OUTDOORS: Settlement could curtail harvests
Bob Mottram; The News Tribune

Washington Trout - the organization that has threatened to sue Washington
state over salmon hatcheries - says its separate salmon-harvest lawsuit
against the federal government has ended in a negotiated settlement that
could curtail harvests on Puget Sound.

The lawsuit challenged a joint state-tribal plan for harvesting Puget Sound
chinook salmon.

The fish-conservation organization says the settlement calls for the
National Marine Fisheries Service to write a full-blown Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) by 2004 that analyzes the impacts of the Puget Sound Joint
Resource Management Plan (RMP) developed for chinook salmon by the
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound treaty Indian
tribes. It says the settlement "opens the door for important changes in
salmon-harvest policies and practices."

The state and the tribes say they believe the plan they developed is
scientifically sound.

Washington Trout contends that the plan imposes too much risk for chinook
listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act. It says the
impact statement that the Fisheries Service produces will contain a
"no-harvest" alternative among those to be considered.

The Endangered Species Act requires Fisheries Service approval of any
management plan that might affect listed salmon. Washington Trout filed its
lawsuit against the Fisheries Service in 2001, challenging its approval of
the RMP on grounds it had failed to produce an Environmental Impact
Statement or Biological Opinion concerning the plan. It contended that
federal law requires both documents.

The Fisheries Service agreed to postpone final approval of the RMP for a
year, until 2004, while it prepares an EIS and a Biological Opinion.

Tim Waters, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said
his agency will assist the federal Fisheries Service "in any way they ask us
to in preparation of the EIS. We feel the management plans as written now
are scientifically sound, but we'll do everything we can to support the
expanded process."

Tony Meyer, spokesman for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, which
represents treaty tribes, said the joint plan "is conservative and
protective" of listed chinook.

"Analysis through the EIS process will clearly show that the plan
effectively provides for the rebuilding of the threatened chinook
populations," Meyer said.

Washington Trout said the Fisheries Service had "agreed to study a specific
list of alternatives to the RMP ... including no fishing at all. ... This
... could result in much more conservative fishing regulations in Puget
Sound."

The Fisheries Service had approved the RMP for a two-year trial, with final
approval scheduled for 2003. Instead, it will grant a temporary re-approval
for an additional year, and will not consider final approval until after
completion of the EIS. However, it agreed to produce a Biological Opinion
and an Environmental Assessment - which are less rigorous than an EIS - in
2003. Under terms of the settlement, Washington Trout said, the
Environmental Assessment also will include comparisons to other
harvest-management alternatives, including a no-fishing alternative.

"This has the potential of requiring changes to the harvest plan even before
the 2004 EIS is completed," the organization said.

Brian Gorman, spokesman for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said
that, while the Fisheries Service would have to consider a no-harvest
alternative, "that doesn't mean we would have to embrace it. It would depend
on what direction the facts pointed us in and what the public response to
the draft EIS told us."

Gorman said his agency will hold a public hearing in Seattle on Aug. 22 to
solicit input about what alternatives the Fisheries Service should consider
in drafting the EIS.

Washington Trout recently gave the state 60-day notice that it plans to sue
to shut down 18 salmon hatcheries on Puget Sound whose operation it contends
negatively impacts listed wild chinook salmon.

Bob Mottram: 253-597-8640
bob.mottram@mail.tribnet.com

ssssay what?!??!?
I totally understand the need to protect endangered fisheries but this seema a little much. To me this is just another example of a few people with a cause trampling on the rights of the majority...again. I read the lawsuit. ( visit their website if you want to see it for yourself) This one will surely cause much controversy and anger a lot of sport fishers.

Hey Busy,

Where were you about a month or two ago!

Search for a thread called "WA trout declares war on recreational fishing."

You'll get all of the controversy you can handle!

p.s. Oops I'm sorry, I guess you were probably "Busy".

Hey 4Salt - I just did not take them for really doing such a thing. I also was not feeling like getting involved in all the mudslinging... Guess I know better now. For some reason I always seem to learn the hard way.

Guys and gals, no need to get your nipples in a wringer over this - the bottom line is in ESA consultatons science, not politics, rules. If the science that WDFW is using to manage recovery of chinook is valid, and I would think that it is because they actually are recovering, and in the Columbia, where they have been listed 7 years longer, they are recovering even better - whitness the last two years of record returns, then that is what will come out of the consultation and be the result of the biological opinion. We all know that if we can get to the point where all the hatchery fish are marked and we c&r all the natives, we will have virtually no impact on listed chinook survival, certainly not compared to the impact that dams, dredging, commercial, industrial, and residential development has. And because huge areas of freshwater and estuarine habitat have been lost, hatcheries that raise fish to a size that enables them to enter saltwater without using the freshwater and estuarine rearing area that the smaller wild fish need will not impact their survival. And because native stocks are depressed compared to their numbers historically, there is plenty of room in the ocean for growout of these hatchery fish. All WDFW and NMFS has to do is figure out how to harvest hatchery chinook without killing wild chinook, and we sportfishers are the best bet for that dirty little job. So I say bring it on

Busy,

This: means funny, light-hearted, not serious, joking.

I did not mean to upset you, I honestly thought that when you posted: that you hadn't realized that the issue did exactly what you said it would do.

Again, my apologies if you somehow mis-construed the meaning of my post.

Edit: OK Aunty, let me have it! :p

4salt - when you reminded me, jokingly , that this issue had already come up, I remembered reading about it. I realized that you were joking. I was only lamenting my hard head and laziness when it comes to standing up for something like this.

Although I think that this lawsuit may come to nothing except more stringent regulations and better marking of hatchery fish it will cost us, the sport fishing folk, and the we the taxpayers more money. Clearly this was not thought out very much.

This is a very interesting topic. My question as a first time poster here is. WHO is it that supports Washington Trout?? Several months ago I attended my FIRST and LAST meeting at the Renton Chapter of Puget Sound Anglers. The reason I went that night was to listen to the gentleman from Washington Trout. He gave an OK pitch about what they do. After this was all done the Renton Chapter, presents this guy a check. Tom Nelson from Salmon University asks the room to take up a collection around the room. Seems this chapter fully supported this individule and the cause that he was fighting for. I am not sure how all of the chapters feel about issue, but I know where Renton stands. Sure glad I didn't join that night now. If there are any Renton Chapter guys on this board could you explain why your chapter was in support of Wa. Trout.

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

I'm no expert here, but in the last 15 years in which I have supported Washington Trout, I have seen them win a huge lawsuit against a major river polluter in central Washington, I have seen them constantly fight for the rights of wild steelhead, and I have seen them broker a excellent coho wetland/stream away from a condo-developer and into a conservation reserve. When native fish are in trouble, we can call Washington Trout and get excellent expert assistance.

Before the Port of Portland and the Army Corps of Engeneers start deep water blasting & dredging fish out of the Columbia River in order to deepen it by 3 feet, Washington Trout will be there to protect the fish.

Fisheries will use science not politics to choose plan. Yet then they say the plan will be based on public opinion and science. WA Trout is trying to shut down hatcheries, I said it before, now I am saying I TOLD YOU SO! What happens when the Feds see they can save a bunch of money if the hatcheries are shut down. I bet the "plan" will go that way. We all need to stop supporting these groups that want to force their way or no way. I liked some of the things WT and PSA have done, but this is just too much.

I've got no problems with WT fighting on the habitat protection issues....they are one of many that do this. But on the issues of hatcheries their plans have huge holes in them and they would prefer not to discuss it with sport fishers as they have readily admitted that we are not important. But they are more than willing to take our money and support.

Jim, you've hit a bit of a hot button for me.

In some cases, Washington Trout, and other groups, are working to change the hatchery program. I don't think they are doing this simply because they hate hatchery fish or the people that fish for them. They are doing it because they love trout and salmon, and they believe that the hatchery programs are killing them. Based on the information I have seen in their newsletter (I am a member) these are in cases where they believe the hatchery in question is ill advised. Usually this is because there is a wild run in the river that the hatchery fish are impacting, and the data is there to support a belief that the wild run could recover if given any sort of a chance.

It's pretty easy to see that hatchery programs are not a slam dunk way to make fish come back to the rivers. A river I grew up on, the Washougal, has had a hatchery program since I was a kid. When I was a kid, however, it also had a strong wild run. In the last 30 years, the wild run has been allowed to to be fished into nothing. We just didn't know any better, and we believed what we were told, that the hatchery fish would replace the wild fish.

Well, guess what? The hatchery fish didn't replace the wild fish. WDFW planted more and more fish, and got fewer fish back. The fish that did come back shot up to the hatchery, which is in closed water, and didn't give us a chance at them. WDFW spent more and more money, and we caught fewer and fewer fish. Catch stats in the Washougal are still in a long term decline. When I was a kid, you expected to catch your limit, and the limit was three. Now, you're lucky to hit fish, and two fish is a darn good day. The fish that do come back come through in a rush, in a two week period. In the old days we fished from December through March, and expected to hit fish the whole time.

Another fun fact: about 3 to 5% of wild fish that are hatched will return to spawn. Hatcheries have been struggling to get a half percent of fish spawned to return. Hatchery fish are weak. Even if we plant fish, most of them die.

The overall returns are weak, as well. How many times in recent years have we heard that the hatcheries are struggling to get enough eggs?

The WDFW and the departments in other states have a pretty spotty record in managing hatcheries and their impact on rivers. In many states, including Washington, they have knowing planted diseased fish from hatcheries into rivers that were previously healthy. This has resulted in severe damage to rivers in the Olympic peninsula (IHD), and most of the rivers in Montana and Colorado, (whirling disease) for instance.

So it's not clear to me that hatcheries work. I'd love to be wrong on this. But I don't think I am.

It is clear, however, that wild fish work. If we let them.

The folks I have met in Washington Trout have been knowledgable about their cause, and their positions are fact based. You may disagree with them, but they have done their homework. They've done great work in habitat restoration, and lobbying for wild fish release. These are steps that will improve our fishing in the future. It's not clear that hatcheries have the same beneficial effect, and more important, hatcheries are much more expensive, in terms of fish created, than these restorative efforts are.

That last bit provides the clincher for me, when choosing between wild fish and hatchery fish. It's this: Hatcheries can get shut down when budgets get tight. Oregon just closed three of them, because there was no money. If you depend on hatchery fish for your fishing, then you have to make sure that the money is there to run them. When the state government has to choose between paying for medicine for welfare kids and fish for recreational fishing, guess which loses? Don't bother making noise about how you pay for your license, that's not how it works, The moeny all goes into the same pocket, and we've been voting to cut the taxes for too many years now.

I'd love to have hatcheries supplement our runs. If they work. I think the folks at WDFW are doing their best to make them work, and I support them. I think they're getting better at it, and I think that's great. However, I look carefully at what they tell me, because these folks will lose their jobs if the hatcheries are shut down. Even if they believed that the hatcheries didn't work, they'd have to be pretty brave to say so, because it would likely mean that they would have to find new work. And there aren't a whole lot of jobs for fisheries folks these days.

So, my friends, I ask that you think about it before you bash Washington Trout. These guys all fish, and they're no dumber than you and I are. They're on our side, and if they're taking these steps, there's a reason for it. Might be right or wrong, but if nothing else, they are dead sincere in their desire to save our fish, and ultimately our fishing. I urge you to check out their website and try to see their side before kicking them.

And if you think they're right, give them 10 bucks to help them continue the effort.

AMEN

OMG

The RMP is primarily a COMMERCIAL harvest plan. (As are ALL harvest plans. Get it through your heads: you are an afterthought to fisheries managers.) The RMP REDUCES escapement thresholds for chinook on most Puget Sound Rivers, in many cases by as much as half. It will allow commercial harvest on listed chinook every year, NO MATTER HOW SMALL THE ACTUAL RUN SIZE IS, because it utilizes a fixed-percentage exploitation rate, rather than an escapement-goal management regime. It will allow harvest on smaller subpopulations without any monitoring. WDFW claims that allowing more fish to spawn will not increase salmon production, because they say that the existing habitat is already being seeded to capacity, but they offer no data to support this counterintuitive hypothesis.

(I can hear smalma coming, so I'll mention that the only credible way to test the hypothesis would be to allow chinook escapement to significantly exceed existing goals for at least two chinook generations, ten to twelve years. In the last 25 years, how many years in a row has WDFW ever allowed chinook escapement to significantly exceed existing goals? I believe the answer is none. How many years in a row has it actually even met those goals? I believe the answer is few. I don't want to know how much harvest has been reduced; I want to know how often escapement has been exceeded.)

How many of you think those all sound like good ways to manage the harvest of salmon the are THREATENED WITH EXTINCTION? Washington Trout didn't. At the very least, we thought NMFS needed to meet its legal responsibility and subject the proposal to full environmental and biological analyses before it was approved. We believe the "sound science" WDFW, the tribes, and NMFS cite will have a hard time making it through an EIS. We believe having to analyze a "no fishing" option and other more conservative alternatives will force NMFS to confront the weaknesses in the "habitat capacity" hypothesis.

This process will not lead to no fishing; it will likely not even lead to no commercial fishing. We hope it will lead to better managed fishing. It is not WT's position that there are no salmon to catch. There may even be individual populations of Puget Sound chinook that can tolerate some level of harvest, but not if harvesting those fish puts other, weaker populations at increased or uncertain levels of risk. It is our position that any harvest regime that impacts listed stocks must adequately account for ALL risks and uncertainties. Conservative fisheries management will likely include reduced pressure on mixed stock fisheries, and high reliance on non-lethal, selective-fishing techniques and terminal fisheries.

As I have reminded this board again and again, WT is NOT a sportfishing-advocacy organization and it is against our bylaws to become involved in allocation issues. However, it seems to me that organizations and individuals interested in sportfishing-allocation issues would understand that the management scheme WDFW and NMFS are defending is not in sportfishers' interest. It seems to me they might understand that the management regimes WT is advocating could be much easier realized in a sportfishing context, and would support it. Perhaps that's why PSA, the REEL NEWS, and other sportfishing institutions supported WT's suit, even though they understood it risked some short-term pain for anglers (if we had gone to court and won, there WAS a chance ALL fishing could have been shut down this year, a fact we never hid when we went to them for support; neither did we hide our position on hatcheries), and perhaps it's why they've welcomed this settlement agreement.

While Washington Trout advocates solely for the interests of wild fish and not for any stakeholder group, it thoroughly analyzes all the facts, examines every side of the issue, and considers every implication or potential consequence before taking an action or a position. It seems to me that is an ethos others might consider adopting. Toward that end, please visit www.washingtontrout.org. After you learn about the work Washington Trout is doing every day, on a host of habitat, harvest, and hatchery issue to protect and recover Washington's wild-fish resources, please consider becoming a member.

Ramon Vanden Brulle,
Communications Director
Washington Trout

I want those who have not read my posts about the WA Trout Declares War... to go back and read them. This topic here will end up the same way. 158 posts. I will not argue about it. Yes there are better ways, which have been pointed out. Yes WT is doing a great job in SOME areas. But this whole topic is how people FEEL! WT FEELS that not enough is being done. I FEEL that WT is trying to shut down hatcheries, which I FEEL will result in no fish or fishing, period. One side says their biologists are right, the other says no, their's are. I will make a point though with a quote from my previous posts. "I also feel that this pending suit will end before court." Notice the FEEL? I was right, at least partly. I have worked for the state, against the state, and had many dealings with the feds, I FEEL I know what the outcome will be. NO ONE tells them what to do. Just look at the track records of them. And this last statement is NOT targeted towards any one person or group on the board, but if the shoe fits... If some people can't see the light of day because their rectum is in the way, then they need more help then we can give.

Sorry Ramon but can't sit on the side lines any longer! You know my buttons!

Clearly give the shape our chinook stocks are in (after all they are an ESA listed species) changes are/were needed in all areas that affect their survival: harvest, hatcheries and habitat. I encourage each and everyone of you to become informed with accurate information, form an opinion and lobby for the changes that your individual ethics demands.

The Puget Sound Chinook RMP is a fishery management plan that attempted to account for all for all sources of fishing mortality in assessing expliotation rates. This includes mortalities in and out side of Washington waters, treaty and non-treaty, commerical and sport. The plan is much more that a commerical fishery management plan.

To illustrate the fisheries that are considered let's look at the impacts for this year's season on the wild Snohomish basin chinook. The RMP for this sysyem called for a maximun expliotation rate on wild stocks of 32%; the approved seasons and the modeled impacts were expect to have a total of 19% impact on these stocks. 28% of the impacts are expected to be in Alaskan and Canadian waters, The remaining 72% of the impacts are in Washington waters. 24% expected to be from tribal fisheries, 6% from non-treaty commerical fisheries, and 42% from recreationl fisheries (infromation from the North of Falcon process). Most of these impacts are the result of incidental impacts from fisheries directed towards stocks other than wild chinook; examples coho, hatchery chinook (Samish river, blackmouth Tulalip bay etc), sockeye etc. The impacts on other system stocks will differ but it is clear that much more than commerical season are considered and any additional reduction of impacts will continue to involve recreational fisheries.

Ramon and Washington Trout are correct in that wild chinook harvest management in the past has a very poor track record. Returning to the Snohomish example the escapement goal (5,250 adults) for wild spawning chinook prior to 1998 was last met in 1980, that is 17 consective years without meeting the escapement goal. Beginning in the early 1990s managment began moving from past management practies to the kind being put forth in the RMP. The escapement goal has been exceeded 3 or the last 4 years with the average escapement for those 4 years being being 120% of the goal. At least on the Snohomish managment appears to be moving towards what Ramon wants; that is "allow chinook escapement to significiantly exceed existing goals for at least two chinook generations...". The question becomes are we comfortable the potential risks in the plan to allow the time needed to see if the populations will responded as hoped. Always our decisions come down to some risk assessments.

It is true that not all populations have responded as well as the Snohomish which gives rise to the question - "why"? In at least some cases (for exmple the Stillaguamish system) the latest information seems to indiate that the quality of freshwater habitats have decline to such a degree that it is no longer capable of supporting the populations of even 25 years ago.

In the 1960s, 70s and early 1980s expliotation rates on Snohomish chinook was typcially in the 60 to 80% range. As shown above that has been reduced to 1/3 of that level. Has any other of the Hs; hatchery, habitat, or hydro reduced their impacts at anything comparable to that of harvesters? While it makes sense to reduce or end harvest first (the benefits are realized almost immediately while it may take decades to realize the pay off changes in say the habitat arena) with out changes in the other Hs the sacrifaces in harvest will be meaningless.

A final point; the RMP did not reduce escapement goals on the Puget Sound systems. Virtually all the escapement goals remain the same. What is new is something called "low bundance threshold" levels. These thresholds come into play when expected escapements (likely casued by extremely poor survial conditions such as that caused by severe flooding)are at or below that level the allowable expliotation in the plan would be reduce to an even lower level as identified in what was called appendix C of the management plan.

The RMP is a complex document that isn't easy to summarize in a forum such as this. If any of you are interested in the details I encourage you to contact one of the co-managers or NMFS for a copy of the plan.

Tight lines
Smalma

Smalma-- escapement goal before 1998 was 5250, goal not meet since 1980. Is the escapement goal lower after 1998 allowing the stocks to exceed the goal but perhaps have less fish in the river?

Jerry -
Good question but as I pointed out the goals in the RMP have remained unchanged and for the Snohomish the goal remains at 5,250. The escapements were:
1998 - - 6,304
1999 - - 4,799
2000 - - 6,092
2001 - - 8,161

Tight lines
Smalma

Jim, are you saying that if you FEEL something strong enough, it's true?

People can believe in something very strongly, and still be quite wrong. A good measure of a man is what he does when he is presented with facts that indicate that his opinion is incorrect. When that happens to me, and it definitely does, I change my mind. What do you do?