Wild Salmonid Policy

STATE OF WASHINGTON April 1997 WildWild SalmonidSalmonid PolicyPolicy DraftDraft EnvironmentalEnvironmental ImpactImpact StatementStatement April 15, 1997 Dear Reviewer: We take pride in introducing, on behalf of our resource client — wild salmonids — this Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a Wild Salmonid Policy. We view this as an important step in the vigorous pursuit of healthy habitat conditions and wild salmonid fish populations. Considerable work remains to be done on the policy and we need your help. This is a draft. We have identified and supported an agency recommended alternative but are not irretrievably wedded to its specific elements. Our minds remain open to more innovative approaches. However, we do feel strongly that the deliberate overfishing of wild Pacific salmon populations must come to an end. While we concede relative inflexibility on this one point, better ways to get the job done may well come, via this process, from outside the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Get involved. Attend one of the 10 public meetings scheduled throughout the state. Your interest in the resource is certainly appreciated. Your involvement in conservation of one of the Northwest’s most unique resources is essential for future generations. Sincerely, Bern Shanks, Ph.D. Director BS:SW:lsm STATE OF WASHINGTON April 1997 WildWild SalmonidSalmonid PolicyPolicy DraftDraft EnvironmentalEnvironmental ImpactImpact StatementStatement PreferredPreferred AlternativeAlternative JustificationJustification StatementStatement Recommended Alternative Justification Statement Wild Salmonid Policy - Draft Environmental Impact Statement Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife 1997 We conducted an examination of our ancestor agencies (WDW, WDF) in attempting to understand how we had become so integral a part of an acknowledged resource management failure. The resource management case histories of steelhead, sea-run cutthroat and resident trout evolved to relatively successful levels in the 1980s and these trends have carried over into the 1990s. Hatchery fish management zones never became a part of steelhead management because we correctly perceived the viable alternative of marking all hatchery fish. The ability of treaty Indian tribes to take their rightful share of the resource was not impaired by this change. Even the bull trout/Dolly Varden populations have shown improvements recently when managed under a strict conservation ethic. The failure in resource management can be traced to Pacific salmon but even here the recent case histories of chum, pink and sockeye salmon show relative degrees of success. Management failure is deeply rooted in our chinook and coho salmon resources, the two species with huge hatchery programs and heavy fishery interceptions by other states and Canada. It would be easy to join the popular 1990s trend of hatchery bashing, but the failure lies squarely in our inability to manage the mixtures of hatchery and wild fish. We did not have the foresight to perceive the viable alternative of marking all hatchery fish during a time frame when the change would have been relatively easy to implement. Our federal government negotiated a poor treaty with Canada, based on our advice. We wanted it too badly. We knew from their annual management plans that the Canadians were willing to fish some of their own wild chinook and coho populations to extinction in order to get the type of treaty they wanted. We supported continued high Canadian catches of chinook and coho salmon despite warnings. Analysis at the time showed that the negotiated levels of catches could not be supported on a sustainable basis by the mixture of Washington fish and obviously depleted Canadian runs. We failed to realize that numerical catch limitations on Canadian and Alaskan fisheries also become catch guarantees to the same fishers. The normal year-to-year fluctuations in surplus production become accentuated in amplitude by the time Washington stocks become available for potential harvest by our own fisheries. The treaty should have been based upon percentage shares of annual surplus production. We now know that achieving success in salmonid resource management will require major changes, especially for chinook and coho. We also know that to be successful overall, we will have to succeed in both fish habitat management and fish population management. We fully Draft April 3, 1997 1 realize our lack of substantial authority in the first area. We attempted to identify the most critical elements which were mandatory for eventual success. Such elements simply have no viable compromise or fall-back positions. We believe that our recommended alternative best describes the recipe for success. No one in the agency wants to see their names added to the long list of personnel associated with resource management failures. The Resource is Our Client The documented case histories of fish resource management successes throughout the world share one common denominator. The people involved clearly recognized that the resource was their client. Alaskan salmon management has been an acknowledged success story under state management authority. Their primary objective is simple and the same for every fish population - put adequate numbers of viable wild fish on the spawning grounds. It is no coincidence that the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has by far the best record of resource stewardship among all the regional councils. The basic conservation ethic established in managing foreign fisheries still carries over in today’s domestic fishery management. These types of efforts also produce the best possible results for users of the fish resources. Having the resource as a manager’s client is clearly in their best long-term interest. When we examined case histories of management failures, there was also one common denominator. In each case, the officials responsible perceived something other than the resource to be their client. The federal government’s classic failure of salmon management in Alaska was rooted in their capture by the fish processing industry. Potential production losses to this same group were of staggering proportions. In the Atlantic coast groundfish fishery, officials were far too anxious to immediately accommodate domestic fishermen recently freed from foreign competition pressures. The die was cast. The fish community changes now observed may well be irreversible. The less desirable species that were not heavily fished now dominate the ecosystem’s biomass. The fishing industry may never quit paying for their unwarranted client status. In our self-examination, we were forced to concede that the resource was not always our client in a myriad of past actions. In WDF, fisheries were often allowed to continue when we could not prove to someone’s satisfaction that unwise use of the resource was occurring. We habitually cited benefits to certain user groups as reasons for our actions. For chinook and coho salmon, we have now failed to provide sustainable surplus fish production to these same groups. We have failed to actively enforce long-standing fish passage and screening laws due to a perceived fear that the legislature would repeal the laws and/or eliminate our own budgets for these same services. In WDW, we often hypothesized that such actions would anger landowners. In retaliation, they would bar access to fishers/hunters and license sales would plummet. One example, the ever growing list of stream miles blocked to fish access by culverts (now nearly 3,000 miles), is ample testimony to the folly of our past actions. Draft April 3, 1997 2 We know that in order to be successful, the resource must be our exclusive client. Considerations such as loss of regulatory authority or budgets can no longer be factored into resource management decisions. We must also escape from our reactive behavior toward perceived threats such as the Endangered Species Act. Turf protection is not a character trait associated with competent natural resource managers. We can best serve future uses of salmonid fish populations - consumptive and non-consumptive - by having the resource as our client. Eliminate Hatchery Fish Management Zones Many wild chinook and coho salmon populations carry the nomenclature tag of “secondary protection.” What this means in plain language is deliberate, planned overfishing designed to harvest co-mingled hatchery fish. The logical end point is genetic extinction of wild fish - the same result already achieved in fact for lower Columbia River coho salmon. In their case, heavy overfishing began in the early 1960s. Most of the other hatchery fish management zones in the state only date back to the mid- to late 1970s. The so-called secondary protection is in fact non-existent in many cases or confined to fishing areas with only marginal attractiveness. Either way, nothing is in place to stop the inexorable push toward wild population extinction. Agency employees cannot pursue successful fish habitat management in these same areas without compromising their professional integrity. Why should anyone incur tangible costs for protection of salmon habitat when fish population managers are not going to deliver viable wild fish to the same habitat? We simply cannot afford to continue this transient practice of stop-gap origin that has outlived its usefulness and, on balance, now presents a preponderance of negatives. Manage Hatchery Fish as Separate Species It should be obvious to even the most casual observer that we cannot successfully manage any mixture of hatchery and wild salmonids as if they were a single homogeneous fish population. They really need to be managed by the same proven principles that you would use to manage separate species of fish. Steelhead and sea-run cutthroat have a better contemporary record of resource condition for one main reason - all hatchery-origin fish are marked by removal of their adipose fins. We must be able to clearly identify wild fish everywhere we observe them - on the spawning grounds, in catches, at hatchery racks, in fishways, and in juvenile populations. The steelhead/sea-run cutthroat prescription is the same one needed for chinook and coho salmon.

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