[1] Hatchery Operations Get Serious Scrutiny

The value of habitat restoration could double if Northwest salmon hatchery managers change the way they do business and harvest reforms are implemented, according to a new report released March 27.

The congressionally mandated review of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead hatcheries by far the most extensive look at the region's fish factories, where conflicting mandates have created a hodge-podge policy that has likely hindered efforts to recover ESA-listed wild salmon populations.

Attorney Jim Waldo facilitated the $3-million effort, which grew out of an earlier five-year-long exercise that examined Puget Sound and coastal artificial propagation from a conservation and harvest perspective.

Waldo has been studying hatchery programs for more than 20 years, starting with a task force that wrestled with the results of the Boldt decision that gave Puget Sound tribes the right to half of the salmon harvest. Back then, the answer was to double the runs by producing more hatchery fish.

But it never worked. The potentially harmful effects of hatchery fish mingling with wild stocks have been scrutinized more closely, since some of those wild stocks are now covered by the ESA, and billions have been spent to recover them.

The marathon effort looked at 178 different programs and took nearly three years to complete. But the recommendations for improving hatcheries--mainly by using different strategies like weirs, terminal fisheries and mass marking to reduce straying by hatchery fish on spawning grounds--do not carry the force of law.

However, sources said the report actually pulled one of its major punches by delaying release of a white paper on harvest. One source said the report may never see the light of day.

But consultant Steve Smith, a member of the Hatchery Scientific Review Group, the committee that wrote the report, later told NW Fishletter that the harvest paper was in the final editing process. He said it was somewhat controversial and "they want to get it right."

Waldo was upbeat about the report's usefulness, even though tribal commenters have noted that some recommendations don't mesh with terms of previous agreements, like the U.S. v. Oregon process that manages Columbia River harvests.

Waldo said provisions are in place to make use of the new report by all the people funding, executing and reviewing these programs under the ESA.

Regional consultant Lars Mobrand, first chair of the committee that wrote the 1,000-page review, said the group decided early on that its task was not to audit hatcheries to see if they were good or bad. Rather, it was to figure out how these facilities could contribute to and support sustainable harvests while still being compatible with conservation goals for naturally producing populations.

Mobrand said the overarching conclusion was good news.

"It is indeed possible," he said, "to operate hatcheries in such a way that you can maintain current harvests, and in some cases increase harvest opportunities, while at the same time do it a lot better in terms of protection and assurance that natural populations will be sustainable in perpetuity."

Waldo said the review has already led to major modifications to hatchery coho operations in the lower Columbia, where most of the changes need to be made to help both wild coho and chinook.

The review calls for marking all hatchery fish to help fish managers sort them from wild returning spawners when they are heading upstream to spawn. There is considerable evidence that hatchery fish spawning with wild ones reduces the overall fitness of future stocks.

But by clipping a small fin, managers can also pick out more wild fish to use for hatchery broodstock, which can help beef up fitness of the hatchery stock.

By making sure that hatchery stocks are more like neighboring wild runs, Mobrand said chances are good that wild productivity could be boosted when some hatchery fish spawn naturally.

Washington Congressman Norm Dicks (D) applauded the effort. He had previously sponsored legislation that called for marking all hatchery fish at federal hatcheries.

Dicks said it will take time for some of these ideas to sink in. He said selective fisheries was still a somewhat controversial issue, but noted that he just received a letter from Puget Sound tribal leader Billy Frank, of the Puget Sound-based Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, that expressed support for mark-selective fisheries.

"There are still some people who may not be in favor of it," said Dicks, "but I think when people see that the science says if you do selective fisheries, you can improve wild runs in the river by reducing stray rates, I think that's a very compelling argument."

He noted how the Colville Tribes have begun using purse seines to release wild fish unhurt.

"This is a dramatic difference, and I think the next big step here is to do more experimentation on selective fisheries," Dicks said.

The federal government has a responsibility to spend more on the Mitchell Act hatcheries on the lower Columbia, which were built to make up for fish losses from federal dams, Dicks said. He added that he was appalled at the shape they were in and is pushing to get another $8 million to $15 million to repair them along with older tribal hatcheries as part of the reform effort.

Waldo said since many of those hatcheries were built 60 or 70 years ago, "many of them are in the wrong place."

The HSRG actually weighed in with its recommendations for lower Columbia hatcheries way back in August 2007. Since then, one facility has actually been closed in response, WDFW's Elochoman Hatchery.

Using the All-H tool (AHA) developed by Mobrand, the HSRG analyzed several scenarios to see how different harvest and hatchery changes could play out in the lower Columbia.

The HSRG solution called for reducing ocean harvest rates on lower Columbia stocks from 42 percent (recently cut already from 46 percent) to 36 percent and focusing on catching hatchery stocks in mainstem fisheries, which could boost mainstem harvest rates to 20 percent on hatchery stocks from the current 12 percent.

But this scenario would reduce harvest rates on natural stocks from about 12 percent down to 4 percent.

The HSRG recommendations are already showing up in policy talks over setting this coming year's Pacific Fishery Management Council ocean harvest rates. One potential option called for recreational fishers to land only marked (hatchery) chinook between Westport and the Columbia River.

Further upriver, where tribal harvest policies are involved, the issues get more complicated. Yakama tribal spokesperson Terry Goudy-Rambler said the report's recommendations would require "substantial changes to some hatchery programs that the Columbia River tribes fought hard to establish."

She said co-managers in the U.S. v. Oregon process would have to find a "responsible balance" between the HSRG recommendations and other policy considerations, "including impacts to treaty-reserved fishing rights."

Rebecca Miles, a member of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee, said her tribe will "study carefully" the harvest recommendations.

But wild fish advocate Bill Bakke, executive director of the Native Fish Society, said the report downplays the harvest adjustments necessary for the hatchery reform effort to be successful.

"I believe the scientists are sincere, but I don't think the managers are going to follow through," he told NW Fishletter.

Bakke also voiced doubts about the AHA model's extensive use of expert opinion instead of real data to come up with estimates of hatchery fish influence on wild stocks.

NOAA Fisheries recently announced it was expanding its own study of hatcheries in a new biological opinion. What began as an EIS on Mitchell Act hatcheries will now include all facilities in the basin, said NOAA staffer Allyson Purcell. It will be released in draft form next fall.

Purcell said the EIS will not include recommendations for specific programs, but will include other NEPA issues like environmental justice in minority and low-income populations. She said it will study five alternatives--status quo, with Mitchell Act hatchery closures, and three others with different conservation standards.

She said NOAA plans on using the AHA tool as well, to determine whether the HSRG report has overestimated or underestimated effects of hatchery stocks on wild fish. -Bill Rudolph

The following links were mentioned in this story:

Hatchery Reform System-Wide Report

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