilla) The Nez Perce Tribe hasn't reached any agreement yet, but that didn't stop the tribe from sending its own wish list to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, whose deadline for recommendations to amend the F&W program was April 4. There were no cost estimates attached to the Nez Perce documents, but judging what the other tribes had received, it will add up to plenty. However, the tribe still may not climb aboard the MOA train, since it released a statement last week that still expressed their desire to see dams breached on the lower Snake.

The AP reported that the Colville Tribes, who signed a separate MOA, will receive about $200 million over the 10 years, the Warm Springs Tribes $80 million, the Umatilla Tribes $150 million and the Yakama Tribes $330 million, while the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission would receive $90 million for many new projects involving research, monitoring and evaluation.

The deal also calls for secure funding for the Fish Passage Center for the next 10 years.

Warm Springs attorney John Ogan said the two-year MOA negotiation restores the region's commitment to fish not listed under the ESA. He said it did not begin with a process like the BiOp's concern for filling survival gaps, but started by asking tribal F&W staffers, "experts in their fields," a question: "If you had the resources available to you in the next decade, population by population, subbasin by subbasin, river by river, tell us what you would do to improve the health and number of steelhead, chinook, lamprey."

But others think the final product is still well short of enough independent review.

Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest River Partners, said the proposals aren't exempt from scientific scrutiny, and should be reviewed by the independent panel that judges the merit of F&W proposals for the BPA-funded program.

The 3-tribe MOA calls for ISRP review, but if problems are found, the affected tribe and BPA are charged with reaching an "adjustment." If none can be reached, then a replacement project will be identified.

BPA senior policy advisor Lori Bodi, told NW Fishletter that instead of a project-by-project review, BPA and the tribes would like the ISRP to review the projects at the subbasin scale, to ensure that the limiting factors analyses are correct and the right fish populations are targeted for improvement.

But she said the new habitat projects would be evaluated for biological benefits, in much the same way BiOp projects are being analyzed for future benefits, by using the "best professional judgment" of local biologists. She expected the 200 or so projects to be ramped up over the next two to three years.

Some of the new hatchery projects -- which are budgeted at $130 million over the next 10 years -- may become quite controversial. But the agreements say they can still be funded by BPA, even if the ISRP judges them to have little value.

Bodi said it was up to NOAA Fisheries to judge whether certain hatchery projects help or hinder recovery of ESA-listed stocks. She said an upcoming review of hatchery operations would also play a role in evaluating the proposals.

In the past, the science panel has found little scientific support for supplementing wild fish populations with hatchery stocks. It was an issue the ISRP raised only last month in a review of the latest step towards a new hatchery program slated for the Upper Columbia, a facility heavily promoted by the Colville Tribes, who say it's been promised since Grand Coulee Dam was built.

But in their Mar. 7 review, the ISRP said, "...we caution Council [NPCC] that the project has yet to gain the full support of the ISRP based on scientific merit."

Bodi acknowledged that BPA sometimes does not follow the advice of the ISRP, noting that the science panel had called for ending the Redfish Lake sockeye program because they judged the stock to be functionally extinct. BPA still funds it as part of a mandatory ESA program (The Nez Perce wish list also calls for reintroducing sockeye at other lakes in its region).

The hatchery proposals have torqued one long-time advocate of wild fish. "The tribes have turned their back on stewardship of wild salmon recovery," said Bill Bake, executive director of the Native Fish Society, "by agreeing to not legally enforce environmental laws associated with dam operations such as water temperature and gas bubble disease or dam removal as a necessary salmon recovery action.

"By joining the Bush administration salmon team," said Bakke, "the tribes are getting $94 million for hatcheries that have already been scientifically discredited as a recovery tool, and $32 million for habitat that will not compensate for the salmon kill at the dams. This rate payer gift to the tribes can be added to the $9 billion already spent on salmon recovery with no measurable benefit."

The notion that the tribes sold out was echoed by environmental groups. The Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition said in an April 7 press release that the three tribes "must disavow their prior biological recommendations, which are steeply at odds with the federal approach. The tribes must also refrain from advocating for measures they have long said were scientifically necessary for salmon survival such as removing the four dams on the lower Snake River."

Tribal officials took umbrage at the idea they had compromised their position. The agreement says if the Snake ESUs are still in big trouble by 2015 and more must be done to save them, the tribes may advocate for breaching one or more of those projects.

"The folks on the other side are terribly disappointed," said Yakama tribal attorney Tim Weaver, "because they have had the opportunity to use an awful lot of good tribal science in their efforts and they are not going to be able to enjoy that same luxury this time around." He said it sounded like "sort of sour grapes on their part. We're doing something for the fish, we're consolidating the gains that we have gained through the litigation process and are forging a new partnership here with the action agencies to really bring back the fish."

"It's been fun, quite frankly, beating Bonneville over the head in the courtroom," said Weaver, "but it hasn't produced any fish. We believe what we're doing now is going to have that impact and we're going to do it together with the action agencies."

BPA customer groups were still reserving judgment on the MOAs, though in comments they had filed with the NPCC's amendment process, they questioned BPA's legal obligation to fund all offsite mitigation when the NW Power Act calls for F&W spending to be tied directly to mitigation for losses from hydro operations.

Scott Corwin, executive director of the Public Power Council, said his group was still trying to get to a bottom line on added costs from the agreements. He said his members were very concerned about the level of biological benefits that would be realized from the added expenditures.

At last Monday's press conference, action agencies did not have an answer to the new costs question, but by Wednesday afternoon, they were saying that 60 percent of the $900 million was "new" money and would add another two to four percent to wholesale power rates. Later that day, another $65 million was added to the total, when a new F&W agreement between the state of Idaho and action agencies was announced.

The number is likely to go up even more. BPA's Bodi said a deal is imminent with the state of Montana and they are still talking with the Nez Perce Tribe and the state of Oregon. Just before presstime, it was announced that a $15 million MOA had been reached between Montana and action agencies. BPA spokesman Scott Simms said that was all "new" money, but was not expected to have any effect on future power rates.

WDFW sent a late February letter to BPA, to get in on the action, though Washington state had earlier decided it didn't need a formal MOA. Evidently, some state officials were growing concerned that all this proposed spending may adversely impact efforts of their own salmon recovery board. BPA told WDFW in an April 1 letter that it would grandfather some land purchases and easements to protect critical fish and wildlife habitat into an MOA

The governor of Washington has endorsed the BPA-tribal agreements, but it was also reported that the state of Oregon has actively campaigned against the new MOAs.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski was not happy that two tribes from his state had signed one of the agreements. "It's a sad day for me," he said last Monday. It has been reported that the state has held out for future dam operations that include more spill and a drawdown of John Day reservoir.

The 3-tribe MOA does mention the JD drawdown issue. It says the action agencies will meet with the tribes "in the near-term to discuss relevant existing hydraulic and biological information to better understand the biological benefits and/or detriments associated with John Day reservoir operations." It also notes that an action to draw down JD to minimum operating pool "is a contingency and so may be decided as a product of the 2015 comprehensive review." -B. R.

[2] PFMC Closes Most of West Coast To All Chinook Fishing

The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced April 10 that it plans to keep all chinook harvest closed this year south of Cape Falcon, Ore. in response to the "unprecedented collapse" of the Sacramento River fall chinook.

"This is a disaster for West Coast salmon fisheries, under any standard," said PFMC chair Don Hansen. "There will be a huge impact on people who fish for a living, those who eat wild-caught king salmon, those who enjoy recreational fishing, and the businesses and coastal communities dependent on these fisheries."

The council will recommend to NOAA Fisheries a small, 9,000-fish harvest of hatchery coho off the Oregon coast.

North of Cape Falcon, chinook fishing will be similar to last year, but coho fishing will be severely restricted. Non-Indians will get 20 percent of last year's allocation, treaty fisheries 50 percent.

Council officials said the sudden decline was a mystery, though many federal scientists point to poor ocean conditions in 2005 as a probable cause, though others say large water withdrawals in the Sacramento have greatly reduced fish survival. A task force will look into the causes of the rapid decline.

The PFMC's minimum goal for returning Sacramento chinook is 122,000-180,000 fish, but even with no fishing, managers expect only 54,000 to return this year. That's a far cry from the 775,000 that returned in 2002.

Chinook escapement to the Sacramento has dipped as low as 1992's 87,000-fish return. But that was after an ocean harvest of more than 200,000 fish (s. of Pt. Arena).

These stocks have the capacity to bounce back fast. Sacramento escapements quadrupled by 1995, and that was after an ocean commercial and recreational harvest of more than a million chinook that year.

West coast governors are already calling for disaster aid to bail out fishermen and coastal communities, where impacts from the commercial fishery are estimated by the PFMC at $61 million a year, and $21 million in the recreational fishery. -B. R.

[3] Sporties Catch Thousands Of Chinook Below Bonneville Dam

While California fishermen were trudging through the halls of Congress last month, trying to drum up support for an investigation of NMFS and the collapse of Sacramento River salmon stocks, Columbia River sportfishers were reeling in spring chinook right and left -- 4,441 by March 31, according to WDFW harvest manager Joe Hymer.

The chinook count at Bonneville Dam was a paltry 769 fish by April 9, but Hymer said that should change when flows pick up and spill starts on April 10. He said sportfishers were getting about one fish per boat and most of the action was around Vancouver, the best catch rates since 2002. About 1,500 boats were counted on the river on the last Saturday in March.

Another positive note, according to Hymer, was the fact that chinook jacks are showing early this year, which could mean another big run next year.

Sporties are only allowed to keep fish with a clipped fin, which means it was raised in a hatchery. They had released 680 wild fish by the end of March.

Harvest managers hope to keep sportfishing open between Hayden Island and Bonneville Dam from the middle of March until the end of April. They have reduced the bag limit to one hatchery chinook a day.

A 10-hour commercial gillnet fishery on April 1 snagged 674 hatchery spring chinook. About two dozen boats participated. The commercials are slated to fish every Tuesday until they catch their allotment--about 5,200 chinook. They were reportedly getting $9 to $10 a pound for their catch.

The sports side has been allotted more hatchery fish because their impacts on wild, ESA-listed fish are less than the gillnetters. Sports fisherman will be allowed to keep fishing below Bonneville until they catch 18,600 hatchery springers.

Washington and Oregon agreed this year to split the overall 2-percent impacts by non-Indians a bit more in favor of the sport side -- 61 percent to 39 percent. Before, it was a 57-to-43 split.

Another new wrinkle this year is the presence of tribal fishers below Bonneville Dam. An agreement between WDFW and the Yakama Nation has sanctioned tribal subsistence fishing from Bonneville Dam to Beacon Rock, 4.5 miles downriver. Tribal members may fish with more than one pole.

"The agreement was reached cooperatively with the Yakama Nation, and clarifies fishing areas and enforcement responsibilities immediately below the dam," said WDFW southwest regional manager Pat Frazier.

The tribes got a big boost in their allotment this year, thanks to a sliding scale used by managers to adjust catches in times of plenty, like this spring when 269,000 upriver springers are expected to show up. The tribal fishers will be allowed a 10-percent impact on the upriver run, up from last year's 7 percent. They mostly fish above Bonneville Dam with nets. -B. R.

[4] Federal Court Upholds Puget Sound's ESA Harvest Policy

A federal judge in Seattle ruled against several conservation and fishing groups who had sued NOAA Fisheries to get more ESA-listed salmon back into Puget Sound streams.

Their arguments that current harvest numbers are too high for a variety of reasons did not persuade Judge Robert Lasnik in the least.

It's the latest in a series of setbacks to harvest reform that began several years ago, when issues of harvest and recovering ESA stocks got a serious boost in the public consciousness after Seattle attorney Eric Redman spoke before the Northwest Power and Conservation Council about the conundrum of harvesting the very fish the region was obliged to recover. Redman helped write the Northwest Power Act nearly 30 years ago.

His main message was that expensive salmon-recovery efforts in Puget Sound and the Columbia Basin were being stymied by too much harvest. He announced the formation of a new alliance of municipal governments, utilities and environmental groups to focus on harvests by both humans and marine mammals.

That alliance is now pretty much a goner, and its attempts to get more ESA-listed fish to spawning grounds are running out of steam in the courts.

In the March 20 decision, the feds did admit that the management plan put together by Sound-area tribes and WDFW, and approved by NOAA Fisheries, was less than ideal, but managers were faced with competing mandates of upholding tribal harvests and starting recovery efforts. They felt current harvest rates wouldn't really harm recovery because so little improvement in salmon numbers would occur from few habitat actions during the short, 5-year life of the plan

Judge Lasnik said, in the face of competing scientific data, the agencies deserved "deference" in their decisions, and he gave it to them on every major point.

Plaintiffs' attorney Svend Brandt-Erichsen said the judge should not have deferred to the agencies because it allowed the government to sidestep its legal obligation to recover the ESA-listed chinook. He represented the Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance, Wild Fish Conservancy, Native Fish Society and Clark-Skamania FlyFishers in the proceedings, which began in early 2006.

Brandt-Erichsen argued that the harvest plan set escapement goals far too low -- some only a tenth of what a technical recovery team had estimated was needed to create viable populations.

But harvest managers said those goals were based on MSY (Maximum Sustainable Yield), the estimate of a certain watershed's current fish-production capability. MSY is a factor limited mostly by habitat constrictions and has nothing to do with recovery goals. The feds argued that reducing harvest rates had little impact on recovering the chinook, compared to rebuilding habitat.

Plaintiffs also argued that increased Canadian interception of some Puget Sound stocks should have triggered re-consultation of the harvest plan's BiOp, but the government argued successfully that it is still collecting data on the subject, which is generally updated every five years.

"Accordingly, the Court defers to NMFS's technical expertise and concludes that NMFS' decision not to reinitiate consultation on the Canadian harvest was not arbitrary and capricious," Lasnik ruled.

"We have yet to find a court that will take a serious look at recovery," Brandt-Erichsen told NW Fishletter. "It's a frustrating thing." He said there has been no decision yet whether to appeal.

Two other harvest-related cases are still in process. The same groups had filed over the legality of bringing ESA-listed salmon across the border. That one was dismissed in customs court about a year ago, and is now in the Federal Circuit, where a ruling may come in a couple of months, said Brandt-Erichsen.

The groups' challenge to the Pacific Salmon Treaty and increasing Canadian harvests was dismissed in federal District Court in September 2006, and appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where argument is set for April 11 over whether the district court has jurisdiction to hear their complaint.

The political will to push for harvest reforms that began with Congressional hearings four years ago seems to have pretty much petered out.

In October 2005, several Northwest congressmen, including Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), held field hearings on ESA recovery and harvest issues.

The Tacoma hearing listened to attorney Brandt-Erichsen, who represented a then-brand-new coalition concerned about the Canadian interceptions of listed U.S. stocks. He hinted that the group might sue federal agencies to reopen consultation over the U.S.-Canada salmon treaty. At that time, the coalition also called on the Customs Service to enforce regulations that would keep U.S. sports fisherman from returning home with chinook caught in B.C. because the fish might have been part of an ESA-listed U.S. stock.

At a Jan. 25, 2005 hearing on harvest in Pendleton, Ore., Gary Loomis, president of the Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance, told Congress that "harvest rates on chinook from key Puget Sound rivers are too high for the salmon to recover." He said NOAA Fisheries acknowledged it, "but approved the harvest plan anyway."

That very same day, the White House announced that the Bush administration would like to reduce harvests and weed out hatcheries that had adverse effects on listed stocks.

The get-tough-on-harvest message, delivered by James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was partly in response to the emerging lawsuits.

Since then, the Bush administration has found bigger fish to fry. NMFS is now actually supporting some increase in harvest rates in the Columbia River in the nearly finished renegotiations in the U.S. v. Oregon process, and the hatchery review in the Columbia Basin is only half-completed at best.

And Snohomish County PUD, the biggest member of the Salmon Spawning and Recovery Alliance, no longer participates nor funds it. That leaves just two conservation groups -- Fish First, and Friends of the East Fork -- in the Alliance.

But the Alliance's Loomis (he's also president of Fish First) hasn't given up. He has found thousands of new constituents in the recreational-fishing sector as a prime mover to develop Oregon and Washington chapters of the national Coastal Conservation Association, with a chief aim to ban non-Indian commercial gillnetters, which he sees as the major obstacle to increasing wild salmon and steelhead runs.

The Northwest CCA chapters are picking up where the Salmon Alliance left off -- pushing for more clipped-fin hatchery fisheries to allow for more selective fishing, while allowing more wild (unclipped) salmon and steelhead to get back to their spawning grounds.

In 2003, Norm Dicks sponsored legislation that called for marking all fish at federal hatcheries. It passed, despite serious objections from many tribes. The new regime has led to a selective spring chinook sport fishery in the Columbia and selective coho and steelhead fisheries in some areas of both Washington and Oregon.

But it's still not being implemented in Canadian or Alaskan mixed stock chinook fisheries in the ocean, though some players in upcoming treaty talks say it will definitely be one of the hot-button issues in talks this year. About 80 to 90 percent of the chinook caught by Canadian commercial trollers and sports fishers off Vancouver Island are bound for the Lower 48. -B. R.

[5] Humane Society Tries To Kill Fed's Bonneville Sea Lion Decision

The Humane Society and Wild Fish Conservancy have filed a complaint in federal district court in Oregon to stop the lethal removal of sea lions preying on salmon at Bonneville Dam.

The group says the marine mammals' 4-percent take is nothing compared to the fishermen's take of 12 percent, the birds' 18 percent, and the dams' 59 percent.

The complaint argues that the sea lions do not have a "significant" negative impact, as federal agencies claim.

Further, the complaint says, some members of these plaintiff groups have developed "personal relationships with some of these animals," and will be "severely emotionally affected" if any of their favorite sea lions are killed.

The March 24 complaint pointed out that in the early 1990s at Seattle's Ballard Locks, NMFS decided that the sea lions had to have a 10-percent impact on the steelhead run they were consuming before the agency would condone lethal removal.

For these and other reasons, the groups say the feds are violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Lethal removal of some sea lions was slated to begin last Friday, but an agreement was reached between the feds and the Humane Society that would keep the lethal option from being implemented until April 18, which will give the court enough time to rule on the society's request for a preliminary injunction to stop the sea lion removal project. -B. R.

[6] Alaska Cuts Chinook Quota Nearly 50 Percent

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced a big cutback in this year's Southeast chinook fisheries, down to 170,000 treaty chinook. The troll fishery would be allocated about 125,000 of the total, with the rest divvied up between the commercial seiners, gillnetters and the sport side, which is getting 31,350 chinook to catch this year.

ADFG said the 48-percent reduction from last year is based on its estimate of ocean abundance. These are the smallest preseason allowable catches since implementation of the 1999 Pacific Salmon Treaty Agreement.

The department's April 4 press release pointed to the ocean as a big factor in the reduced numbers. "While the factors affecting the abundance of chinook on the West Coast are complex, it is widely recognized that unfavorable ocean conditions in 2005 and 2006 likely were a significant cause of the poor survival of chinook in the early part of their four- to five-year life-cycle, Some of these ocean conditions have moderated substantially and appear to be returning to a status more favorable to salmon populations."

What the press release didn't say was that most of the chinook caught in Southeast Alaska are bound for British Columbia and Lower 48 rivers. The state does produce some hatchery fish, which make up 15 percent or so of the SE catch. Columbia River stocks, especially Mid-Upper Columbia chinook, comprise about 25 percent of the Alaskans' chinook catch in SE. Another 30 percent or so originate in BC, about 15 percent from Oregon and the rest from the Washington coast. -B. R.

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