[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
[2] BiOp Judge Wants Breaching Language Added To Salmon Plan
All parties in the BiOp litigation huddled with federal District Court Judge James Redden April 2 after federal defendants requested a meeting to discuss concerns the judge raised at a March hearing on the latest salmon plan. At that time, Redden made it clear that he thought more estuary restoration was needed in the new plan.
The feds used the occasion, which was closed to the public, to announce that another $4.5 million in annual estuary actions will soon be added to the effort, part of a new agreement in the works with the state of Washington and action agencies that would boost spending for estuary projects to $100 million from $55 million over the 10-year life of the plan.
However, a source familiar with the meeting said Redden seemed mostly focused on the immediate survival of the listed stocks in the Snake River. He reportedly told the parties that he was worried that by 2017, "all the fish will be dead."
His remarks puzzled some onlookers, since Snake River spring chinook runs are poised for blockbuster returns over the next several years, and fall chinook have been returning at levels above interim recovery goals.
And why 2017? The judge didn't say, but that happens to be the date mentioned in the recent accords signed with lower Columbia tribes and BPA when the tribes could start advocating for removal of Snake River dams if the listed runs haven't started improving by a 2015 status review, and if the tribes' own analysis shows "contingent actions are needed."
The year 2017 is also about the time a 1999 extinction analysis funded by conservation group Trout Unlimited estimated that the Snake spring chinook stocks would be functionally extinct. That report, called 'The Doomsday Clock,' was updated in 2001. It was harshly criticized by regional scientists, who said the analysis had cherry-picked the time frame to reach its conclusion (see next story).
However, the judge wants NOAA Fisheries to add language to the BiOp that would provide a breaching "off-ramp" in case the Snake runs collapse. That could take some fancy legal footwork, since the feds had recently announced they were not going to reopen the 2008 BiOp for consultation.
Before that, they had told the judge the breaching option was not included in their salmon plan because it was an action "not reasonably certain to occur," noting that the judge had previously ruled the plan could only include actions that were likely to occur.
Federal defendants and plaintiffs later said they would respond to the judge's other questions within the next three weeks.
Meanwhile, environmental groups have pulled out the stops to get breaching in the public consciousness. American Rivers pegged the lower Snake River as the third most endangered river in America, and an April 11 editorial in the New York Times called for the Obama administration to consider breaching the lower Snake dams.
But a new poll conducted by Northwest RiverPartners found that two-thirds of Northwest voters opposed dam breaching. -B. R.
[3] Analysis: Judge Alarmed Over Extinction Clock
BiOp judge James Redden surprised everyone at a recent meeting among litigants (no public or court reporter allowed) with his continual references that Snake River salmon were going extinct by 2017. He seems to have been misled by an old study that has since been proven to be totally wrong.
Federal agencies asked for the meeting to explain a new agreement that would add more habitat restoration efforts in the Columbia estuary. Redden expressed concern about the lack of estuary actions during oral arguments last month. At that meeting, federal attorneys had reminded him that for the past several years wild fall chinook had been returning in numbers that exceeded the interim recovery rate.
Attendees reported being puzzled by his remarks, but the judge said nothing to explain why he had come up with the year 2017.
However, after a little detective work (two minutes on the Internet), I think I know where he found it. There is a good chance that the good judge has been trolling the Web for comments about the latest salmon plan. Maybe he even Googles himself to see what people are saying about him.
He may have stumbled on a March 23 article in the High Country News with the headline, "2017 is just around the corner," written by one Paul Van Develder, who was billed as a contributor to Writers on the Range and a resident of Corvallis, Ore.
"I've been writing about the Great Salmon War in the Columbia River Basin for so long that by now you'd think I'd have grown a tail and fins," his article began. "When I wrote my first stories, Moby Dick was a minnow, my 30-year-old son was still in middle school and the projected extinction date for salmon, 2017, seemed like a long way off."
Well, to some of us who have been covering these issues for years, the extinction date for salmon still seems like a long way off, but a stiff dose of reality--i.e., fish numbers--doesn't seem to mean much to dam-breaching supporters like Van Develder.
Mr. V's functional extinction date of 2017 obviously comes from a 1999 study commissioned by scientist Phil Mundy, who once worked for CRITFC, and later served as a member of the original group who wrote the 'Return to the River' report that called for a return to a more "normative" state of the Columbia and Snake rivers. He now works for NOAA Fisheries and runs NMFS' Auke Bay Lab in Juneau, Alaska.
Mundy dubbed the original 1999 version of his extinction analysis "The Doomsday Clock." We wrote about it in NW Fishletter. The poetic Doomsday reference echoed Cold War rhetoric and the possibility of nuclear winter, but the work itself was pretty weak.
Our story included a critique by UW fisheries professor Jim Anderson, who said Mundy's analysis didn't reflect the real world very well.
"Mundy's analysis indicates that Snake River salmon would go extinct if they all returned at the same time and if the extremely poor environmental conditions of the early 1990s continued into the future. Fortunately for salmon, their evolutionary strategy is more robust than Mundy's mathematical fish and the real climate is less hostile than his model's climate," he said.
But Mundy stuck to his guns.
"I have to ask those who are forecasting improved ocean conditions, 'When may we expect to see more spring and summer spawners as a result?' Time is the essence of the extinction problem, and timing, quite literally, is everything. Let them step up to the plate and make some predictions of their own. My predictions succeed or fail based on the numbers of fish on the spawning grounds, not on the longing for better ocean conditions," he said in an email at the time.
In 2001, Mundy updated his clock and we wrote about it again (see NW Fishletter 124).
"The updated version, which still uses the Doomsday theme and was completed by Mundy and Dr. Gretchen Oosterhout, predicts median 'functional extinction' of the stocks in about 15 years, similar to the earlier report. But the newer analysis uses recruit/spawner data and an expanded time frame (1985-1999). However, it deliberately excluded brood years from the early 1980s (used by NMFS in its own analysis) because the time frame showed 'anomalously high productivities,' according to the authors, who noted that the high rates of return could be due to a number of factors, including climate trends, increased flows, and/or a response to harvest rate reductions."
A few weeks before Mundy released his second report, the spring chinook count had climbed 10 times higher than the previous 10-year average at Bonneville Dam. On one single spring day--April 17--27,000 springers were counted. That was nearly three times the size of the entire spring run in 1999, when Mundy first wound up his Doomsday Clock.
But that's all water over the dam, I guess. The judge seems convinced that the pseudo-scientific hoopla being peddled by dam-breaching advocates is gospel. Mundy himself begged off any comment.
"Being in a leadership position in the agency responsible for the BiOp, albeit geographically remote from the CRB, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to join this dialogue," he relayed via email last week.
1999 Portland billboard
Maybe Mundy remembered that he had predicted some stocks should have disappeared by now. Let's look directly at Doomsday's 2001 scripture, which included a table that predicted spring chinook stocks in Idaho's Marsh Creek and Oregon's Imnaha River would go extinct as early as 2007.
The redd count (salmon nests) for Marsh Creek was exactly zero in 1999, but it jumped up to 409 by 2003, then deteriorating ocean conditions helped to drop that back to 48 redds by 2006.
For the Imnaha, redd counters in 1999 estimated only 191, but 1,123 redds appeared in 2002, and 276 in 2006.
No runs have gone extinct or close to it since the Doomsday Clock began counting down, while more big fish numbers are expected again in the next few years. The ocean rules all.
But judging from his own comments at the April 2 fiasco, Judge Redden seems to be taking credit away from Mother Nature for the salmon runs' continued survival. He appears to believe that his own court-ordered spill is the secret ingredient that has kept these runs from tanking.
According to meeting notes from an attorney whose client authorized their release, "The judge began the meeting by noting that the Obama administration had recently reversed a Bush administration policy to promote logging, and expressed the view that the new Administration might be more 'open.' He [the judge] suggested that 'by the year 2017, the wild fish will be dead' and that 'we have done nothing about it but spills.' He stated that he wanted to amend the BiOp to make it 'viable' and 'save the fish.'"
The judge's apparent thinking runs contrary to a recent NOAA Fisheries memo that looked at last year's high sockeye returns and found from little to negative correlation between spill added in 2006 and last year's adult numbers.
Reportedly, the feds are working on a broader analysis that shows added spill doesn't correlate with adult chinook and steelhead returns, either.
This really shouldn't be any great news, since the NMFS scientists have said for years they can't find any correlation between juvenile survival through the hydro system and adult returns, but do see a relation between ocean indicators and returns.
The penultimate conclusion is that the ocean plays an overwhelming role in determining future fish survival--enough so that return rates can change by an order of a magnitude in the span of just a few years.
But it's seemingly a view not shared by Judge Redden, who is now fretting over extinction risks and wants to know if the federal defendants are willing to ask the Corps to breach the dams if things don't work out.
But that's not all he wants. He's also pushing for more of everything. In a letter to BiOp parties before the meeting, he wondered whether the added spill operations, which the feds have already agreed to extend this year, will be continued after 2009, and whether more flows can be squeezed out of Canada and Montana.
The judge also wanted to know if habitat-improvement projects completed over the past few years are resulting in projected survival benefits. Evidently, the Colville Tribal attorney had to explain to him that it would take many years for such work to pay off.
But Redden said the Corps should start studying breaching now, because it will be too late to save the fish if it takes 10 years to decide that the BiOp is not working. According to the attorney's notes, "he [the judge] observed that he did not know whether the federal defendants had the 'courage' to take this step, noting that even the Clinton administration did not like dam breaching."
President Obama himself did not support breaching the dams during the campaign. Nor has his pick for heading the Commerce Department, former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, supported the drastic action in the past.
Meanwhile, the feds, who have already said they won't reopen the hydro BiOp for consultation, are reportedly asking the Obama administration for guidance.
They have undergone a complete mood change since March, when they were nearly high-fiving each other on the way out of the courtroom, confident they could deal with Redden's concerns.
Before he adjourned that March hearing, Redden suggested the feds could add language similar to that in the 2000 BiOp, so if the habitat improvements did not work, the region would study breaching one or more dams on the lower Snake.
"I don't know if breaching of the dams is the solution," he said, but he thought that in five or seven years, the region should take a look and see how the runs are progressing.
One thing is obvious: the extra billion dollars BPA has promised to pay to support this new salmon plan hasn't impressed the judge enough to go along with it.
Just how much more he can extract from the defendants remains to be seen. As one attorney observed, attempting to solve the problem with money "is really not working, only feeding the fire."
Meanwhile, spring chinook runs are poised for some jaw-dropping returns in the near future, especially next year, according to federal scientists. Judging from trawl surveys that counted juvenile salmon last summer off the mouth of the Columbia, they say the 2010 spring run could easily be the largest return since Bonneville Dam was built in 1938.
But the elderly judge is working on his legacy. I don't blame him for being concerned. I wouldn't want the fish to wink out on my watch, either. But he shouldn't be duped by another phony salmon analysis, which would call into question his sense of judgment.
You've got to hand it to him. Judge Redden may be in his dotage, but he has the feds over a barrel, and is likely to be granted more concessions no matter how wrong-headed they may be.
And though now 80, his hearing must still be pretty good as well. Only he can hear that Doomsday Clock still ticking away. -B. R.
[4] Cold River, Slow Start To Chinook Season
By April 13, fish counters at Bonneville Dam were still twiddling their thumbs, wondering where the great spring run of 2009 had got off to. This year's expected upriver run of around 300,000 chinook has fueled high expectations, but with only a little more than a thousand fish over the dam so far, fish managers were meeting to discuss possible changes to the fishing season--which is slated to end April 22 for recreational anglers.
They said daily counts should be "increasing dramatically" this week, based on timing curves from recent years. Flows have been increasing, and water temperatures as well, but water clarity was still high.
Commercial gillnetters had landed 3,300 chinook by the 13th and had released 784 unmarked ones (wild). That represents about half of the .378 percent allowable impact on the upriver stocks. They fished again last Wednesday, and an unofficial count had suggested they had landed another 1,200 chinook, about half what managers had expected.
Sportfishers have boated about 12,000 hatchery chinook so far, with a lot of time between fish. On April 4, nearly 3,300 recreational boats were counted in the lower Columbia, surpassing 2001's record count.
In 2001, by this time, nearly 135,000 chinook had been counted at Bonneville Dam, with 17,000 counted on the 13th alone. However, water temperatures were nearly 2 degrees C. warmer back then.
The University of Washington forecasters at Columbia Basin Research have estimated that only .5 percent of the run has passed Bonneville, with a peak arrival day of May 7, a week later than their preseason forecast.
Both tribal and non-tribal gillnetters have asked managers to shut down the sport fishery for a week to see if the run improves, but, so far, managers are sitting tight. They say a run update won't come until early May.
Some folks have suggested the California sea lions near Bonneville Dam have been keeping the fish from moving upriver, but there is no real data to suggest that may be the case. More than three dozen have been around the dam, of late, and 14 of them have been trapped. Seven have been euthanized, while four others have been shipped to aquariums around the country, and three released with acoustic transmitters.
Another novel hypothesis is that the chinook have such a sensitive sense of smell they can smell blood in the water and will not move upstream while the marine mammals are feasting away. Unfortunately, that theory doesn't explain why the springers eventually head upstream, sea lions or not.
In 2008, river conditions were similar. It was cold and the run was late. However, by this time last year, more than 7,000 fish had been counted at Bonneville Dam. By April 15, only 1,328 had been tallied.
However, the late start seems to be a continuing a trend that began in 2005, when only 453 fish had been counted by now. In 2006, only 182 had appeared and in 2007, 2,273 chinook had been counted at the dam.
Others have speculated that early inriver harvests since 2001, when spring sport and commercial harvest started again for the first time in many years, may have wiped out the early returning fish.
Cold water is still the prime suspect. Experts said it correlates quite highly with low adult numbers at the dam. -B. R.
[5] Salmon Closure Hits Cal, More Opportunity In NW Waters
The Pacific Fishery Management Council has voted to keep California and southern Oregon ocean waters closed to commercial salmon fishing for the second year in a row. But they did adopt a 10-day chinook season for recreational fishers off Eureka and Crescent City.
The backbone of the California fisheries-the Sacramento Basin chinook run--suffered mightily from poor ocean conditions off San Francisco in 2005 and 2006, when juveniles went to sea. In 2008, only 66,000 adults returned. About twice that number is expected back this year, but it's still below the level that managers say will support sport and commercial fisheries.
A draft report on the chinook collapse found ocean conditions the main factor in the decline, but it also pointed to habitat degradation, water withdrawals and too much reliance on too few hatchery stocks as contributing factors.
Further north, the Klamath River run fared better.
They also OK'd a recreational 117,000-fish quota for hatchery coho south of Cape Falcon, and a 10-day chinook season for sportfishers off Brookings, Oregon.
North of Cape Falcon the news was much better. Sporties can land 176,000 hatchery coho (nearly nine time last year's allocation), and commercials can take 33,000 of them. A 41,000 chinook quota will be split 50-50 between sports and commercials, with treaty Indians allowed 39,000 chinook and 60,000 coho.
Recreational ocean salmon fisheries will begin June 27 off LaPush and Neah Bay and June 28 off Ilwaco and Westport.
The Council decided not to vote for a mark-selective option that would have allowed more chinook for sportfishers off the SW Washington coast than they will now be targeting.
In Puget Sound, summer/fall chinook salmon returns are expected to total about 222,000 fish, down slightly from last year's forecast. Several new mark-selective fisheries for chinook salmon were added in the summer and winter months, said Pat Pattillo, salmon policy coordinator for WDFW.
"Selective fisheries are just one of the management tools we can use in our effort to recover and protect wild salmon populations," said Pattillo. "By adding these fisheries, we were able to meet our conservation goals and allow anglers some great opportunities to fish for hatchery chinook in Puget Sound."
The increase in hatchery catches has been helped by the acceptance of the new regime by Puget Sound tribes. In a Mar. 20 letter to Washington Congressman Norm Dicks (D), Billy Frank Jr, chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, said they supported these fisheries "...and the development of this management tool. Mark-selective fisheries, like all other fisheries, must however contribute to achieving stock recovery objectives and appropriate effort must be taken to monitor their impacts on unmarked/natural populations. Our support for this management tool is evident by the fact that over half of the Puget Sound recreational fisheries are now mark-selective, by agreement of the co-managers."
Harvest managers also expect an abundant pink salmon run this year. About 5.1 million pink salmon are expected to come back to Puget Sound streams, nearly 2 million more fish than forecast in 2007. Pinks return to Washington's waters only in odd-numbered years. -B. R.
[6] Water Supply Improves 10 Percent From February
With above-average precipitation continuing throughout much of the Northwest, the water supply numbers got a big shot in the arm April 7 with the release of the latest estimate for runoff. The April-August supply at The Dalles bumped up 5 percent to 89 percent of average from the week before. That's a full 10-percent increase since the end of February.
The Snake Basin picked up as well, with April-Sept. inflows to Lower Granite Pool up to 94 percent of average, up 5 percent from the previous week, and recovering from a 75-percent of average estimated at the end of February
Above Coulee, the water supply went from 88 percent of average to 92 percent, while the north Cascades gained little; the Skagit is still only 80 percent of average, and up 1 percent. On the eastside, the Methow Basin dropped from 65 percent to 63 percent of average from April-Sept, but the Yakima Basin improved 13 percent since February. It's now up to 89 percent.
In Montana, at Hungry Horse, water supply dropped to 96 percent from 101 percent, while Idaho's Clearwater Basin is 102 percent, up 5 percent.
Meanwhile, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center shows near ocean temperatures several degrees below average for this time of year, and University of Washington climate researchers said the PDO negative index is up from last month to -1.59 from -1.55 last month and -1.40 in January; that's generally taken to mean conditions will stay cool and wet for some time to come. -B. R.
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