New
direction for salmon recovery
Better hatchery
management, smaller catch in new plan
Mitch
Lies
Capital Press Staff Writer
February 3, 2006
The
Bush administration last week provided what farm and forest industry leaders
called sorely needed direction when it unveiled a salmon recovery plan that
calls for reducing harvest and improving hatchery management.
Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the
plan will lead to increased salmon runs without altering the region’s
dependence on dams.
“In the long run, this (policy) will be better for salmon and for the
people who live and work here,” West said.
Natural resources leaders also said the plan validates the voluntary work
done by farmers and foresters over the past decade to improve salmon
habitat.
“I think it’s a success story,” said Oregon Farm Bureau President
Barry Bushue. “It is vindication that our commitment ... to voluntary
programs is one piece of the puzzle.”
“We’re the ones who gave up our evenings and weekends working on
watershed councils,” West said. “We’re the ones who got dirt under our
fingernails.”
The administration’s plan calls for transforming the Northwest’s
hatcheries from factories producing fish for fisheries to state-of-the-art
facilities designed to restore populations.
“We need to ensure that our hatchery facilities are up to date. ... We
need to mimic natural production and selection processes, not harm them,”
James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental
Quality, said in introducing the new plan.
In calling for a reduction of harvest levels, Connaughton said:
“We have in years past taken steps to reduce the amount of threatened and
endangered salmon we catch, but we are still catching them at levels that
warrant reassessment. This is a paradox for an administration committed to
end overfishing, and we are going to resolve it.”
West applauded the strategy, saying: “If we are going to recover species,
taking of species needs to have a harder look.” In the long run, he said,
the strategy will result in the recovery of salmon populations to
harvestable levels.
The strategy was scorned by the fishing industry, which claimed that
trimming the minor impact they inflict on salmon runs will not restore wild
fish populations.
“All commercial, recreational and tribal harvests combined account for 5
percent of the human-induced mortality in the system,” said Glen Spain,
Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s
Association. “Meanwhile, the hydropower system accounts for 80 percent.”
Instead of reducing the harvest, Spain said the administration should
consider removing the four lower Snake River dams:
“I would be overjoyed if there was any demonstrable way to improve the
runs without removing dams,” Spain said, “but the biology doesn’t say
it’s possible at this point.”
Connaughton said in his presentation that the administration is advancing
the plan as part of shifting its focus from avoiding extinction to promoting
recovery of endangered salmon runs. Connaughton said the administration
stands firmly behind the dams, but said more improvements in dams would be
necessary to meet administration goals.
“The hydropower system has made significant improvements,” he said.
“These improvements will need to be sustained and enhanced as part of an
overall recovery strategy if we are to be successful.”
Charles Hudson, spokesman for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish
Commission, said he liked aspects of the plan that showed the administration
recognizes the sovereignty of tribal fishing rights. And he agreed with the
administration’s assessment that hatchery management needs improvements.
But, he said, the administration is wrong to promote harvest reductions.
“We have concerns about the administration’s attempt to redirect
attention to what we view hands-down as the most intensively managed of the
four H’s — harvest,” he said.
The new strategy also is an attempt by the administration to advance a more
comprehensive approach than has been used in the past to recover salmon,
Connaughton said — an approach taking into account what are commonly
referred to as the four H’s: harvest, hatchery, habitat and hydropower.
“It is time to press ahead and find a way to more effectively put all of
the H’s to work in the context of a better integrated — instead of an ad
hoc and piecemeal — approach,” Connaughton said.
Farm and forest industry leaders called on the Northwest’s political
delegation to support the plan by funding hatchery improvements and
providing low-interest loans or other support programs to offset short-term
revenue losses fisheries are expected to suffer under the strategy.
Mitch Lies is based in Salem. His e-mail address is mlies@capitalpress.com.
