[1] NWPCC Approves New, More Expensive F&W Program

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council unanimously approved last month the latest revisions to the Columbia Basin's fish and wildlife program.

Following a bit of final wordsmithing, the eight-member council voted Feb. 10 for the latest amendments to the plan, after a good chunk of it was exempted and voted on later.

The later vote focused on the plan for the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers, which draws support from the latest Biological Opinion on hydro operations.

Oregon has strongly objected to the new BiOp, and is fighting it in court, alongside fishing and environmental groups and the Nez Perce Tribe.

The state had submitted its own recommendations for running the hydro system--more flow and spill for fish, dumping the so-called Montana proposal for slower reservoir withdrawals, and calling for a drawdown at John Day--actions the state said would improve fish numbers over BiOp operations.

But Oregon's recommendations never got to square one with other council members. When the vote was tallied on the BiOp-centric mainstem part of the plan, the result was a predictable 6-2 in support.

"In the new program, the Council brings together federal, state, and tribal actions to protect and enhance fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin," council Chair Bill Booth said.

"The new program strengthens our focus on project implementation and performance," Booth said, "ensuring that the region's significant investment in fish and wildlife is focused, coordinated, and scientifically credible."

The new plan will accommodate some 200 new projects developed through the Fish Accords process that mostly traded more BPA-funded habitat and hatchery projects for some tribes and states in return for their support of the new BiOp. The added projects are expected to boost annual costs of the program by about $90 million to $230 million.

The latest F&W plan includes these main themes:

• Increases project performance and fiscal accountability by establishing reporting guidelines and using adaptive management to guide decision-making.
• Commits to a periodic and systematic exchange of science and policy information.
• Emphasizes a more focused monitoring and evaluation framework coupled with a commitment to use the information obtained to make better decisions.
• Calls for a renewed regional effort to develop quantitative biological objectives for the program.
• Retains an interim objective recommended by the region's fish and wildlife managers of increasing salmon and steelhead runs to 5 million fish by 2025 and achieving smolt-to-adult return rates of 2 to 6 percent.
• Addresses passage problems for lamprey and sturgeon at the mainstem dams.
• Proposes changes in some hatchery practices to create a more balanced, ecological approach to fish production.
• Retains a crediting formula for wildlife losses of two new units of habitat for each lost habitat unit.

Before the Council voted on the plan, Montana member Bruce Measure offered a last-minute tweak to language calling for the Fish Passage Center's oversight board to develop a peer-review policy for FPC work that was distributed beyond fish managers.

Measure, who chairs the oversight board, wanted to tighten up the language drafted at last month's meeting in Missoula from: "The Oversight Board shall determine the requirements for peer review of analytical products before dissemination to an audience broader than the manager(s) requesting the analysis" to simply, "The Oversight Board shall determine the requirements for peer review of analytical products."

He assured Oregon's Melinda Eden that the process would not keep fish managers from receiving information in a timely manner.

"On the other hand," Measure said, "there's a problem with information that is put out to the public too early. I think we found that today with NOAA's referral to the sockeye returns, and the articles in several magazines, including Clearing Up, regarding what NOAA came up with--the reasons for the unusually large sockeye returns--and the reason the Fish Passage Center came to, earlier. And I think, at least the policy for independent review would have potentially prevented that kind of problem."

The feds' analysis found that the large returns were due mainly to improved ocean conditions. The FPC study from last summer suggested robust 2008 sockeye runs were the result of better flow and spill conditions through the hydro system.

But Eden objected, saying she supported peer review but objected to changing the language "so that peer review is a condition of the fish manager, which is what the absence of this language would open the door for, receiving the analysis the fish manager asks for.

"I'm fully aware of all the discussion of the difficulties with broader dissemination before peer review. I am simply trying to protect the right of the fish manager to ask for analysis and get analysis and use that analysis as the fish manager sees fit. And then if it's used 'incorrectly,' I'm sure that would come out in any subsequent peer review," Eden said.

Oregon's other representative, Joan Dukes, said she always supported peer review, "but peer review doesn't necessarily resolve anything. Peer review often gives you two or three different scientific opinions on an issue, as opposed to thinking that all scientists who peer-review are going to come up with the same conclusion."

She said if they were concerned about the political ramifications of distributing something early, it will not be solved with this language change.

But the council voted 5-3 (Idaho's Jim Yost also dissented) for the change. Some salmon-recovery wonks said it was likely that Oregon was trying to protect the use of FPC analyses in their litigation without fear of it being contradicted by a third-party review.

The FPC has since completed its own analysis of the feds' latest sockeye memo. And it sticks with its earlier results--that inriver conditions played the key role in improved fish numbers. -Bill Rudolph

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program

Fish Passage Center, Memorandum, Feb. 18, 2009

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