The Bonneville Power Administration did not violate the “equitable treatment mandate” for Columbia Basin fish and wildlife when it declared an emergency during the 2001 drought and power crisis, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week.
Non-Indian and tribal commercial fishers, as well as sport anglers, on the Columbia River mainstem have begun to feast on what is expected to be another sizeable return of fall chinook salmon.
“They’re really starting to catch fish in the sport fishery,” Patrick Frazier, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Columbia River Management Program leader, said last week. “What that tells us is that there is a pile of fish in the river.”
The following is the transcript of President’s Bush’s remarks on Columbia Basin salmon restoration delivered August 22 at Ice Harbor Dam on the Lower Snake River.
Fearing a positive decision would move them onto slipperier legal ground, federal officials on Tuesday said they would not implement changes in federal Columbia River hydrosystem operations this summer that proponents say would yield great economic and upriver resident fish benefits without hindering salmon and steelhead recovery efforts.
Commercial fishers will begin testing the Columbia River mainstem’s waters Monday night, the first of three 12-hour fishing periods targeting sturgeon and early arriving fall chinook salmon approved this week by the Columbia River Compact.
The Oregon/Washington Compact, which sets mainstem commercial seasons, started the non-Indian commercial fleet’s fall season off fisheries from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Aug. 4, 6 and 11.
Strong upper Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead returns of recent years brighten stock status assessments, but it appears work remains to ensure they won’t slide toward extinction, according to evolving analysis by NOAA Fisheries.
Today’s opening of the popular Buoy 10 salmon fishery at mouth of the Columbia River also marks the implementation of a few new fishing rules as anglers pursue fall chinook and hatchery coho salmon.
A “committee of lawyers” will provide a window into NOAA Fisheries processes as it works over the next 10 ½ months to correct deficiencies in the salmon and steelhead protection plan aimed at avoiding jeopardy posed by the federal Columbia/Snake hydrosystem.
The federal government’s plan to protect and recover threatened and endangered Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead — already being revisited as the result of a court order — may become target for another legal punch
An action at the July 16 Technical Management Team meeting to reduce spill at Ice Harbor Dam on the lower Snake River by half to 12 hours per day evidently was less than unanimous.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council last week recommended that nearly $2 million in fiscal year 2003 capital funds be spent on two hatchery-related projects and a fish passage improvement proposal.
Closing the spill gates in summer when wholesale power prices are at their peak has the potential to generate millions of dollars in revenue with relatively small effect on Endangered Species Act-listed Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead, according to Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff biological and economic analyses.
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s executive director says the tribes “question the value” of a recently released scientific report that advises limited use of hatchery “supplementation” until its risks and benefits can be better evaluated.
Tribal fishers casting their nets in Columbia River reservoirs above Bonneville Dam hauled in a total of 2,107 adult summer chinook salmon, 326 steelhead and 10 sockeye this week during a rare-midsummer commercial fishery.
Representatives of the Oregon and Washington departments of fish and wildlife this week cited financial and biological uncertainty in a plea for continued funding for their experimentation with live capture commercial fishing gear — so called tangle nets.
Two orders issued last week by U.S. District Court Judge James A. Redden hint at his expectations and set out firm deadlines for federal government reporting on how it will bring a Columbia/Snake river salmon and steelhead protection plan into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
Although federal fisheries and action agencies have made improvements
in streamlining endangered species consultations in the Pacific
Northwest, lengthy delays and other problems persist, the General
Accounting Office told Congress last month.
Lower Columbia River treaty tribes next week will launch their first commercial gillnet fishery directed at summer chinook salmon in 38 years thanks to a higher-than-expected return that will likely be the second-largest since 1960.
A shot of cold water from Dworshak Dam on the North Fork Clearwater River was released this week to help cool water in the lower Snake River.
Flows from the dam’s reservoir, which is nearly full, increased from minimum flows to 14,000 cubic feet per second on Wednesday ( July 9).
The House Appropriations Committee this week approved a $19.6 billion interior spending bill for Fiscal Year 2004 that includes money for culvert removal and other fish passage improvements on federal land, mass marking of hatchery fish, Elwha river dam removal and various other Northwest salmon restoration programs.
Four citizens groups say they will sue the federal government to force action on their request to have nine Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead stocks dropped from the Endangered Species Act list.
Federal agencies, all four Columbia River basin states and farming, navigation, irrigation and utility interests last week all rallied to the support of the NOAA Fisheries’ salmon and steelhead protection strategy that has been declared illegal in U.S. District Court.
Fish and wildlife managers, researchers and federal officials chafed this week as many of their favored project proposals were left off the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s recommended short list for funding through the mainstem/systemwide category of the NPCC’s fish and wildlife program.
The governors of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington on Thursday banded together to proclaim their support for a federal Columbia River salmon and steelhead recovery plan that has been judged inadequate by a federal court.
The federal strategy is working, the governors said, and should be left in place while the federal agencies address concerns about it expressed by U.S. District Court Judge James L. Redden in a May 7 order.
The harms, potentially, outweigh the benefits of supplementing naturally spawning salmon and steelhead populations with infusions of hatchery fish in most situations, according to a scientific panel.
But the magnitude of the effects produced from those wild/hatchery integrations — positive or negative — cannot at this point be accurately measured, says the Independent Scientific Advisory Board’s June 4 report.
A NOAA Fisheries “findings letter” generally gives good grades to the three action agencies charged with implementing actions designed to avoid jeopardizing the survival of salmon and steelhead stocks passing through the Federal Columbia River Power System.
At the urging of President George W. Bush, the U.S. House this week passed legislation to implement his healthy forest initiative to expedite thinning, brush removal and logging on federal lands considered at risk of wildfire.
The forecast return of “upriver” spring chinook salmon to the Columbia River was revised upward again this week, allowing tribal treaty fishers an unexpected chance to open their second commercial gillnet fishing period of the season.
A federal judge, and the lead attorneys for those involved in the lawsuit, agreed today (May 16) that the federal government should be allowed a year to recast a Columbia River Basin salmon recovery plan that was judged by the court last week to be legally flawed.
Olney Patt Jr., who led the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon for five years as tribal council chairman, has been named the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s new executive director.
Six conservation organizations initiated legal proceedings Thursday that would allege Oregon’s state-run fish hatcheries are routinely violating the Clean Water Act and ultimately ask a federal court to order the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to redress the violations and mitigate for any damage caused.
The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission May 9 unanimously adopted a new hatchery policy that will move the state’s hatcheries away from their current purpose — a tool for harvest — to a combined harvest and safety net tool that recognizes the impact of hatchery production on wild stocks of salmon and steelhead.
A Portland-based U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday ruled that a federal salmon recovery strategy adopted in December 2000 is illegal because it relies improperly on actions that are not “reasonably certain to occur.”
A federal court decision this week that sends federal salmon recovery strategists back to the drawing board is seen by some that are party to the lawsuit as vindication.
Others see it as an opportunity for a mid-course correction of what is essentially, they say, a sound Columbia River basin salmon recovery plan.
Federal appeals court judges heard arguments this week whether conservation groups had the right to appeal a September 2001 decision by Eugene, Ore.-based U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hogan, and how the appeal and resulting stay in the case will affect coastal coho salmon.
The state of Oregon is reopening public comment in its review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ $133.6 million plan to deepen the Columbia River shipping channel by three feet.
At the same time, the state is floating a complicated new proposal that would alter the Corps’ plan to restore shallow water habitat in the lower Columbia River estuary.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers on Monday exhibited their math skills as they tried to keep a mainstem Columbia River sport fleet afloat and maximize a targeted, commercial spring chinook salmon fishery.
Northwest fisheries managers over the last couple of weeks have asked federal agencies, Grant County Public Utility District and other mid-Columbia River dam operators to modify their dam operations to reduce the size of flow fluctuations at Priest Rapids Dam that they say is causing increased mortality of fall chinook fry emerging and rearing along Hanford Reach.
A federal judge who has said he is predisposed toward overturning the federal government’s plan for Columbia River basin salmon recovery said Monday he gained “food for thought” from hearing oral arguments in the lawsuit pressed by conservation groups.
The 2003 upriver spring chinook salmon run forecast keeps rising, staying just ahead harvest impact limits that threaten to send home sport fishers who enjoy plying the lower reaches of the mainstem Columbia River.
Lower Columbia River commercial fishermen have again been victims of a 2003 spring chinook return that defied, at least to this point, all predictions about when, where and how the salmon migration would proceed.
The federal judge presiding in a lawsuit that challenges federal salmon recovery strategies in the Columbia Basin this week issued a “draft opinion” that would — if it were his final call — force the agencies involved to rework the plan commonly referred to as the Biological Opinion, or “BiOp.”
The 2003 return of so-called Columbia River “upriver” spring chinook salmon will be strong, but just how strong is anyone’s guess.
Fisheries officials this week pushed up their estimate of this year’s upriver spring chinook salmon return thus allowing sport anglers to fish the lower Columbia River for the prized salmon for at least another four days.
Hard work, experimentation and compromise were the words uttered most often Thursday as the Northwest Power and Conservation Council caught its collective breath, and approved unanimously amendments to the Columbia/Snake river mainstem portion of its fish and wildlife program.
With a rising water supply forecast and juvenile fish already showing up at dams, the decision this week by the Technical Management Team to begin spill at four dams in the Lower Columbia River was made without challenge.
Federal, state and tribal fisheries managers proposed to federal operating agencies to begin spill at McNary, John Day, The Dalles and Bonneville dams and to start the spill Monday, April 14.
Sport and commercial salmon-fishing seasons set for Washington’s waters this summer reflect the continued strength of many chinook and coho salmon stocks from Puget Sound to the Columbia River, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.
Tribal fishers are currently harvesting the first spring chinook salmon of the season in preparation for ceremonial events planned this week. A salmon feast at Celilo Village along the Columbia River is scheduled Saturday with annual Root Feasts on the Umatilla Indian Reservation and at the Longhouse at Satus, Wash., are planned Sunday.
Columbia River mainstem fishers, both recreational and commercial, are keeping their fingers crossed that a strong early showing of upriver spring chinook salmon is a portend of a much larger adult return than had been forecast.
Adult coho and chinook salmon from the West Coast now in the ocean and preparing to return to their native streams or hatcheries are showing up in historical numbers, according to early estimates compiled by a group led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.
Pressured by biological opinion deadlines, the Bonneville Power Administration and its federal partners are pushing for speedy funding and scientific decisions that, to the distress of others involved, go outside the normal process for choosing Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife projects.
The lower Columbia River’s commercial fishing fleet was scheduled to return to the water today to salvage what the fishermen can from a fishing season turned gloomy.
River operators this week spilled water at Bonneville Dam to help 7.5 million tule fall chinook smolts released from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Spring Creek hatchery safely negotiate the dam.
Donald Sampson is leaving his position as executive director for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission for a similar position on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Eastern Oregon.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined this week to list burbot, a species of freshwater cod located in the Kootenai River in Idaho, as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.
But work by a coalition of parties to develop a conservation agreement for the species will continue and that may result in better circumstances for the species than if it were listed.
The proper mix of fish stocks now exists to enable a lower Columbia River commercial fishery, but fishermen this week turned down an opportunity with the hope that another week will allow more of a tardy Willamette River spring chinook run to return to the river.
Federal agencies this week revealed that overall they will spend more in 2003 and 2004 for Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead recovery activities than they did in 2002.
A final tally of data from last spring’s initial test of a “removable spillway weir” at the Snake River’s Lower Granite Dam shows that the device attracts young salmon and steelhead better, is more efficient in its use of water and sends the juvenile on their way faster than other means of passage, including spill.
One after another, lower Columbia River commercial fishers trooped to the microphone to describe the effects of state and federal rules they say are preventing their industry from capitalizing on what is expected to be a bumper crop of returning spring chinook salmon.
The author of a new requirement that all hatchery salmon and steelhead be physically marked before release signaled this week he is willing to be flexible in how federal officials carry it out.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., met privately with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Steve Williams and also discussed the issue with him briefly during a congressional hearing on the agency’s proposed FY2004 budget.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) has created a new division at the agency’s Portland office that will focus on developing plans to recover salmon and steelhead protected under the Endangered Species Act in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
A draft federal report released this week outlines a good news/bad news scenario for West Coast salmon and steelhead recovery, calling recent years’ general increase in the number of returning wild spawners “encouraging,” but cautioning that only time will tell if populations are truly rebounding.
The Bush administration’s implementation of the 2000 Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan received its second annual failing grade this week from Northwest environmentalists, who predicted it will flunk its mandatory third-year evaluation this September.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials are concerned about the cost and manpower needed to comply with a recently enacted congressional requirement for federal and federally funded salmon hatcheries to mark all juvenile fish.
Federal, state and tribal officials expect more good news for anglers and fish managers when fall chinook and coho salmon begin forging up the Columbia River late this summer in search of the basin spawning grounds and hatcheries.
The spring chinook salmon returning to the Willamette and Columbia River systems turned conventional wisdom upside down this week and in the process put a damper on a much anticipated gill-net season in the lower Columbia.
Congress has finally passed an annual spending bill to fund most departments of government for this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
The catchall appropriations bill for FY2003 includes a $700 million increase in the Bonneville Power Administration’s borrowing authority as well as funding for numerous salmon recovery programs that were sought by Northwest members of Congress.
After breaching federally prescribed limits last year, Oregon and Washington fishery officials are under the gun this year to keep impacts to steelhead mortality under a 2 percent cap during lower mainstem Columbia River commercial and sport fisheries targeting spring chinook salmon.
President George W. Bush in his budget for fiscal year 2004 is asking Congress for less spending by federal agencies on Columbia Basin salmon recovery than he requested last year.
Last year, Bush requested a total of $506 million for FY03, but a catchall spending bill now moving through Congress would cut that by more than $50 million
The process to cut the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s fish and wildlife program’s 2003 budget to the $139 million cap imposed by the Bonneville Power Administration could be making some progress.
The final report on the costs and impacts of deepening the Columbia River navigation channel from 40 feet to 43 feet, released this week by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, lowers the project’s cost and raises its benefits.
And although the Corps made some concessions to critics, lower river communities say the project still does not adequately address their concerns and they are continuing to oppose the project.
The number of fall chinook redds found this year at Snake River sites is the largest since Idaho Power and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began surveying redds in 1991. The utility and agency, surveying the mainstem river, as well as the Grande Ronde, Imnaha, Salmon, Potlatch and Clearwater rivers, found a total of 1,851 redds.
The Bush administration has approved the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s strategic plan for its fisheries program, and as a result, this week announced it will boost funding by 16 percent for national fish hatcheries, including those involved in Columbia Basin salmon recovery.
Saying it doesn’t have enough information to judge the task at hand, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council this week delayed a decision about how it would pare back its fish and wildlife program to fit under a $139 million cap.
Oregon and Washington fisheries officials convened fishing interests Tuesday to gather input on a strategy to use wide-mesh gill nets early — and live capture tangle nets later — in the spring chinook commercial fishing season as a means of lessening the encounter rate on steelhead.
Opponents of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Columbia River Ports’ $156.2 million plan to deepen about 100 miles of Columbia River navigation channel from 40 feet to 43 feet were out in force at Astoria and Portland hearings this week — their last chance to voice opinions on the controversial project.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game plans to launch within the next few weeks a rare commercial fishing season on a game fish — lake trout — in an attempt to prevent the total collapse of Lake Pend Oreille’s kokanee population.
Economists this week responded to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service criticisms that said their economic review of a sample of Northwest hatcheries was based on inadequate data and that comparisons should not have been made between hatcheries with differing management objectives and using different data periods.
Tough choices are ahead for the Northwest Power Planning Council which on Thursday agreed to lead a process to cut, defer or reduce the scope of some $40 million worth of fish and wildlife work that the panel had earlier recommended, or was expected to recommend, for funding.
The Northwest Power Planning Council on Thursday moved an experimental lower Columbia River selective spring chinook harvest proposal to the front of the funding line so the project can be implemented in February.
The 2003 return of upriver spring chinook salmon to the Columbia River basin may not match counts of the previous two years, but officials say the return should still afford plenty of fishing opportunities up and down the river.
Tribal, state and federal agencies have agreed to a diversified approach that would use captive brood and conventional hatchery practices to sustain salmon runs in the Grande Ronde Basin of northeastern Oregon.
“All in all, we’d like to see runs restored to harvest levels,” said Dave Johnson, manager of the Nez Perce Fisheries Program, “but the program also illustrates the highly unusual actions we would take to try to keep salmon runs from disappearing.”
A federal judge won’t decide until next year on a lawsuit by Northwest landowners and development interests seeking to remove four salmon runs from the endangered species list.
Oral arguments in the suit against the U.S. Commerce Department were heard Nov. 25 in federal district court for the District of Columbia.
The tally of 474,000 adult fall chinook at Bonneville Dam during the summer and fall of this year is the highest since counting began in 1938, and figures to be one of the higher overall returns to the Columbia River in more than a half century.
With nearly 40,000 jacks counted at Bonneville as well, the total upriver fall chinook count swells to 514,000, also the best count on record. Jacks are smaller salmon that return to freshwater after only a year in saltwater.
The tally of 474,000 adult fall chinook at Bonneville Dam during the summer and fall of this year is the highest since counting began in 1938, and figures to be one of the higher overall returns to the Columbia River in more than a half century.
With nearly 40,000 jacks counted at Bonneville as well, the total upriver fall chinook count swells to 514,000, also the best count on record. Jacks are smaller salmon that return to freshwater after only a year in saltwater.
The Bonneville Power Administration’s top official announced today that the agency will not, at least for now, pursue a rate increase as a remedy for a growing budget deficit but instead continue to scour its own activities and the programs it funds for $500 million in cost savings over the next four years.
Survival estimates for yearling chinook salmon and juvenile steelhead migrating in-river through the Columbia-Snake River hydrosystem rebounded this year from the precipitously low levels estimated during last year’s drought.
But trouble spots remain, particularly for steelhead, whose in-river survival rate has charted a steady decline, according to estimates compiled by National Marine Fisheries Service scientists in an ongoing study that began in 1993.
Making concessions to both hatchery advocates and fish conservation groups, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission gained the support of such diverse groups as the Save the Salmon Coalition, the Oregon Farm Bureau, timber interests as well as Oregon Trout and Trout Unlimited, when it approved the long-awaited Native Fish Conservation Policy at its Nov. 9 meeting.
Preparing for the arrival of spawning salmon downstream from its Hells Canyon Dam, Idaho Power initiated stable and even flows Oct. 14, just in time to ensure salmon redds will not be dewatered.
One week later biologists from the utility and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, while surveying the Snake River below the dam, found 30 redds made by spawning fall chinook salmon.
Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Portland General Electric, along with 21 government agencies, conservation groups and fishing groups, signed a long awaited agreement Oct. 24 to remove two dams in the Sandy River watershed, and to donate the dams’ water rights to public uses and 1,500 acres of PGE property to a public land trust.
Coastal commercial fishermen and business people marched inland last week to vouch for the economic benefits received from a terminal fishery project funded through the Northwest Power Planning Council.
After three months of bi-monthly meetings, Oregon’s Native Fish Conservation Strategy task force has not reached a consensus. Although fish conservation groups generally support the draft policy, detractors say it is biased against hatchery fish.
Flat federal funding for Mitchell Act facilities and the imminent hatch of spring chinook salmon eggs may force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to start destroying some 1.5 million eggs next week at their Carson and Little White Salmon hatcheries.
An eight-month effort to resolve issues through mediation has ended, coincident with a cavalcade of new filings in the lawsuit brought to challenge the federal government’s Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan.
Plaintiffs in the case, National Wildlife Federation, et al. v. National Marine Fisheries Service, are asking the court to require NMFS to withdraw its 2000 Federal Columbia River Power System biological opinion and reinitiate consultation on hydrosystem operations.
A Citizens’ Forum pledged to consensus building will present a conceptual “White Paper” that supports hatchery supplementation as a tool for rebuilding salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin.
The diverse group, which has been meeting since its organization in February of 2001, was the outgrowth of meetings started in 1999 between staff and policy makers of the Oregon Wheat Growers League and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Four U.S. wolf experts agreed this week that education is one of the most important ingredients of a good wolf management plan.
The four experts speaking to Oregon’s seven-member Fish and Wildlife Commission said, with so many misconceptions about wolves, both from those who favor their reintroduction and those who fear it, that it’s important to get the wolf story right.
Caspian terns that settle in each spring on an island in the Columbia River estuary and prey on passing salmon and steelhead smolts do hinder Endangered Species Act fish recovery efforts, according to a report released Sept. 26 by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
A massive fish die-off over the past two weeks has fanned the flames of controversy in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern California with tribal members, conservation and fishing groups, a politician and California fishery officials saying federal water management policies give too much water to irrigators and too little for in-river fish flows.
Commercial fishermen on the lower Columbia River say they need more fishing time to take advantage of what is the third largest fall chinook salmon return on record and to help reduce what is a surplus of adult fish returning to the basin’s hatcheries.
The Northwest Power Planning Council has nearly completed the first round in its newly created three-year rolling “provincial review” process for selecting projects to be funded through its Columbia Basin fish and wildlife program.
The Nez Perce Tribe’s hatchery supplementation program — and to some extent Mother Nature — can be credited for this year’s fall chinook salmon count at Lower Granite Dam, which is expected to set a record with a return of 10,000 adult fish.
On Monday, 604 fall chinook were counted at the dam, located 20 miles northwest of Lewiston, Idaho, on the Snake River. That’s higher than the total fall season counts in six individual years since the dam was built in 1975.
The federal Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead recovery effort can list $3.8 billion in costs over the past 20 years, but can not identify a biological benefits bottom line, according to a report recently released by U.S. General Accounting Office.
A report by the RAND Corporation says removal of the four lower Snake River dams and replacing the lost power with at least 20 percent conservation and renewable energy would have a negligible effect on the Northwest’s economy and could even add up to 15,000 new jobs.
Anglers up and down the Columbia River are sharing the bounty as fall chinook salmon course their way upriver.
Sport and tribal and non-Indian fishers are hauling in chinook in numbers unprecedented in recent years. The fall chinook return to the river mouth was predicted to be 659,800 adult fish — the third highest since 1948 behind those of 1987 and 1988. That number is expected to include nearly 500,000 chinook from hatcheries and spawning grounds above Bonneville Dam.
Researchers are taking stock as the latest batch of Snake River sockeye salmon begins to trickle back into Idaho’s Stanley Basin where a captive broodstock program aims to perpetuate a still-flickering genetic line.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Thursday directed state fishery managers to negotiate rules for next year’s Columbia River spring chinook commercial fishery that set a maximum size for tangle nets at 4 1/2 inches.
Lower Columbia River treaty tribes are poised for what could be their most bountiful commercial fall chinook harvest ever in the mainstem waters above Bonneville Dam.
The Northwest Power Planning Council sorted through sometimes conflicting advice in making a decision to recommend that 10 projects be funded under its “innovative” fish and wildlife project category during the current fiscal year at cost of nearly $2 million.
Already behind schedule, implementation of the Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan would slip further under an annual federal funding bill recently approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Plans and actions taken by key federal agencies to implement a 10-year Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead recovery program are — for the most part — on schedule to meet the first major benchmark in the plan — a major 2003 evaluation, the National Marine Fisheries Services announced Tuesday.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a bill by Oregon’s senators to authorize up to $32 million in federal funding for repair of the privately owned Wallowa Lake Dam and for water conservation and fish restoration in the watershed.
The bill, S. 1883, by Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., both members of the committee, is opposed by the Bush administration because the northeastern Oregon dam is owned by local irrigators.
The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday released a preliminary draft hatchery policy that reaffirms the agency’s emphasis on building self-sustaining salmon and steelhead populations in their natural ecosystem with careful consideration of the risks and benefits that hatchery fish might bring to the recovery process.
A surprisingly high “bycatch” of steelhead this past spring during Columbia River mainstem commercial fisheries targeting spring chinook salmon has sport anglers concerned, and angered.
Anglers awaiting the Buoy 10 fishery, which opens Aug. 1, are likely to encounter a near-record return of fall chinook salmon in numbers that will continue to build through August.
The National Marine Fisheries Service on Thursday announced it would officially consider petitions asking that the agency define and list only the “wild” fish for 15 separate Pacific salmon and steelhead stocks, forgoing ESA protection for hatchery fish in the same waters.
The Northwest Power Planning Council on Wednesday recommended the expenditure of $462,000 to have its artificial production review process complete draft documents that are necessary for Columbia Basin salmon hatcheries to gain “coverage” under the Endangered Species Act.
A panel of independent economists this week outlined its conclusions and recommendations based on an analysis of the costs of rearing and releasing fish at eight Columbia Basin hatcheries.
Minimum size limits on chinook salmon caught by anglers off the Washington coast will be raised in an effort to prevent an early closure of fast-paced fisheries from Ilwaco to Neah Bay, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.
Some called the process rigged. Others — including attorneys hired by two Washington counties — said any approval of a water quality certification application related to the removal of Condit Dam would almost certainly be illegal.
Expectations for 2002’s summer chinook salmon return to the Columbia River have been downgraded slightly but the banner run is still affording tribal and non-Indian fishers opportunities that they haven’t enjoyed in decades.
A final supplemental environmental impact statement issued this week recommends that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission allow the surrender of the federal hydroelectric license for southwest Washington’s Condit Dam and a one-year dismantling of the structure that would begin late in 2006.
Oregon and Washington fishery managers decided Tuesday to open a fishing season on hatchery-bred summer chinook that starts today (June 28) in the lower Columbia River. It marks the first time since 1973 that anglers may target summer chinook — known historically as “June hogs” because of their large size.
Complicated and uncertain science, and similarly complex legal and policy issues, have turned the National Marine Fisheries Service’s “hatchery policy” deliberations into the proverbial 900-pound gorilla — a creature that essentially sets its own schedule.
The purpose of the first meeting this week in Portland of a task force to set rule language for Oregon’s draft Native Fish Conservation Policy was to give volunteers a solid grounding in the issue.
However, differences already are arising about how to define a native fish and the proper role of hatchery fish in Oregon’s fisheries management — not surprising considering the diverse membership.
An abundant Methow River Basin spring chinook salmon return has allowed federal, state and tribal fishery officials to again implement a plan that involves the capture of naturally spawning fish to reinvigorate hatchery programs and allows any “surplus” hatchery returns to find spawning grounds in the wild.
The rigors of economic analysis should be a part of the 62 subbasin plans the Northwest Power Planning Council will consider before it approves projects recommended by those plans, according to the Independent Economic Analysis Board.
An envisioned 10-year plan for managing the federal Klamath Project failed to clear its final hurdle this week with the Bureau of Reclamation’s regional chief criticizing federal fish agencies’ strategies for protecting fish listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Oregon’s seven-member Fish and Wildlife Commission asked for, and got, an earful Thursday in what is the second in a series of sessions planned to gather insight on gray wolf management.
Pressured by Oregon’s two senators, a Department of Interior official this week agreed to negotiate with them on their bill to rehabilitate Wallowa Dam and restore salmon in northeastern Oregon.
At a hearing on Thursday before the Senate water and power subcommittee, Bureau of Reclamation official Mark Limbaugh repeated the department’s opposition to the bill, which has also been introduced in the House by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.
Biological opinions released by two federal agencies last week said a project that will deepen by three feet the Columbia River shipping channel from Portland, Ore., to Astoria will pose no jeopardy to 13 species of salmon, steelhead and cutthroat trout listed, or being considered, under the federal Endangered Species Act.
A recently released draft Methow River Basin spring chinook genetic analysis says that it is too late to segregate an Upper Columbia salmon melting pot by phasing out the so-called “Carson” bloodlines in favor of “Methow composite” stock in hatchery operations.
A draft report now out for technical review likens the impact of predatory Caspian terns on migrating Columbia Basin juvenile salmon and steelhead to those brought by human activities that increase fish mortality.
The federal action agencies say they are “right on track” in implementing measures called for in a December 2000 federal fish recovery plan for the Columbia Basin.
Critics call that assertion a “fairy tale.”
A bill by California, Oregon and Idaho senators that would equalize federal funding of Pacific salmon restoration projects in Western states is opposed by Alaska and Washington.
But sponsors and opponents this week agreed to work on a compromise that all five states can support.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, objected strongly to changing the larger shares of funding that Alaska and Washington have received the past three years from Congress in annual spending bills.
As they put the final touches on their hatchery economics report, the Northwest Power Planning Council’s Independent Economic Advisory Board considered how to value hatcheries used specifically to supplement or augment wild salmon and steelhead runs.
The 2002 spring chinook salmon season was definitely not a letdown for Columbia River mainstem fishers thrilled by last year’s record bounty.
The National Marine Fisheries Service on Thursday had not yet determined a
course of action for 68,000 sockeye salmon smolts infected with an
untreatable kidney virus, but it’s clear that Idaho does not want the fish
in three Sawtooth Valley lakes.
Sport fishing for hatchery spring chinook has been extended through May 15
on the lower Columbia River — and tribal commercial fishers get another
harvest opportunity this week — after estimates of the 2002 upriver run
were revised upward for the second time in a week.
The 2002 spring chinook salmon return to the Columbia River has been a forecaster’s nightmare, but it remains a fisherman’s dream because the very worst scenario described to date still amounts to one of the biggest upriver counts on record.
Oregon’s governor on Tuesday again challenged the Northwest and country as a whole to attack the salmon recovery issue at full power or be turned down a road of social, economic and legal chaos that leads ultimately to dam breaching.
For the second consecutive year, the spring chinook salmon tangle net fishery on the Columbia and Willamette rivers is showing positive results in immediate survival, according to an interim report by Oregon and Washington fisheries agencies. In addition, a recently completed study on long-term survival is showing that adults caught in the tangle net and released are surviving in high numbers.
Only the “wild, naturally producing” fish among 15 West Coast salmon and steelhead stocks should be listed under the Endangered Species Act, according to petitions sent Thursday to the National Marine Fisheries Service by a group of 17 national, regional and local conservation groups.
Sport fishers hopeful that their pursuit of spring chinook salmon would stretch into May have been cut short as run estimates are revised downward — from 333,700 adult returns to 238,000 — and thus reducing the number of hatchery salmon that can be taken within limits established to protect wild fish.
The public will have its first opportunity of 2002 to purchase fresh salmon along the banks of the Columbia River when the spring chinook catch of tribal commercial fishers is offered.
The Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping energy bill that would allow owners of non-federal hydroelectric dams to change new fishway requirements if they showed they could meet environmental standards in less costly ways or benefit power production.
Columbia River sport fishers’ piece of the spring chinook salmon pie is shrinking as the number of adult fish continues to lag — behind expectations and far, far behind last year’s record run.
Economists are finding that the cost to produce smolts at Northwest hatcheries stays relatively steady over the years, but the cost of returning adults is inconsistent and can be expensive, depending on ocean conditions and the location of the hatchery, among other factors.
An estimated 75,000 to 90,000 yearling Twisp River spring chinook salmon died April 13-14 when debris borne by heavy rains clogged water intake screens at a remote salmon rearing pond site, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has provided its Columbia River
Basin salmon recovery partners with a set of numerical targets to help
“size” the task at hand — building fish populations to the point that
they can be removed from the Endangered Species list, and beyond.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has released an early draft
biological opinion that identifies the Bureau of Reclamation’s on-going
irrigation projects, started nearly a century ago, as harmful to
steelhead in the Umatilla River.
The Technical Management Team extended spill this week to another lower
Snake River dam and also began spilling water at lower Columbia River
dams.
Salmon anglers along the Pacific coasts of Washington and northern
Oregon this year should be able to take advantage of a strong return of
Columbia River chinook salmon, but must ease off on the harvest of coho
salmon returning to the Columbia as compared to last year.
An 11th-hour settlement has been reached between bird conservation
groups and fish management entities that would guide fast-arriving
Caspian terns toward Columbia River estuary nesting grounds where the
predatory birds are believed to be less of a threat to migrating
juvenile salmon.
The Northwest Power Planning Council on Wednesday recommended $36.3
million in funding for fish and wildlife projects in the Blue Mountain
and Mountain Snake “provinces” in northeastern Oregon, southeastern
Washington and central Idaho.
A deep plunge into experimental tangle net fishing presented some
logistical nightmares, but the just-ended season was mostly positive for
non-tribal commercial fishers who enjoyed their biggest haul of Columbia
River basin spring chinook salmon since 1991, and found the market was
willing to pay top dollar for the catch.
With yearling chinook showing up at lower Snake River dams, the
Technical Management Team this week gave approval to begin spilling
water at Snake River dams and will likely order spill at lower Columbia
River dams next week.
Federal agencies this week revealed that overall they will spend more in 2003 and 2004 for Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead recovery activities than they did in 2002.
A group of Yakama tribal fishers hope a proposed portable
fish-processing enterprise will help them play a larger role in the
sales of salmon caught from the Columbia River.
Two Columbia Basin fishing interests often at odds about how to share
fish harvests have united in an effort to wring more dollars from next
year’s federal budget.
The money is needed, they say, to ward off hatchery production cutbacks
and provide funding for fish marking that is allowing a more bountiful
harvest of returning hatchery salmon and steelhead through selective
fisheries.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped spilling water over Bonneville
Dam this morning (March 15), ending nearly four days of spill to help
hatchery-bred juvenile chinook salmon pass the dam safely.
However, as the spill ended this morning at 6 a.m., only about 50
percent of the 7.8 million juvenile tule fall chinook salmon released
from the hatchery had passed the dam on their downstream migration to
the ocean, according to the Fish Passage Center.
Fisheries managers this week asked for ten days of spill and higher
flows at Bonneville Dam to aid passage at the dam for juvenile chinook
released from the Spring Creek Hatchery upstream.
However, dam operators said there isn’t enough water in the system to
provide either the flow or the spill and sent the issue to a higher
forum for a decision.
The spring chinook salmon catch is small as of yet, in the first-ever
full fleet, “live capture” commercial fishery on the Columbia River
mainstem.
But the strategy has shown the promise of accomplishing its dual goal —
allowing commercial fishers to catch and keep more fish without
increasing their impact on salmon and steelhead listed under the
Endangered Species Act.
The Department of Interior this week came out against a bill that would
authorize federal funding to rehabilitate an aging private dam and
enhance and restore salmon habitat in Oregon’s Wallowa River Basin.
In the 1880s, two canneries took some 12,000 sockeye salmon two years in
a row from Wallowa Lake in Eastern Oregon. By 1905, the run was gone.
Alaska sockeye were dumped in the lake in the 1920s, but the last year
anyone remembers seeing an ocean-going sockeye in the Wallowa River was
1926, the year Wallowa Lake Dam was raised to its final height to
provide water for irrigators downstream.
Thirteen environmental and fishing groups on Tuesday sought to intervene
in a federal court lawsuit that is challenging the Endangered Species
Act protected status of coho salmon in the Klamath River basin.
More than 200 people, including rancher Stan Hermens, attended public
meetings across Oregon this week to learn about disease transmission,
testing methods and hunter safety following the confirmation of
tuberculosis in a cow elk that died on Hermens’ elk farm in Eastern
Oregon last November.
The team of independent scientists advising Washington’s Puget Sound and
coastal Hatchery Reform Project this week released the first in what
will be a series of reports on how existing hatcheries should be changed
to better support sustainable fisheries and help restore threatened
stocks.
The National Marine Fisheries Service this week officially concluded
that five of six delisting petitions it received last year contain
“substantial scientific and commercial information to suggest” that 14
of the 15 Pacific salmon and steelhead stocks addressed in the petitions
could warrant removal from the Endangered Species list
One of the most notable hot seats for federal officials in the Pacific
Northwest has only gotten hotter since Bob Lohn took over in September
as regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Public comment at the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting last
Friday (Feb. 8) made it clear that the department’s proposed Native Fish
Conservation and Hatchery Management policies are not yet ready for
prime time.
Current scientific evidence does not support the need to require higher
water levels in Oregon’s Upper Klamath Lake or higher flows on the
nearby Klamath River, as prescribed by two federal agencies to protect
endangered and threatened species of fish.
That’s the finding of a new interim report from the National Academy of
Science’s National Research Council.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife plans to shoot 250 adult deer
and 100 adult elk from a helicopter in late February and March to
determine if tuberculosis from a single female captive elk that died at
an eastern Oregon ranch in November has spread to the wild population.
Migrating juvenile spring chinook salmon and steelhead faced a gauntlet
last year with low, clear, and often warmer, Columbia-Snake river flows
retarding their downstream progress and leaving them more readily
accessible to fish and avian predators, according to National Marine
Fisheries Service officials.
The total forecast for a return of 677,900 Columbia River fall chinook
salmon to the river mouth this summer would be the third largest adult
return since 1948.
The projections this week from the U.S. v Oregon Technical Advisory
Committee continue a trend of rosy forecasts for 2002, after a 2001
season that saw modern-day records fall for spring chinook salmon and
for summer steelhead.
The Northwest Power Planning Council on Wednesday recommended a $659,368
“within-year funding allocation” to allow further evaluation of live
capture selective harvesting techniques by the Oregon and Washington
departments of fish and wildlife.
The Bureau of Reclamation released this week for review a draft
biological assessment of its Klamath projects in southern Oregon and
northern California that assumes irrigators will get nearly all the
water they need.
A commercial fishing method tested on 20 boats last year will be
employed later this month on a much grander scale — potentially 200 or
more fishing boats — on the mainstem Columbia River as spring chinook
salmon begin to appear on their way to hatcheries and spawning grounds.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has made minor changes to its
December draft Native Fish Conservation Policy and intends to present
the policy, along with initial draft rules, February 8 to the Oregon
Fish and Wildlife Commission and to push for initial rulemaking by
April.
Former U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Sid Lezak, has agreed to lead a
mediation effort among the parties involved in a lawsuit that claims a
2000 National Marine Fisheries Service Federal Columbia River Power
System biological opinion is doomed to failure and should be rewritten.
Plum Creek Timber Co. proposes to piggy-back grizzly bears onto a
conservation plan for native fish on its corporate lands in northwest
Montana.
The gap between threatened bull trout and threatened grizzly bears may
not be as wide as it seems, said Tim Bodurtha, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service’s habitat conservation plan coordinator in Montana.
The draft Native Fish Conservation Policy and Guidelines and the
Hatchery Management Policy and Guidelines released for review by the
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is proving to be unpopular.
The first system operations request (SOR) of the year for the Technical
Management Team asked for lower Kootenai River flows in Idaho and a
lower water temperature to protect burbot, a species little known in the
Northwest outside of the Kootenai River in Idaho and Kootenay Lake in
British Columbia.
Fisheries experts expect most spring and summer salmon and steelhead
returns to the Columbia River to be strong, though perhaps not in the
record numbers experienced this past year.
A Montana-based federal court judge on Monday stalled a proposal to
harvest 176 million board feet of charred timber on the Bitterroot
National Forest until the U.S. Forest Service complies with the federal
Appeals Reform Act.
Oregon coastal coho salmon stocks stripped of Endangered Species Act protection three months ago are back on the list following a Dec. 14 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Columbia Basin experienced during 2001 what could be called the
“year of the salmon,” at least in modern times, with record upriver
spring chinook and steelhead runs, and high counts for most other stocks
as well.
After more than five years of research conducted at a cost of $25
million, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that major
systems improvements — not dam breaching — will be the preferred path
for trying to improve salmon and steelhead survival through four lower
Snake River federal hydroelectric projects.
The “federal executives,” along with representatives of states and
tribes, met this week to consider the potential of transitioning from an
informal organization to a more formal, regional decision-making forum.
Federal, state and tribal representatives raised issues this week with
the federal “implementation plan” released by the federal action
agencies in mid-November.
The plan describes the specific measures the agencies will implement
between Oct. 1, 2001, and Sept. 30, 2002, to comply with the National
Marine Fisheries Service’ 2000 biological opinion.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it expects to release in
mid-December an assessment of the biological effects that deepening the
Columbia River shipping channel by three feet from Portland to Astoria
may have on 13 listed species of salmon, steelhead and trout.
A federal decision to revisit Endangered Species Act listing decisions
for 23 of 25 West Coast salmon and steelhead stocks has provoked a
variety of opinions about the future of the region’s fish recovery
efforts.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Hogan, in an order dated Wednesday,
granted seven environmental and fishing groups legal “intervenor status”
for the purposes of appealing his own Sept. 10 decision in Alsea Valley
Alliance v Evans that struck Oregon coastal coho from the federal
Endangered Species Act list.
Four Northwest tribes with treaty fishing rights will be at the “heart”
of plans to re-evaluate the hatchery policies of the National Marine
Fisheries Service following a September federal court ruling, said
Donald Sampson, executive director for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal
Fish Commission.
In a time that has lawsuits littering the salmon recovery landscape and
pressure increasing on the Northwest Power Planning Council to satisfy a
variety of fish and wildlife funding demands, NWPPC chairman Larry
Cassidy still relishes the challenge.
Instead of appealing a federal court order that tossed out the Oregon
coastal coho Endangered Species Act listing, the National Marine
Fisheries Service has opted to use that decision as a springboard toward
the re-evaluation of as many as 23 other West Coast listings and its own
artificial production strategy.
U.S. District Circuit Judge Michael Hogan on Tuesday turned aside
arguments that federal protection for Oregon coastal coho and their
habitat be continued while the federal government rethinks the status of
the salmon’s wild and hatchery produced populations.
A shower of petitions asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to
drop numerous Pacific fish species from the federal endangered species
list has been followed by flurry of letters to the agency calling the
requests “spurious,” “facially deficient” and “frivolous.”
A shower of petitions asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to
drop numerous Pacific fish species from the federal endangered species
list has been followed by flurry of letters to the agency calling the
requests “spurious,” “facially deficient” and “frivolous.”
No less than five administrative “de-listing” petitions — targeting
fish stocks from the Puget Sound to northern California and Oregon’s
Klamath Basin — have landed on federal fish managers’ desks in recent
week.
This week, Congress passed a final interior spending bill with $26
million toward removal of two dams in Olympic National Park and at least
$14 million for Columbia Basin fish habitat and salmon enhancement in
the Northwest.
Seven environmental and fishing groups on Tuesday filed a series of
legal measures they hope will lead to an appeal of U.S. District Court
Judge Michael Hogan’s Sept. 10 decision that has resulted in the
delisting of the Oregon coastal coho.
The Northwest Power Planning Council is pondering a “freeze” on funding
for new fish and wildlife projects until it can judge the full weight of
growing demands stemming from its newly instituted provincial review
process and from federal hydrosystem biological opinions.
A recent U.S. District Court judgment that the federal government erred
in its listing of Oregon coho could open a can of legal worms across the
Columbia River basin and Pacific Coast, according to an assessment
provided by the Northwest Power Planning Council’s legal staff.
An administrative petition calling for the delisting of seven Columbia
Basin salmon and steelhead stocks is, perhaps, the first legal broadside
delivered in response to a recent federal court decision declaring
illegal the Oregon coast coho’s listing under the Endangered Species
Act.
Two conservation organizations joined the effort to put pressure on
Department of Commerce Secretary Don Evans to order an appeal of a
recent U.S. District Court decision requiring the National Marine
Fisheries Service to reconsider its decision to list Oregon coastal coho
salmon under the Endangered Species Act.
A recent U.S. District Court decision ordering a reconsideration of an
Oregon coastal coho Endangered Species Act listing could have
implications beyond the fish world — affecting the health of Columbia
Basin communities and their economies, according to Oregon Gov. John
Kitzhaber.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced last Friday that
all Oregon fishing rules adopted for 2001 remain in effect and no
changes will be made as a result of last week’s court decision on coho
managed under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The Senate has approved an additional $4 million for Pacific salmon
restoration projects in Washington state, raising total funding next
year to $74 million for four West Coast states.
The Pacific Salmon Fund is part of the $42 billion FY02 appropriation
bill for the Department of Commerce and other departments. The Senate
total is $26 million less than the House approved in July but $18
million above the current fiscal year.
Boosted by a huge “tule” return, the 2001Columbia River upriver fall
chinook run has tracked at a record pace, with more adults passing
Bonneville Dam this year than in any year since the project was built in
1938.
The threatened Snake River portion of the upriver run is also producing
some surprising numbers.
A U.S. District Court judge in Eugene, Ore., has ordered the National
Marine Fisheries Service to rethink its Aug. 10, 1998, threatened
species listing for Oregon coastal coho, saying the federal agency erred
by excluding hatchery coho in judging the need for federal protections.
Counts of fall chinook, coho, and summer steelhead crossing Bonneville
Dam broke records this week, prompting biologists to predict that this
year’s total adult fish return from the ocean to the Columbia River will
be the highest since at least 1938.
The Columbia River Compact on Thursday took a cautious approach towards
the goal of enabling non-Indian commercial harvest of 260,000 hatchery
coho in the lower river during September and October.
The year 2001 marks the 100-year milestone for the Spring Creek National
Fish Hatchery in Underwood, Wash., an event formally celebrated on Sept.
8., with educational activities, a formal ceremony and the viewing of
adult tule fall chinook salmon return that is next to none in recent
history.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans on Thursday announced the
appointment of Dr. William T. Hogarth to head the department’s National
Marine Fisheries Service and Robert Lohn as chief of NMFS’ Northwest
region.
Hogarth, a veteran with 16 years of experience in fisheries and natural
resources management, has since January been NMFS acting assistant
administrator.
Adult salmon and steelhead counts during the spring and summer of 2001
continue to astound with fishery officials predicting the overall return
of salmonids to the Columbia Basin this year could set a new high since
record-keeping began in 1938.
Fisheries biologists have counted 13 adult sockeye that have made it all
the way back into the Stanley Basin, with three more holding below the
Sawtooth weir, for a total of 16 so far, according to the Idaho Fish and
Game Department.
Substantial concurrence between fish and wildlife managers and a
scientific panel on fish and wildlife project proposals in the “Columbia
Plateau” province figures to complicate decisions as the Northwest Power
Planning Council and Bonneville Power Administration launch into a new
post “MOA” era.
More than 1,200 adult spring chinook salmon, surplus from the Ringold
Hatchery near Priest Rapids, Wash., have been released into the Walla
Walla River in the second year of an effort to restore the extirpated
run.
The agency caught in the middle — the Bonneville Power Administration
— fielded questions Wednesday about how it might mete out “off-site
mitigation” fish and wildlife recovery funding as the lines blur between
federal Endangered Species Act mandates and those under the Northwest
Power Act.
Three federal hydroelectric operating agencies released for public
comment their long-anticipated plan on how they will operate the hydro
system and what they will do in the other “H’s” — hatcheries, harvest
and habitat — to aid salmon recovery.
Columbia Basin state and tribal representatives gathered Wednesday to
discuss how they fit into salmon recovery plans that profess federal
responsibility but stress that success hinges in part on actions taken
outside federal agencies’ direct authorities.
A self-described “five-year blueprint for fish recovery actions by the
three (action) agencies” was released this week in draft form —
detailing how Federal Columbia River Power System operators aim to meet
survival goals for salmon, steelhead and resident fish species listed
under the Endangered Species Act.
Oregon and Washington officials are predicting uncommon success for
sport anglers turned loose Wednesday to pursue salmon returning to the
Columbia River.
Many are already zeroing in on coho near Buoy 10 at the river’s mouth,
where more than one million hatchery coho are predicted to return along
with nearly 300,000 chinook.
Responding to criticism, an independent science panel stands by its assessment that a “more cautionary approach” should be used in attempts
to supplement Columbia Basin wild salmon and steelhead populations with
surplus hatchery fish.
A quick-fix at Tumwater Dam on central Washington’s Wenatchee River has
restored the flow of sockeye surging toward their spawning grounds —
and restored anglers’ hope that they’ll be able to pull the salmon from
Lake Wenatchee’s waters for the first time since 1993.
The Bonneville Power Administration this week agreed to begin a limited
summer spill program at two lower Columbia River dams to help juvenile
salmon remaining in the river pass federal projects.
At the multi-agency Implementation Team meeting this week, BPA said it
can spill 30 percent of the river at The Dalles Dam for up to two weeks
and about 45,000 cubic feet per second for 5 hours per day at Bonneville
Dam, depending on actual river flow.
A 2001 trend towards early and abundant fish runs is continuing, with
upriver summer steelhead adult counts seemingly on a record pace.
The single highest daily steelhead count on record — 10,181 — was
charted Monday (July 23) at the Columbia River’s Bonneville Dam …
The number of endangered sockeye salmon swimming toward central Idaho’s
Stanley Basin is a trickle compared to the relative gusher of adults
that made the trip up the Columbia, Snake and Salmon rivers last year.
But researchers involved in the captive broodstock program — attempting
to revive a population that counted zero returning adults in 1997 and
one in 1998 — remain optimistic.
Citing the failure of the Bush administration to increase funding for
recovery of endangered Columbia Basin salmon, Rep. Jim McDermott, D
Wash., on Thursday introduced legislation to develop contingency plans
for breaching four dams on the lower Snake River.
A recently published research paper concludes that young steelhead are
the favored targets of avian predators circling the Columbia River
estuary, a phenomenon the authors say could have dire implications for
some of the basin’s most imperiled stocks.
Columbia Basin fish and wildlife managers and others watching this
year’s mainstem and tributary flows fear the worst for migrating
juvenile and adult salmon as the summer warms.
The forecast for January-July runoff as measured at The Dalles Dam fell
to 54.7 million acre feet or 52 percent of normal …
A long-running difference of opinion about how, when or even if
supplementation should be used in Columbia Basin salmon recovery efforts
continues to simmer this summer, with an independent scientific report
on the practice again the focus.
In a June 29 letter, the heads of the two entities that sponsor the
11-member Independent Scientific Advisory Board defended the panel and
the conclusions made in a recently published review of “surplus”
hatchery salmon issues.
Reducing spill at federal hydrosystem projects below levels outlined in
a National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion would have
“negligible” impacts on migrating Snake River fall chinook salmon
juveniles, according to a preliminary Northwest Power Planning Council
staff issue paper released for public comment June 13.
The clock began ticking today (June 22) on a process that will allow the
Bonneville Power Administration and its administrator better take a
“comprehensive, consistent and unified approach” toward its
responsibility to fund the multiple Columbia Basin fish and wildlife
recovery efforts.
A hydropower vs. fish debate jumped onto the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission stage this week, with fishery agencies from Alaska to the
Northwest, as well as tribal entities, protesting a proposal to forego
spill operations this summer at two mid-Columbia dams in order to
increase energy production.
A hydropower vs. fish debate jumped onto the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission stage this week, with fishery agencies from Alaska to the
Northwest, as well as tribal entities, protesting a proposal to forego
spill operations this summer at two mid-Columbia dams in order to
increase energy production.
A research project on Caspian terns in Commencement Bay has been cut
short due to concerns raised by tribal fisheries co-managers about the
birds’ consumption of area salmon, according to the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Oregon House of Representatives on Tuesday approved by a 32-26 vote
a bill that would establish a moratorium on destroying hatchery-bred,
returning adult salmon while a scientific panel studies those fishes’
role in wild fish recovery.
Reacting to improved news about the region’s electric system reliability
from the Northwest Power Planning Council, the Bonneville Power
Administration said today (May 25) that it will not only extend spill at
two lower Columbia River dams through next Friday, it will also spill
water through McNary and John Day dam spillways through Tuesday in an
effort to move juvenile salmon downstream.
Taking issue with President George Bush’s agenda on many issues,
including energy and the environment, Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt., on
Thursday quit the Republican Party, handing control of the Senate to
Democrats.
Taking issue with President George Bush’s agenda on many issues,
including energy and the environment, Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt., on
Thursday quit the Republican Party, handing control of the Senate to
Democrats.
An independent scientific panel this week urged regional entities to
learn as much as they can from this good news-bad news year for Columbia
Basin salmon recovery efforts.
The good news is that many of the basin’s salmon stocks are returning
this year in larger, and sometimes record, numbers to spawn naturally or
revisit the hatchery of their origin.
The term “surplus hatchery fish” has, at least for this year, has been
erased from the Methow Basin salmon management dictionary following a
landmark agreement that focuses on the collection of local, naturally
spawning spring chinook to replenish hatchery egg banks and lets
unneeded hatchery stocks seek a spawning niche in the river’s mainstem.
A bill that sponsors say would allow more hatchery salmon to spawn
naturally and require the state to use hatchery salmon eggs to replenish
fish runs was signed into law late Tuesday by Washington Gov. Gary Locke
over the protestations of the federal agency charged with protecting and
rebuilding “wild” salmon and steelhead runs.
A proposal to begin spilling water now at lower Columbia River hydro
projects to improve passage for a building juvenile salmon and steelhead
migration hit a snag Friday (today) when the Bonneville Power
Administration and Grant County Public Utility District failed to win
regional support for the plan.
A proposal to begin spilling water now at lower Columbia River hydro
projects to improve passage for a building juvenile salmon and steelhead
migration hit a snag Friday (today) when the Bonneville Power
Administration and Grant County Public Utility District failed to win
regional support for the plan.
Two Oregon leaders are supporting a plan by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, to
make Northwest salmon recovery a national priority and boost federal
funding by $400 million next year.
Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., this week gave his endorsement, and Gov. John
Kitzhaber praised the overall $688 million plan, which Crapo announced
on May 3.
The pickings have been somewhat meager to date, but state fishery
officials are hoping that an ongoing “tangle” or “tooth” net
experimental fishery will yield information that allows commercial
gill-net salmon fishers to regain a foothold in the Columbia River.
A lawsuit filed Thursday asks the U.S. District Court to order the
federal government to rethink a Columbia Basin salmon recovery plan that
the plaintiffs say is rife with faulty scientific assumptions and doomed
to failure because of a lack of Bush Administration support for
implementation funding.
Flow “augmentation” via water releases from Snake River reservoirs and
those that feed the Snake should not be abandoned. But a fine-tuning of
research is needed to settle conclusively debates over the practice’s
potential benefit to migrating fall chinook salmon, according to a panel
of independent scientists.
An Earthwise Knowledge Initiative Publication
