I recieved this email today from a fellow ifisher and contacted the author to seek his permission in posting it on ifish.net.
Had a real interesting phone conversation with him and also he brought up last years anti-snagging work done by the ifish community and was real apreciative of the work and complimented a job well done.
Dan
IS 12% ENOUGH? In reading the joint staff report on Columbia River fisheries, I calculated some of the numbers to find out that 12% of the spring chinook run in the Willamette River are wild. Over the last 51 years this run has declined from 100% to 12%. In 1953 the chinook run was all wild and in that year 125,000 returned to the river. In 2004, the run is forecast to be 130,000 but it is 88% hatchery fish. This means that the natural reproductive capacity of the watershed for spring chinook has been reduced by 88% in just 51 years. That is a remarkable success story for western culture. At 12% of the total run the wild run size is 15,600 chinook. That is a lot of fish and hopefully it is a building block for this wild population. But this run will have to grow by 114,400 fish to match the 1953 run size. There is probably not enough habitat remaining in the watershed to produce that size of run. Most of the spring chinook rivers have been dammed or otherwise degraded so that the Willamette can no longer regain the productive capacity it once had.
LIKE IT OR NOT IT’S THE FUTURE: A secret society is deciding the future of the Columbia River salmon runs. I heard somewhere that secret societies are unable to reform themselves. Yet, Jim Lichatowich says that salmon cannot be recovered until the fish management institutions are reformed. The simple model of rearing fish in public funded hatcheries and allocating the harvest of these fish to competing user groups has been the fish management model for over 150 years on the West Coast. The secret society that is spending your money, about $500 million a year, wants their plan adopted before anyone finds out what they are doing. This secret society invented the Columbia River Fish Management Plan. It is populated with state, federal and tribal fish management agencies and they have sequestered themselves with the help of the federal court so they alone can decide the future of salmon and steelhead in the entire basin. You and I have no access to these meetings. No, their agreement will not be made available for you to read or comment on. Yes, they alone will decide the fate of Columbia River salmonids. They are more powerful than the federal Endangered Species Act and can override the state law. If you have participated in a public policy decision at a state agency that would protect wild steelhead, for get it.
I recently sent a letter to Governor Kulongoski and asked if the newly passed Native Fish Conservation Policy was being advanced in the U.S. v Oregon negotiations to protect wild salmon and steelhead. That was on November 20, 2003. No reply yet. But I have heard the Governor’s office sent Jim Myron to observe the secret negotiations. I have heard whisperings from ODFW too. I found out that this public policy was not being advanced and they are struggling to figure out a way to do so. It shouldn’t be any problem since it is the state’s policy for wild salmonid protection.
I heard that my name came up at a recent meeting. One of the parties said that they did not want me finding out what is being proposed before it has the force of the court behind it. This lead to the gag order so now the parties cannot talk about what is being discussed or represent the position of any other party. So forget about asking ODFW to come clean about this process and give you a chance to know what is going on. They will not tell you. Well, before the gag order went into effect I did get some information. So, here it is:
The tribal hatchery proposal would do two things. It would increase hatchery production and it would reduce the marking rate on hatchery fish. Both of these are predictable aspirations. The external mark, usually an adipose fin clip, is used to distinguish hatchery from wild fish. Since the non-Indian fishery is regulated for conservation, we can “reduce to possession” only marked fish. The tribes because they do not have a selective fishery can kill wild and hatchery fish. The tribes want to eliminated the external mark to hide hatchery fish from the sport fishery, giving them more fish to harvest without impact on ESA conservation restrictions. So when you hear the tribes say that they are fighting for salmon recovery for you and them, bring out your spin meter. To help win your heart, they are fond of saying that by not marking hatchery fish they are fighting the “mass mutilation” of a sacred animal. By not marking hatchery fish, the tribes are creating a conservation and evaluation problem. It can be difficult to distinguish hatchery from wild salmon and steelhead when there is no mark. This could lead to padding the wild fish count, it makes it impossible to evaluate hatchery programs, it prevents legal removal of stray hatchery fish in rivers like the Deschutes, and it makes documentation and control of stray hatchery fish on the spawning grounds difficult.
The tribes want to reduce summer chinook external marks from 85% to 7%; increase spring chinook releases by 13% and reduce external marks from 85% to 18%; increase steelhead production by 19% and reduce external marks from 79% to 47% and reduce external marks on coho from 21% to 11%.
Since the NOAA Fisheries attorneys and the court advisor Howard Horton support the tribal agenda, the states have a steep political hill to climb. Even though NOAA Fisheries is responsible for recovery of ESA-listed salmonids, the tribal fisheries and hatchery production are not managed to support recovery. The states, while stung by all this, are not lily pure because they would like more hatchery fish and have their constituents kill more fish too. They are more concerned that the tribes are boxing them in on hatchery production and harvest which is a stronger motivation than mere recovery or conservation. The point is that the wild salmon and steelhead are being hurt by these secret, closed door negotiations and there is nothing that you can do about it.
SHAMELESS STEELHEAD KILL SECOND ROUND: After beating back the kill crazed harvest managers in Oregon and Washington a few weeks ago, they are at it again. Their goal is to increase the kill of wild winter steelhead in the lower Columbia River so that the gillnetters can gain access to a bumper crop of hatchery spring chinook. We poked holes in their assessment of steelhead kill rates the first time. We also warned them that it would be a good idea to include the staff in the conservation and recovery program at ODFW in the evaluation. Not willing to give up on more harvest the states have reissued their proposal to kill more steelhead in the chinook fishery. This time the conservation staff signed off on the plan and the result recommends an increase in kill from 2% to 6%. There are still lots of problems with the way they evaluated the impact of this increased wild steelhead kill on ESA-listed threatened steelhead, but at least the ODFW got internal agreement on how to do it.
John Esler, Chairman of the ODFW Commission, said he is determined to have a public meeting on this fishery if NOAA Fisheries give it a green light. The only hope we have is that time will run out to consummate the fishery. On conservation issues such as listing fish for federal protection, NOAA Fisheries is very slow and has to be reminded through the courts to pick up the pace, but when it comes to killing listed fish, NOAA Fisheries is more motivated, so maybe they will get the decision done in time to have a fishery this year. However, if a public hearing intrudes on the schedule, the window for the fishery may close. Conservation often has nothing to do with direct action by informed and concerned people, too often real gains are only made at retirement parties and scheduling problems.
COUNTING STEELHEAD: Keeping track of hatchery and wild steelhead is not easy. When hatchery steelhead are not provided with an external mark, usually a clipped adipose fin, it is difficult to know for sure whether the fish in your hand is from a tank or a stream. Some fish managers want to perpetuate this confusion, but it is causing a problem if your goal is to protect wild steelhead and the biological diversity they represent.
The Warm Springs Tribes have chosen to manage the Warm Springs River for wild steelhead, spring chinook, and bull trout. Even though the tribes do not rear steelhead at their Warm Springs Hatchery, they have made a commitment to keep the run wild above the hatchery. They are able to do this because they constructed a weir across the river that effectively stops all salmon and steelhead. The tribes work the fish, passing only wild ones above the weir to spawn in the river. They are doing a good job, at least they are trying to. But there is a problem. The Deschutes River attracts a lot of hatchery steelhead strays, but not all of them are marked. According to ODFW estimates from 2,000 to 15,000 stray steelhead remain in the river each year and probably spawn. From 1987 to 2002 the total number of stray steelhead bumping their head against the Warm Springs weir is nearly 5,000 fish. Fully 87% of the strays that could be identified came from Oregon’s Irrigon Hatchery, near McNary Dam further upstream on the Columbia, but 63% of the stray fish could not be traced to a particular hatchery because a comprehensive coded wire tagging program has not been adopted for the Columbia. Since not all stray hatchery fish that reach the weir can be identified as hatchery fish, the Warm Springs Tribe’s goal of keeping the river a wild salmonid stream is difficult.
The authors of a report on the Warm Springs Hatchery, David Hand and Doug Olson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said: “A return to 100% fin-marking of steelhead released from hatcheries in the Columbia Basin will reduce the likelihood of hatchery fish being passed upstream into the Warm Springs River.” If the Columbia River Treaty Tribes have their way, the marking rate on steelhead and other species will actually decline not increase as the authors hope.
Ian Tattam wrote a paper published by the American Fisheries Society on scale reading and he found, though his unique, first time research, that 26% of the fish were misidentified. This problem was complicated further. Ian says, “… 95% of the hatchery fish (native broodstock) were correctly classified, but only 60% of the wild fish were correctly classified as wild.” So by reading the scales of hatchery and wild steelhead in a undifferentiated batch, scale reading doesn’t work well in identifying wild steelhead or for hatchery fish.
If the integrity of the Warm Spring River wild steelhead population is to be maintained all hatchery steelhead will have to have an external mark. Scale reading, snubbed dorsal fins, their look, nothing works well enough to separate hatchery from wild fish like a physical mark. Except for a relic steelhead run locked behind Round Butte Dam on the Deschutes, the only place the historic wild steelhead can be found in the Deschutes Basin reside in the Warm Springs River. If this precious genetic resource is to have a future, fish managers will have to mark the hatchery fish.
In case you were wondering, the Warm Springs Tribes support the united tribal effort to reduce external marking of hatchery fish. That position does not support their very progressive hatchery program. It is just another one of those inconsistencies brought on by politics that stand in the way of a rational salmon management program.
WET LOGS ARE NOT ENOUGH: Coon Creek in the Umpqua Basin is being evaluated under the Oregon Plan For Salmon and Watersheds. The goal of the plan is to improve coho salmon habitat, the inspiration of Governor Kitzhaber when these fish were proposed for a federal protection program.
Coon Creek flows through private industrial tree cutting land. The land has given up its large trees and walking along it now one sees alder and small firs. When the big trees go salmon habitat suffers for a number of well known reasons. One major problem is the stream is starved for large trees that provide stream structure, traps gravel and nutrients and creates the habitat complexity that coho and other salmonids need.
In an effort to restore Oregon’s threatened coho salmon runs, ODFW put large wood (trees) in Coon Creek and the fish responded. Coho smolt production increased and the adult spawners increased too. But the biologists with me looking at the creek were disappointed. They were pleased there were more fish, its just that they expected more of them. But it has not happened even though ocean productivity has improved and coho survival has increased. They were impressed, however, with the condition of the coho smolts being produced by the creek. The large woody debris has provided the rearing conditions that have greatly improved the size and weight of the coho smolts. The smolts are in great condition. Large, healthy smolts are more likely to have a high survival rate, so why are there not more smolts and more adult salmon? The biologists have pondered this and recognize that the fish are telling them that there are other limiting factors in the basin. Two likely candidates are that large woody debris is not abundant enough to expand the smolt abundance to the levels they expected. Added to this is the lack of off-channel rearing areas that shelter coho juveniles during the winter. Coon Creek flows from industrial timber land into agriculture land and the creek is confined and unable to form side channels and alcoves like a natural stream. The lack of large trees in the stream creating complex habitats and the lack of over-wintering habitat are hard constraints on coho rearing and production.
Coon Creek is a peek into the problems facing wild coho on thousands of miles of streams along the Oregon coast. Improvements can be made with the cooperation of private land owners, but finding a solution for coho recovery is still out of reach.
COHO PROTECTION ENDED: In an effort to protect ESA-listed coho salmon following the decision by Judge Hogan the enviros appealed it. As you remember the private property advocates sued the NOAA Fisheries over their listing decision on Oregon coastal coho salmon. The agency listed hatchery coho along with wild coho but did not extend ESA protection to the hatchery fish. The judge said they agency could not do that after reviewing the requirements of the ESA. The appeals court said they lacked jurisdiction because Judge Hogan remanded the listing decision back to NOAA Fisheries and the agency did not appeal that decision. Rather the agency said it would take a fresh look at its listing decision. Even though two years have gone by, the agency has still not made up its mind about how to treat hatchery fish. Coho are apparently still listed (the appeals court is confusing on this key point) but there is no enforcement of the listing. So the barn door is open and coho are vulnerable to all the actions that put them on the list in the first place. The enviros have circled their wagons and hatched a few strategies to bring the coho back into the circle of the living. With giddy success the private property advocates are now moving to remove all the salmon and steelhead form ESA protection on the West Coast. These salmon and steelhead populations are in trouble whether they are listed or not. The path to recovery is slow and not very straight. The ESA has helped correct some problems and it is needed to finish the job. It would be nice if the NOAA Fisheries would list only the wild salmon as the enviros have asked them to do, but that decision is right now a long way off.
An emergency petition is one way to go, asking NOAA Fish to provide listing protection for 240 days. It would help.
TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: Eating wild salmon is better for you than farmed salmon a new Oregon add will read. Governor Kulongoski announced a new add campaign to sell Oregon and its products. This marketing program is being put together by the Weiden +Kennedy advertising firm.
Eating wild salmon may be good to eat but for most of Oregon doing so is still illegal since most wild salmon and steelhead are on the Endangered Species List. The ESA says you can’t harass wild salmon let along eat them. So where is the Guv and Debbie Kennedy going to get the wild salmon for you to eat? The didn’t say.
Hatchery salmon are contributing to the decline of wild salmon. Just read the plethora of scientific papers and books making that point (see NFS web page at
http://www.nativefishsociety.org The state has embraced the illusion that hatchery salmon can replace wild salmon on your table as well as in the rivers. Oregon gets paid millions in federal dollars to perpetuate the lie.
Oregon reared hatchery salmon eat the same food as farmed salmon. This brew is laced with toxins, causing salmon flesh to be contaminated. The only difference is that farmed salmon are on the diet longer and have more contamination.
The ad campaign would like you to believe that Oregon is kind to wild salmon and that it is food for Dreamers. When one considers that wild salmon are 3% to 5% of historical abundance and most wild populations are in the emergency room , it is difficult to substantiate the claim. Kulongoski and Kennedy are hoping you won’t mind a minor slight of hand.
I was encouraged even more when I found out that the Chairwoman of the state sea food commission who is promoting the Guv’s new idea is Betsy Johnson, a House of Representatives member from Scappoose. She is a worthy leader in this charade. After all she has a 76% pro-environmental voting record. The only problem, according to the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, is that she has a habit of voting against funding for wild salmon and wild salmon habitat protection. She must believe that hatchery salmon are wild too. So eat, drink, and be merry.
PROGRAM REPORT
NATIVE FISH SOCIETY
February 2004
By Bill Bakke
Bill M. Bakke, Director
Native Fish Society
P.O. Box 19570
Portland, OR 97280
503-977-0287
bmbakke@teleport.com
Secret Fish Society, Reduced Tribal clip's?
My god...am I reading this right ? There must be something we can do !!! 
garyk
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