Idaho tribe,
BPA at odds over new Oregon chinook hatchery
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LEWISTON, Idaho -- The
Bonneville Power Administration says it won't spend $16.4 million to build a
fish hatchery in northeast Oregon unless it gets confirmation that, in light
of a recent court ruling, the hatchery will help threatened chinook salmon.
The Nez Perce Tribe,
which wants to start construction on the hatchery this winter, says the BPA
is holding the money hostage.
"From the tribe's
perspective, it appears BPA is holding Northeast Oregon Hatchery 'hostage'
in order to meet its own desire to receive some specific 'ESA credit' from
NOAA Fisheries," wrote tribal Chairwoman Rebecca Miles in a June 13
letter to BPA Administrator Steven Wright.
The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration is the federal agency in charge of restoring
threatened and endangered salmon.
The proposed hatchery was
listed in biological opinions covering federal dams on the Snake and
Columbia rivers as one of the measures that would help chinook salmon
recover.
However, U.S. District
Judge James Redden in Portland recently ruled against management plans for
dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, saying they would not prevent chinook
salmon from going extinct. A new biological opinion is being written by
federal agencies and plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to Redden's
decision.
The BPA wants to make sure
the new hatchery will be considered a help to recovering salmon runs and not
be ruled as detrimental after it is built.
"We need to be
assured it is not going to be treated as a deterrent," Greg Delwiche,
BPA vice president of environment, fish and wildlife, told The Lewiston
Tribune.
"We have every hope
and intention to fund this hatchery," Scott Simms, a spokesman with
BPA, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think we just want to
make sure we go through the appropriate process with NOAA Fisheries to do
this hatchery right."
The hatchery has been
planned for several decades, and last May the project was recommended to
receive money by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
By law, the BPA is
required to help mitigate effects dams have on wildlife. Those efforts
include measures to improve salmon passage through dams for both adult and
juvenile salmon, as well as building fish hatcheries to mitigate lost
spawning habitat.
The new hatchery would be
built on the Lostine River near the town of Lostine. It would be a
"supplementation hatchery," which uses wild salmon to produce
juvenile fish. The juvenile fish, called smolts, would be released to
migrate to the ocean. Most of the returning adults would be allowed to spawn
in the wild.
BPA officials say they
are concerned the hatchery will produce chinook that spawn with wild fish.
Some biologists say mixing hatchery-raised salmon with wild salmon weakens
the genetic strength of the wild fish, making them more susceptible to
extinction.
The agency also is
concerned that the hatchery would lead to tribal anglers harvesting more
wild salmon and hinder recovery of the species.
The agency says those
factors combined could mean the hatchery might harm recovery of wild salmon
rather than help the species under the Endangered Species Act.
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