Idaho Statesman Editorial: Look at big picture to save salmon

When they suggested pulling the plug on a lifeline for Idaho's sockeye salmon, scientists swam straight into a political turbine.

But the scientists didn't get it entirely wrong. They pointed out — correctly — that myriad factors keep the sockeye teetering on the edge of extinction.

The sooner the Northwest faces the big picture, the better the chances of survival for all of the region's imperiled wild salmon. Including, but most profoundly, Idaho's sockeye, now hanging on in a genetic emergency room.

The sockeye salmon — the ocean-running red fish that gave the Stanley Basin's Redfish Lake its name — have been on the federal government's endangered species list since 1991. Fourteen summers later, only six adult sockeye returned to the Sawtooths, completing a mind-boggling 900-mile, 6,500-foot climb from the Pacific.

The sockeye are hanging on not in their pristine spawning waters, but under man-made conditions at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game Eagle Fish Hatchery in Eagle. In hatcheries such as Eagle, biologists raise and hold 300 adult sockeye and spawn them. Some 160,000 smolts are released into Central Idaho lakes each year, in hopes that a fraction of these fish will run a gauntlet of dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers, dodge a food chain of predators and survive temperamental ocean conditions.

The short-term key to survival is to preserve the genetics unique to this Idaho salmon run, fill Central Idaho's lakes with as many smolts as possible, and hope for the best.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council took a positive albeit incremental step in that direction this month. The group of gubernatorial appointees, assigned to review the Bonneville Power Administration's salmon recovery programs, approved a $2.7 million hatchery upgrade. The bulk of the money will be spent in Eagle, on a new hatchery building and other improvements.

The idea behind the improvements — paid for by BPA and, ultimately, its customers across the Northwest — is to release another 150,000 sockeye smolts a year. Only a few hundred of these smolts may return to Idaho as adults, an admittedly high-cost, low-yield equation.

It's not worth the cost, according to a scientific panel appointed by the council. "At this time, it appears the (Snake River sockeye) is extinct in the wild and reintroduction efforts have not proceeded easily or successfully." In making a radical recommendation — shut down the hatchery program, and condemn the sockeye to the death penalty — the Independent Scientific Review Panel makes one very compelling point.

"Since there has been no response by the populations to recovery efforts in the (Stanley) Basin, it is clear that conditions outside the Basin determine the fate of these fish, and there is no evidence that these conditions are likely to improve significantly in the near future."

Salmon recovery does transcend work done in Idaho — whether it's hatchery breeding or habitat preservation in the Sawtooths. The salmon's fate rests also in the ocean, and with the dams that impede the fish's migration to and from Idaho. All we can do in a hatchery is sustain a gene pool.

Not surprisingly, the scientists' recommendation to kill the hatchery program was a political nonstarter. Meeting in Boise this month, the eight-member council voted unanimously to increase the program budget, after Idaho Gov. Jim Risch argued to save the project. "It would not be the policy of this administration to abandon the recovery of sockeye salmon."

This not-on-my-watch stance is commendable, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far. In arguing for the hatcheries, Risch also said that Idaho remains opposed to breaching four dams on the lower Snake River to help salmon migrate to and from Idaho. But then again, a Boise State University survey earlier this year showed Idahoans split on the breaching issue — and meanwhile, most scientists say breaching offers salmon their best and perhaps only shot at recovery.

Defending a hatchery program is fine, though politically safe. Advocating tough changes — such as breaching, which we have endorsed since 1997 — demands courage. But the scientists are right. Unless and until this region faces the range of issues affecting salmon, fish such as Idaho's sockeye will remain in the emergency room.