Fish and wildlife Artificial Production Archive July 1999 meeting

Attachment 1. Draft Attachments of Policy Document

I. Attachment 1: Artificial Production Programs and Policy Developments in the Columbia River Basin

II. Attachment 2: Final Report of the Science Review Team (not included at this time)

III. Attachment 3: Historical Overview of Hatchery Programs and Policies as described by Hatchery Management Personnel

IV. Attachment 4: Artificial Production Programs in the Columbia River Basin

V. Attachment 5: Bibliography (not included at this time)

Attachment 1 - Artificial Production Programs and
Policy Developments in the Columbia River

Attachment 1 contains a description of the major anadromous and resident fish artificial production programs in the Columbia basin, not only the federally funded programs but also separate hatchery programs associated with FERC-licensed dams and state fish and wildlife agencies. Following the narrative description will be a table listing the major programs and facilities and certain relevant information about these programs and facilities (agency, funding source, type of fish, adult collection and holding/spawning sites, and juvenile incubation, rearing, acclimation and release sites). This attachment also contains a description of the extensive scientific and policy developments concerning artificial production that the basin has seen since the 1980s, as well as a look forward to the planning and implementation that can be vehicles for further production policy reform.

Federal and non-federal artificial production programs in the Columbia River Basin

The program descriptions are compiled from a number of sources. Another recent (and relatively comprehensive) compilation of information about production programs and facilities in the basin is the recent Biological Opinion on artificial production in the Columbia basin produced by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Biological Assessments produced by the various agencies in preparation for the Biological Opinion. For a list of relevant documents concerning artificial production in the Columbia basin, see the bibliography in Attachment 3.

Federally funded anadromous fish production programs

Mitchell Act hatcheries. Twenty-five hatchery facilities funded by Congress under the Mitchell Act (also known as the Columbia River Fishery Development Program) are the heart of federally funded artificial production in the basin. Begun in the 1930s and 40s, and pursued ever since without a change in the basic legal authorization, the Mitchell Act called for the "conservation of the fishery resources of the Columbia River" through "one or more salmon cultural stations" and by other means. The majority of the funds spent under the Mitchell Act have been used to mitigate for the salmon and steelhead losses that occurred throughout the river by developing hatchery production in the lower Columbia. Mitchell Act facilities are largely concentrated in the lower Columbia below Bonneville Dam (16 facilities) or in the Bonneville Dam pool area (7 facilities). Two facilities are located in the mid-Columbia area upstream of the confluence with the Snake River. The Mitchell Act program is administered by the National Marine Fisheries Service, although the facilities are primarily managed and operated by cooperating agencies, primarily the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Releases from Mitchell Act facilities represent a large portion of all smolts released in the Columbia River Basin — estimated at one time to be approximately three-quarters of the total numbers produced and more than one-half of the total weight of all Columbia River Basin hatchery releases. The proportion of Mitchell Act releases to total basin releases is no longer quite that large, although Mitchell Act production is still far higher than all other programs — proposed release plans for 1999 show Mitchell Act releases of approximately 60 million anadromous juveniles out of a total of 142.5 million projected for the basin as a whole, or 42 percent. Of those 60 million juveniles, more than half will be fall chinook, with the rest spring chinook, coho, steelhead, chum and sea-run cutthroat trout. Release of 60 million represent a reduction over the last decade of Mitchell Act production, which once ranged as high as approximately 100 million juveniles per year. Cutbacks in Congressional appropriations have been largely responsible for the reduction in total production.

Production to preserve lower-river and ocean harvest opportunities has been the main focus of the Mitchell Act program, a source of bitterness to some of the lower river treaty tribes, whose usual and accustomed fishing sites lie above Bonneville Dam. The effort in the 1980s and 1990s to develop and fund new production programs above Bonneville Dam as part of the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program has been, in large part, an effort on the part of the tribes and their state co-managers to address the fact that the Mitchell Act program provided mitigation in the lower river for impacts that affected people in the upper river as well. Also, as a result of production agreements negotiated as part of the U.S. v. Oregon harvest litigation and embodied in the Columbia River Fish Management Plan, the federal, state and tribal governments have cooperated in recent years in limited movements of Mitchell Act fish upriver for release, such as the release of fall chinook and coho from Mitchell Act facilities in the Yakima River.

Mitchell Act funding comes from Congressional appropriations without reimbursement by Bonneville. Funding for some of the efforts to re-program Mitchell Act releases upriver have made their way into the fish and wildlife projects funded by Bonneville to implement the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. Mitchell Act facilities abandoned in recent years due to reductions in Congressional appropriations have also found their way into the Council’s Program, such as the adaptation of the Gnat Creek hatchery by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to produce fish for a terminal fisheries project in Youngs Bay under the Council’s program.

In the recent Biological Opinion issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Fisheries Service concluded that hatchery operations in the lower river, including the operations of Mitchell Act facilities, are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed lower Columbia River steelhead. The Biological Opinion identified two main problems that led to this conclusion — releases of hatchery steelhead into natural production areas that result in predation and competition with listed steelhead juveniles and, especially, the continued use of non-endemic steelhead stocks in the production facilities in the lower river, which has the potential to affect listed steelhead through genetic introgression. The Fisheries Service identified a set of reasonable and prudent alternatives to avoid jeopardy (and additional conservation recommendations), focused primarily on transitions to locally-adapted stocks, an end to releases of non-endemic stocks, management of hatchery adult stray rates to less than 5 percent of the annual natural population size, and restrictions on the size of juvenile releases to minimize predation and competition.

At the same time the Fisheries Service issued the Biological Opinion, it also decided to add to the endangered species list lower Columbia chinook and upper Willamette spring chinook and steelhead. The Fisheries Service will thus have to revise its Biological Opinion on the production programs to take into account the effects on these newly listed fish.

For a more detailed discussion of current Mitchell Act production numbers and plans, see the Biological Assessment for Mitchell Act Operations (March 15, 1999), prepared by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Columbia River Fisheries Development Program Office.

Grand Coulee mitigation — Leavenworth complex. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation completed construction of Grand Coulee Dam in 1941, blocking the migration of salmon beyond that point on the mainstem of the Columbia River. In mitigation of the losses, the Bureau implemented a plan developed by the Washington fishery agency to trap adult salmon at Rock Island Dam on the mid-Columbia and transport them to a hatchery constructed on the Wenatchee River at Leavenworth for artificial propagation, the smolts to be planted in the Wenatchee, Methow, Entiat and Okanogan rivers. The Entiat and Winthrop hatchery facilities, on the Entiat and Methow rivers, are satellite facilities of the Leavenworth Hatchery. The Fish and Wildlife Service operates the Leavenworth complex, funded through Bureau appropriations and reimbursed by Bonneville. Production plans in 1999 call for releases of more than 2 million spring chinook, as well as 100,000 summer steelhead from the Winthrop hatchery.

The Biological Opinion recently released by the National Marine Fisheries Service analyzed the effects of Leavenworth complex production on listed upper Columbia steelhead. The recent listing of Two million spring Adult returns resulting from this production program have been a fraction of the losses caused by Grand Coulee. In addition, chinook and steelhead in the mid-Columbia region are now listed or proposed for listing.

John Day Dam mitigation. Congress authorized construction of the John Day Dam as part of the Flood Control Act of 1950. Construction and operation of the dam resulted in the loss of spawning grounds for what was then estimated as 30,000 adult fall chinook salmon. Mitigation has been provided by the Bonneville Fish Hatchery in Oregon below Bonneville Dam in Oregon, under a cooperative agreement between the Corps and the state of Oregon, and by the Spring Creek National Fish Hatchery in the Bonneville Dam pool area in Washington. Both wereBonneville Fish Hatchery was originally built in 1909 by the State of Oregon and has undergone major renovations funded by the Mitchell Act, John Day Mittigation and the state of Oregon. The US Army Corps of Engineers, under John Day Mitigation, funds 45 percent of the operation and maintenance of the Bonneville Hatchery and Mitchell Act funds 55 percent. The Spring Creek Hatchery was originally a Mitchell Act hatchery which has also been renovated and modernized. The Corps and Mitchell Act each fund 50 percent of the operation and maintenacne of the Spring Creek Hatchery(and still partly are) Mitchell Act hatcheries, with current funding split between the Corps of Engineers and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Out of appropriations, the Corps pays 45 percent of the operation and maintenance costs of the Bonneville hatchery and 50 percent of the operation and maintenance costs of Spring Creek, most of which is reimbursed by Bonneville. Funding provided through Mitchell Act appropriations and administered by the Fisheries Service pays for the balance of the operation and maintenance of both facilities.

Spring Creek Hatchery is a huge producer of fall chinook, with a production goal of 15 million tule fall chinook and 1999 projected releases of 10.7 million. The Bonneville Hatchery produces fall chinook, spring chinook, coho, and winter and summer steelhead for release locally and in other areas (e.g., fall chinook for the Umatilla River program and spring chinook of the Deschutes stock for release in the West Fork Hood Riverand steelhead for the Clackamas River program). The Bonneville facility is also used as part of the Grande Ronde River endemic spring chinook captive broodstock program, described briefly below.

Lower Snake River Compensation Plan. In the Water Resources Development Act of 1976, Congress authorized funding for a program to mitigate for fish and wildlife losses caused by construction and operation of the four lower Snake River hydroelectric projects (Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Ice Harbor dams), known as the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan (LSRCP). The Corps of Engineers built ten hatcheries and sixteen satellite facilities for adult trapping and juvenile acclimation facilities between 1980 and 1998 on or for the lower Snake, Salmon, Clearwater, Walla Walla, Grande Ronde, Imnaha, Tucannon, Touchet and Walla Walla subbasins, at a cost over $170 million via Congressional appropriations later reimbursed by Bonneville. (Kooskia Hatchery on the Clearwater, which first began operations in 1969, is not technically part of the LSRCP, but it is operated by the Fish and Wildlife Service as a satellite of Dworshak Hatchery spring chinook production under the LSRCP.)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funds and generally administers the operation, maintenance and evaluation of LSRCP hatcheries and related facilities, using Congressional appropriations also reimbursed by Bonneville. Hatcheries and satellite facilities are operated by the Fish and Wildlife Service and by cooperating agencies, primarily the three state agencies, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Three recently completed fall chinook facilities on the Snake and Clearwater rivers (Pittsburg Landing, Big Canyon, Capt. John’s Rapids), although part of the LSRCP program, have operations and evaluation costs directly funded by Bonneville under the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. All three facilities are operated by the Nez Perce Tribe The new Captain John Rapids facility is operated by the Nez Perce Tribe in conjunction with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Shoshone-Bannock Tribes also participate as cooperators in operation and management decisions, and all cooperators except the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes receive funds to conduct monitoring and evaluation studies.

The purpose of the LSRCP has been to replace lost salmon, steelhead and trout fishing opportunities, with management goals focused on replacing the loss of returning adult steelhead and salmon, rather than on releasing a given number of smolts. The adult return goals have been based on estimates of salmon and steelhead adult returns to the Snake River basin in the years prior to the construction of the four lower Snake River dams — adult returns of 18,300 fall chinook, 58,700 spring and summer chinook, and 55,100 steelhead to and above the area of the dams. The production release goals for spring, summer and fall chinook and steelhead (as well as rainbow trout) exceed 20 million are in the range of 10-15 million juveniles per year, although broodstock collection problems and other factor limit the ability to meet these goals. Production estimates for 1999 are closer to 10 million juveniles. No sockeye or coho are produced under the LSRCP authorizing legislation, even though these fish existed in the river and its tributaries prior to construction of the dams.

With the possible exception of fall chinook and steelhead targets in the lower Snake mainstem in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, Steelhead targets have been met LSRCP production has not come close to meeting the adult return objectives. Meanwhile, naturally spawning salmon and steelhead runs in the Snake have declined to the point of endangered species listings. As an indication of the decline, one of the key issues for the LSRCP is whether these facilities can be transformed to be of use in supplementation efforts to rebuild naturally-spawning populations or even in conservation/captive propagation efforts to conserve wild populations threatened with extinction while the productivity limitations are dealt with.

In the recent Biological Opinion issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Fisheries Service concluded that hatchery operations in the Snake River, including LSRCP operations, are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed Snake River spring/summer chinook, fall chinook or sockeye. The Fisheries Service did conclude, however, the production was likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed lower Columbia River steelhead. The problems identified were the same as in the lower Columbia — release strategies for hatchery steelhead that result in predation and competition with listed steelhead juveniles and, especially, the continued use of non-endemic steelhead stocks in the production facilities, which has the potential to affect listed steelhead through genetic introgression. The reasonable and prudent alternatives identified to avoid jeopardy were also similar (as were relevant conservation recommendations) — transitions to locally-adapted stocks, an end to releases of non-endemic stocks, management of hatchery adult stray rates to less than 5 percent of the annual natural population size, restrictions on the size of juvenile releases and other strategies to minimize predation and competition. The same concerns about non-endemic stocks, stray rates and release strategies were present with regard to impacts on listed spring/summer and fall chinook, but the Fisheries Service concluded that recent developments to address these concerns made a jeopardy finding unnecessary.

For excellent details on the status of the LSRCP program, see the publication of the papers from the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan Status Review Symposium (February 3-5, 1998), hosted by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Service’s Lower Snake River Compensation Plan Program: Summary for the Independent Science Review Panel (January 1999).

Dworshak Dam mitigation. Separate from the LSRCP is a production program to mitigate for steelhead and resident trout losses caused by the construction of Dworshak Dam, blocking the North Fork Clearwater River in Idaho. For this purpose, the Corps of Engineers funded the construction of the Dworshak National Fish Hatchery and the USFWS receives appropriations funds via the Corps to operate the facility, all reimbursed by Bonneville. (The Dworshak hatchery also produces spring chinook as part of the LSRCP). The primary goal of fishery mitigation at Dworshak has been to preserve artificially the North Fork steelhead run, as the dam completely blocked the North Fork, a mitigation goal set at returning 20,000 adult steelhead to the Clearwater River. Production goals are to release approximately 1.2 million smolts at the hatchery and another 1.1 million in Clearwater tributaries., although 1999 production plans are limited to the release of 1.05 million steelhead smolts. Adult steelhead returns to the hatchery have ranged from 1,988 to 43,942 since 1972, and the goal of 20,000 fish has been attained in eight of 25 years of operation. Dworshak steelhead operations were included in the Snake River steelhead production operations that the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded were likely to jeopardize continued existence of the listed Snake River steelhead. However, the Clearwater B-steelhead reared at Dworshak NFH are included in the steelhead ESU under ESA but are classified as non-essential for recovery. This classification is because of the North Fork Clearwater habitat of the B-steelhead is no longer available as a result of the construction of Dworshak Dam and the hatchery has maintained an adequate number to maintain gene pool.

Warm Springs National Fish Hatchery. Authorized in 1966 and operational by 1978, the Warm Springs hatchery is located on the Warm Springs River in Oregon and funded and operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (This is one of the few federally funded anadromous production facilities in the basin outside of the Mitchell Act facilities that are not directly or by reimbursement funded by Bonneville.) The hatchery, projected in 1999 to release 750,000 spring chinook into the Warm Springs River, has suffered from an inadequate water supply and fish health problems.

Willamette River mitigation. Congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to build a number of projects on tributaries of the Willamette, blocking or causing serious damage to anadromous and resident fish runs. These include Cougar and Blue River dams on the McKenzie River, Detroit and Big Cliff dams on the North Santiam River, Green Peter and Foster Dams on the South Santiam, and Lookout Point and Dexter Dams on the Middle Fork of the Willamette. Anadromous fish mitigation is provided by the Leaburg, McKenzie, Marion Forks, South Santiam, and Willamette hatcheries, producing over around 5 million spring chinook and steelhead smolts for release at various sites in the Willamette Basin. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife operates the hatcheriesunder a cooperative agreement with the Corps and ; the Corps provides most a majority of the funding while the state of Oregon also provides a substantial portion of the funds. The Corps funded portion is reimbursed by the Bonneville Power Administration. , with reimbursement by Bonneville.

The Biological Opinion recently released by the National Marine Fisheries Service did not implicate these Willamette mitigation hatcheries in the jeopardy conclusion on lower Columbia steelhead. However, the Fisheries Service just listed the wild spring chinook and steelhead runs in the Willamette, as well as lower Columbia chinook, and the Biological Opinion will have to be revised to analyze the effects of hatchery production in the Willamette on these runs.

Northwest Power Act/Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. The most recent attempt to adapt artificial production techniques to the changing needs in the basin has been through the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. The Northwest Power Act requires the Council to develop a Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program consisting of measures to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the construction, operation and management of hydroelectric facilities in the basin. The basin’s tribes and state fish and wildlife agencies, often acting in various combinations of co-managers, have used the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program to provide mitigation for hydropower effects in part by developing and obtaining funding for new artificial production programs in the subbasins above Bonneville Dam, to increase harvest opportunities and as part of an experimental attempt to supplement naturally spawning populations. The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program conceives of this effort as a coordinated habitat restoration/production program, in which artificial production efforts are supposed to be tied to habitat improvements to increase natural production capacity that can be seeded from the artificial production facilities. All Council Program projects are funded by Bonneville. These efforts have included(Lee Hillwig has comments pertaining to this paragraph).:

Hood River Production Project — The Hood River production project is a joint program of the Warm Springs Tribe and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to rebuild spring chinook and steelhead populations in the Hood River through hatchery and acclimation facilities on the Hood River and through use of production facilities already developed in the Deschutes River. Release projected for 1999 include 125,000 spring chinook, 30,000 summer steelhead and 60,000 winter steelhead.

Yakima/Klickitat Fisheries Project — This is a Yakama Indian Nation/Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife project whose main goal is to rebuild salmon runs in the Yakima River, which dropped from historic levels estimated as high as 900,000 adult fish per year to fewer than 5,000, as well as to increase populations in the Klickitat and other streams important to the Yakama Indian Nation. The main focus has been the multi-million dollar Cle Elum Supplementation and Research Facility and associated acclimation facilities, intended to be a large-scale test of spring chinook supplementation, with projected releases of spring chinook juveniles of up to 810,000. The National Marine Fisheries Service produced a Biological Opinion in 1996 on proposed 1997-2001 Cle Elum spring chinook operations. The Yakama Nation has also begun or is planning fall chinook and coho production in the Yakima, Klickitat and other streams, in part using fish from Mitchell Act hatcheries. Significant funding for habitat work in the Yakima associated with the supplementation effort has also come from the Council’s Program and other sources.

Umatilla Hatchery complex — Hatchery propagation in the Umatilla River is funded under the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program is part of a coordinated habitat restoration/flow improvement/production effort to restore spring chinook, fall chinook, coho salmon and summer steelhead populations in the Umatilla subbasin. Salmon runs in the Umatilla have been gone since as far back as 1920, and the steelhead were at very low numbers when the program began. The Umatilla Hatchery and six satellite facilities provide juvenile acclimation/release and adult holding/spawning. ODFW operates the hatchery, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation operate the satellite facilities. Additional facilities are proposed, including a juvenile coho and fall chinook acclimation/release facility, and a hatchery on the South Fork Walla Walla River that would, in part, produce spring chinook smolts for release at satellite facilities in the Umatilla subbasin. Projected production for 1999 includes 810,000 spring chinook, 3.162 million fall chinook, 1.5 million coho, and 150,000 steelhead.

Northeast Oregon Production Facilities, Grande Ronde and Imnaha subbasins — As part of what is called the Northeast Oregon Hatchery (NEOH) program, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Umatilla Tribes, and the Nez Perce Tribes have been planning and implementing supplementation programs for spring chinook and steelhead in the Grande Ronde and Imnaha subbasins, also the scene of Lower Snake River Compensation Plan production. The Grande Ronde spring chinook runs declined so severely that the Grande Ronde production initiative project has transformed into a captive propagation effort — facilities at the Bonneville Hatchery and elsewhere have been constructed or adapted so that spring chinook can be reared in captivity for later release into the Grand Ronde basins. The Grande Ronde has also been a Model Watershed under the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, the scene of significant funding for watershed planning and rehabilitation activities to accompany natural and artificial production efforts.

Northeast Oregon Production Facilities, Walla Walla River — Planning is under way to develop production and acclimation facilities to be used to help restore extirpated spring chinook and enhance the depressed steelhead populations in the Walla Walla, an effort led by the Umatilla Tribes, in conjunction with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The project in concept also includes stream habitat/watershed enhancement, structural fish passage improvement and enhanced instream flow.

Salmon River supplementation — The Council’s Program funds a number of supplementation studies and activities by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and the Fish and Wildlife Service to evaluate whether artificial production can be used to boost the rapidly declining, listed spring/summer chinook and steelhead populations in the Salmon basin. Most of the projects are small-scale research, monitoring and evaluation efforts, but this category includes plans to fund the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, the subject of a 1998 Biological Opinion from the National Marine Fisheries Service. The supplementation efforts in the Salmon overlap with the LSRCP production, and as the LSRCP facilities and efforts begin to transform in part in the direction of supplementation and conservation, some of the LSRCP costs and activities are coming into the Council’s Program itself. And as in the Grande Ronde, in part the effort has transformed into a conservation/captive propagation program, in which spring chinook are or will be reared in captivity for later release into the Salmon basin. The Salmon is also the basin where, in the summer of 1991, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Idaho Fish and Game, the National Marine Fisheries Service and others initiated an emergency captive broodstock program to try to prevent Snake River sockeye in Redfish Lake from extinction.

Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery/Clearwater River — The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program calls for the Nez Perce Tribe to develop a number of small-scale production facilities under the umbrella of a single program for fall and spring chinook supplementation in the Clearwater River. The multi-million dollar project is in the final design stage and is nearly ready for review and approval as to whether it will shift into construction and production. The Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery as planned will actually consist of two central incubation and rearing facilities, six satellite rearing facilities, and 11 temporary weir sites. Maximum production goals are 768,000 spring chinook and nearly 3 million fall chinook juveniles, although initial production will be far below the maximum. The National Marine Fisheries Service completed a Biological Opinion in 1997 for Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery operations in 1998-2002. The Nez Perce Tribe is also working on a project to restore coho to the Clearwater, with initial funding provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the release of approximately 1 million coho juveniles, taken from lower Columbia hatcheries and reared at existing facilities in the Clearwater. The Clearwater River has also been a focus watershed for habitat improvements under the Council’s Program, which the artificial production programs are intended to be linked.

Select Area Fisheries Evaluations (SAFE) — This is terminal fisheries project in the lower Columbia River (Youngs Bay and other sites) included in the Council’s Program, funded by Bonneville and operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to produce fall chinook, coho and spring chinook. Projected releases in 1999 total nearly 3 million juveniles. The National Marine Fisheries Service produced a Biological Opinion on the SAFE program in 1998.

Federally funded resident fish production. Many of the federal programs have significant resident fish production components as well, including the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan, Dworshak hatchery mitigation, Willamette River mitigation, and especially the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. Focused both on rivers affected by hydropower operations and on the reservoirs created by dam construction, these programs include the production of various types of trout for the purpose of supporting fisheries and, in some cases, to try to supplement naturally spawning production; kokanee production efforts; bass production in some reservoirs; investigations throughout the basin about using artificial production techniques to help preserve and rebuild white sturgeon populations, and more. Here too we find questions about the efficacy of this production, such as raised by the kokanee production efforts in Flathead Lake and Lake Pend Oreille, and significant concerns about impacts of artificial production and the introduction of non-native species on native stocks, including listed species such as bull trout.

Examples of these resident fish production programs include:

Colville Tribal Fish Hatchery. The Colville Tribal Fish Hatchery Project involves the production of 22,679-kg (50,000 lbs.) of resident fish that include brook trout, rainbow trout and lahontan cutthroat trout. All fish are released into reservation waters, including boundary waters in an effort to provide a successful subsistence/recreational fishery for Colville Tribal members as well as a successful non-member sport fishery as partial mitigation for anadromous fish losses above Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee Dams.

Lake Roosevelt Rainbow Trout Net Pens. The Lake Roosevelt Rainbow Trout Net Pens Project enhances the Lake Roosevelt fishery by rearing up to 500,000 Rainbow Trout annually. The effort uses up to 42 volunteers to build, maintain and operate 34 net pens on the reservoir. The goal is to provide up to 190,000 harvested adult rainbow trout annually. This program is monitored by the Lake Roosevelt monitors and strategies are worked out with the Lake Roosevelt Hatchery Technical Committee. The Lake Roosevelt Trout Net Pens Project is part of the Spokane Tribal Hatchery. The Lake Roosevelt Rainbow Trout Net Pen Project in operated in conjunction with the Spokane Tribal Hatchery, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Sherman Creek Hatchery, and the management recommendations from the Lake Roosevelt Monitoring/Data Collection Program

Kootenai River White Sturgeon and Conservation Aquaculture Study. An adaptive management effort to use artificial production techniques to assist in the recovery of the ESA listed Kootenai River white sturgeon.

Hatcheries associated with FERC-licensed hydropower projects. Added to the federally funded production programs must be the hatcheries producing millions more fish that are funded by private and public utilities as mitigation for the impacts of their FERC-licensed dams. While these facilities are funded by the utilities, with minor exceptions they are all operated by state fish and wildlife agencies. A partial list includes production facilities funded by:

• Idaho Power Company (the Oxbow, Rapid River, Niagara Springs and Pahsimeroi hatchery complexes in the Snake and its Salmon River tributary, operated by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and producing spring and fall chinook and steelhead, mitigating for the impact of Hells Canyon Complex);
• PacifiCorp (Lewis and Speelyai hatcheries produce spring chinook and coho salmon and the Merwin Hatchery produces steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout and rainbow trout, mitigating for Merwin Dam, all operated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife);
• Portland General Electric (helps fund production of spring chinook and steelhead at the Clackamas Hatchery in mitigation for the Little Sandy Dam and Clackamas River projects and spring chinook and steelhead at the Round Butte Hatchery in mitigation for the Round Butte and Pelton projects on the Deschutes River. The City of Portland and NMFS and state of Oregon also fund fish production at the Clackamas Hatchery.) Clackamas Hatchery produces spring chinook and steelhead in mitigation for Bull Run and Clackamas projects; spring chinook and steelhead are produced at Round Butte Hatchery in the Deschutes to mitigate for the Round Butte and Pelton projects, operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife);
• Washington Water Power (helped to fund the Cabinet Gorge Kokanee Hatchery, producing kokanee for Lake Pend Oreille, and funds rainbow trout stocking in the Spokane River in mitigation for its Spokane project);
• Douglas County PUD (hatchery and spawning channel facilityies producing steelhead, spring chinook, and sockeye in the mid-Columbia region and in the Methow tributary, for Wells Dam mitigation);
• Chelan County PUD (hatchery production of coho, yearling chinook and steelhead as Rocky Reach Dam mitigation, and kokanee production as Lake Chelan project mitigation);
• Grant County PUD (Priest Rapids Hatchery and spawning channel production of fall chinook as mitigation for Priest Rapids and Wanapum dams);
• City of Portland (helps fund production of spring chinook and steelhead at the Clackamas Hatchery, to mitigate for its Bull Run projects. The Clackamas Hatchery is also funded by PGE, NMFS and the state of Oregon.);
• Cowlitz County PUD (sharing the cost of some of the PacifiCorp production, in mitigation of North Fork Lewis River project);
• Tacoma Public Utilities (funding hatchery producing spring and fall chinook, coho, steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout and resident trout, in mitigation for Mayfield and Mossyrock dams on the lower Cowlitz River).

Because of the potential these programs have to adversely affect listed fish populations, the National Marine Fisheries Service analyzed them in its recent Biological Opinion (as part of the non-federal production activities by the state fish and wildlife agencies), implicated certain of these programs in the steelhead jeopardy findings, prescribed conditions on incidental take statements to protect listed steelhead and chinook populations, and suggested additional conservation recommendations.

Production facilities operated by state fish and wildlife agencies that are not federally financed or associated with FERC-licensed project mitigation. The state fish and wildlife agencies operate many of the federally financed production facilities, under all the programs (Mitchell Act, Lower Snake River Compensation Plan, Corps’ mitigation hatcheries, Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program). They also operate most of the production facilities associated with FERC-licensed projects. But the state agencies also operate hatcheries in the basin that are not federally funded or linked to FERC-licensed projects, projects funded by the states themselves and developed primarily address declining fisheries. As with the FERC-licensed hatcheries, because of the potential these programs have to adversely affect listed fish populations, the National Marine Fisheries Service analyzed them in its recent Biological Opinion, implicated some of these programs in the steelhead jeopardy findings, prescribed conditions on incidental take statements to protect steelhead and chinook populations, and suggested additional conservation recommendations.

Examples of these types of facilities and programs include three funded by the State of Oregon and operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife:

• Roaring River Hatchery (producing summer steelhead for release into the Molalla and North Santiam Rriver tributaries of the Willamette, using non-endemic stock);
• Oak Springs Hatchery (steelhead and resident trout production at a facility on the Deschutes River, producing various stocks for release in the Clackamas, Hood, Santiam, Sandy and other rivers — a hatchery implicated in the problems associated with the use of non-endemic steelhead stocks that pass into natural production areas and with the release of juvenile hatchery steelhead that compete with listed steelhead, but also in the forefront of steelhead production programs that are trying to match production stocks and techniques to naturally spawning populations in some areas);
• Clatsop Economic Development Council and other lower Columbia production (Oregon funds coho and fall chinook production activities for Youngs Bay and other areas in the lower river to supplement the Mitchell Act and Bonneville funded programs).

Artificial production policies and activities in transition since the 1980s

As noted in the text, the last decade has seen a myriad of efforts to review Columbia basin production policies and activities and to try to reform both, many of these efforts initiated and funded through the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. The critical issues in these studies have included how to improve the survival of hatchery fish, whether and how production activities can play a role in providing significant and widely spread harvest opportunities throughout the basin, and whether we can do these things while we also act to protect and rebuild naturally spawning and wild runs in as many river reaches as possible.

Several factors converged in the mid- to late-1980s to begin the transition in production policy. These need to be highlighted here, as the same factors will continue to play a significant role in the continuing transition of artificial production activities and policy. One source for change came out of the United States v. Oregon harvest litigation in federal court. State/federal/tribal agreements on production policy within the U.S. v. Oregon framework, in conjunction with the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, became the driving vehicle for two of the critical issues forcing a change in existing production policy — to widen the harvest opportunities provided by artificial production and to attempt to use artificial production techniques to try to rebuild naturally sustaining populations. U.S. v. Oregon began as and remains primarily a forum for resolving disputes over in-river harvest allocation. But production activities became part of the considerations as the state, federal and tribal parties recognized that treaty fishing rights could also be supported by increasing the numbers of fish upriver, above Bonneville Dam. After a series of yearly and five-year allocation agreements or decisions, in 1988 the parties to the litigation developed, and the court approved, the Columbia River Fish Management Plan. The goal of the Management Plan was "to rebuild weak runs to full productivity and fairly share the harvest of upper river runs." In the area of production, the Management Plan called for "agreed-to production oriented actions to achieve the goal of rebuilding upriver anadromous runs," so as to "assure that rebuilding and harvest allocation objectives are achieved concurrent with restoration of the runs." One part of this commitment was the hypothesis, favored especially by the tribes over the last decade, that artificial production could be used to supplement natural production if combined with habitat improvements, and thus rebuild naturally-spawning upriver runs.

The Management Plan contemplated that the main vehicle for this effort was to be the development by the fish and wildlife managers of subbasin-by-subbasin harvest and production plans for the tributaries above Bonneville. This led to an extensive subbasin planning effort that became part of the Council’s 1987 Fish and Wildlife Program amendment process. The co-managers developed draft subbasin plans, but the effort eventually ran afoul of developing Endangered Species Act concerns, as described below, and never reached the intended conclusion of subbasin plans formally adopted into the Council’s Program. Pending the development of a comprehensive set of subbasin plans, the Management Plan also included a list of specific production objectives and actions utilizing artificial propagation to be undertaken during the Plan’s tenure. Many of these production actions were already in master planning as part of the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program (e.g., the plans for an experimental supplementation production program in Yakima basin). Following the adoption of the Management Plan, most of the conflicts, disputes and agreements regarding production that have been part of the U. S. v. Oregon process have involved specific disputes concerning the use of hatchery fish to supplement natural production. In general, the production agreements under the Management Plan moved into the Council’s Program to become the core of the production planning and activities now funded under that Program.

A third factor forcing change in existing production policy has been concerns over the adverse impact of hatchery production on wild fish. These issues were not absent during the development of the Management Plan and the Council Program’s production initiatives, but the driving vehicle for forcing this issue squarely into the core of hatchery policy has been the Endangered Species Act listings. The listings began in the Snake basin at the turn of the decade and have now spread to the whole basin — now affecting both the lower river home of the main harvest mitigation production and the upper basin areas that are the site of the reprogramming and supplementation efforts. ESA consultations have forced hatchery managers to evaluate and reach conclusions as to whether existing or proposed production programs jeopardize the continued existence of listed stocks through health impacts, competition and other ecological interactions, genetic impacts, and other considerations. Thus existing hatchery programs, especially in the Snake (e.g., the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan activities) came under this type of review.scrutiny. The reviewscrutiny of existing programs began in the Snake basin (e.g., the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan activities), but has increased and will only increase and broaden further with the recent additional listings. The LSRCP program staff has worked very closely with NMFS staffs in developing production criteria and suggested changes to reduce or eliminate risks of these programs to listed species. Coming under even greater scrutiny have been the tribal/state proposals to use new artificial production initiatives to try to help rebuild weak naturally spawning populations. The critical fish population demographics that caused some to turn to artificial production techniques as part of the rebuilding solution caused others to worry greatly that new artificial production efforts could fatally undermine the incredibly vulnerable wild populations.

The wild fish considerations embodied in the ESA listings were the major factor preventing the subbasin planning process from coming to a conclusion, as the co-managers could not agree in a number of basins how much risk to accept in planning for new production. Planning work on specific supplementation proposals also slowed to a crawl, as the agencies and tribes worked to address the wild fish and ESA concerns, dampen the extent of the risk presented by each project, and provide greater assurances that artificial production could be a boost and not a hindrance to natural production.

The logjam partially broke in the mid-1990s, as federal agency ESA review finally cleared a number of supplementation initiatives to proceed under the Council’s Program as high priority experiments. Ironically, at the same time NMFS and others began to investigate using the most intrusive of artificial production techniques — captive broodstock — to try to save or conserve populations on the verge of extinction, including Snake River sockeye and spring chinook in the Grande Ronde and Salmon river tributaries of the Snake.
 
 

Policy and operational review and reform through the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program

All of the federal and non-federal production programs in the basin , including Mitchell Act and the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan program, have, to varying been forced in some degrees in recent years to triedy to come to terms with these four factors — how to reform operations and policies to improve hatchery fish survival, broaden harvest opportunities, protect wild populations, and if possible assist in rebuilding naturally spawning populations. But the Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program most clearly has attempted to embodyies all the factors, probably because it is the most recent and is the result of policy recommendations developed by the agencies and tribes over the last 15 years while grappling with these very questions. The Program’s twin goals are to "double the runs" (i.e., increase abundance for increased harvest opportunities) while protecting biological diversity. New artificial production initiatives are one of the key activities identified in the Council’s Program for increasing the numbers for harvest, moving those harvest opportunities upriver, and, if connected with habitat restoration, rebuilding dwindling or extirpated naturally-spawning populations in the tributaries while being consistent with policies to protect wild fish — thus, if all goes well, protecting and increasing biological diversity. The Program’s production and habitat provisions represent confidence in the possibility of an intertwined habitat and production effort that can protect and increase natural production partly through a wide array of small- and not so small-scale supplementation experiments.

The individual planning efforts that have accompanied the specific, individual production initiatives in the Council’s Program have yielded an extensive body of analysis about the problems and opportunities presented by the interaction of artificial and natural production. So has the ESA/wild fish analyses and Biological Opinions that the federal agencies and others have had to produce, beginning with a genetic review by various federal agencies involved in production programs and a genetics "team" established under the Council’s Program that produced a set of guidelines for artificial production intended to protect wild populations from adverse genetic impacts. (Attachment 3 is a list of the major policy and scientific documents produced in the last ten years.) But given the nature of the Council’s Program, in which all of the specific production initiatives are predicated on a conceptual foundation of experimenting with artificial production to assist rebuilding of naturally spawning populations, the Council, the federal and state agencies, and the tribes realized the need in the early 1990s for a more systematic approach to analyzing these issues. If supplementation proposals under the Fish and Wildlife Program were to proceed in the face of ESA listings and increasing concerns for impacts on wild fish, what was needed was a systematic review of the dilemma and a set of guidelines for proceeding that, in theory at least, could increase to an acceptable level the chance that artificial production techniques could benefit natural production without undue harm to existing wild populations.

Out of these considerations came the Regional Assessment of Supplementation Project (RASP), a multi-year, multi-agency analytical effort called for by the Council’s Program and funded by Bonneville. The Final Report in 1992, produced by agency personnel and subject to independent scientific review, provided a background description of the supplementation concept; a discussion of the elements of supplementation theory and the uncertainties inherent in the supplementation experiment; model planning guidelines, objectives, actions and performance standards for supplementation initiatives; and a plan for regional coordination of research, monitoring and evaluation of supplementation actions. It was partly on the basis of the generally well received RASP effort, and the revision of individual supplementation initiatives to be consistent with the RASP guidelines, that the National Marine Fisheries Service (and others) agreed in 1996 that a number of supplementation initiatives in the Council’s Program could proceed to implementation. See Supplementation in the Columbia Basin, Final Report, Bonneville Project No. 85-62 (December 1992); Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, Section 7.3 (1994).

The RASP guidelines applied only to the new supplementation initiatives, representing just a tiny fraction of the artificial production activities in the basin. So, the Council’s Program also recognized the need for a broader review of production policies and activities across the basin, to see whether and how production programs and individual hatcheries could be evaluated and reformed in a systematic way to deal with the critical factors now at play in the basin. This was the genesis for the formation of the inter-agency Integrated Hatchery Operations Team (IHOT), funded by Bonneville under the Council’s Program. The Council’s Program called on the fishery managers "and other experts as needed," "in consultation with appropriate specialists in genetics," to develop "basinwide guidelines to minimize genetic and ecological impacts of hatchery fish on wild and naturally spawning stocks." In the development of these guidelines, IHOT was to include "approaches to basinwide coordination of hatchery production" to reduce impacts, and monitoring and evaluation of hatchery and wild stock interactions. IHOT was to review existing production policies and then develop and update "regionally integrated policies for management and operation of all existing and future hatcheries in the basin," — policies to "be monitored for consistency with the goal of increasing sustained production while maintaining genetic resources."

The Program specified that policies developed by IHOT had to include elements addressing fish health, genetics, ecological interactions, hatchery performance standards, and regional hatchery coordination, with standards specified in the Program for each element. Moreover, the Program called for IHOT to submit a plan to the Council for implementing these policies and to plan and oversee independent audits of hatchery performance for consistency with guidelines and policies developed by IHOT. Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, Section 7.2A, 7.2B. The Program’s charge to IHOT strikingly resembles the Senate committee’s directive to the Council to "conduct a thorough review" of production programs in the basin, to draw on the assistance of the state and federal agencies and tribes in conducting this review, and to recommend "a coordinated policy" for the future operation of hatcheries and "how to obtain such a coordinated policy."

Pursuant to the Program’s charge, by late 1994 IHOT produced Policies and Procedures for Columbia Basin Anadromous Salmonid Hatcheries, containing policy elements, performance standards, performance measures, and evaluation guidelines. The policies covered the areas specified in the Program, including policies on regional hatchery coordination, hatchery performance standards, fish health, ecological interactions and genetics. IHOT also produced operations plans for anadromous fish production facilities in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, and set in motion independent audits of most all of the anadromous fish hatcheries in the basin, using performance measures developed in the policy document. See A Summary of Hatchery Evaluation Reports (NPPC, July 1998). The audits describe deficiencies in hatchery operations when measured against the performance standards and recommend improvements to address these deficiencies. The extent of the improvements recommended is daunting, and the audit recommendations mostly sit and await further consideration by policymakers. The IHOT policies and audits focused mostly on reforming practices in the hatcheries and in release techniques, with the aim to improve the survival of the hatchery releases and to try to avoid harmful immediate interactions. Deciding whether to undertake some of the improvements recommended will require further consideration of broader interactions, of what we really want artificial production facilities to do, and what priorities we have for limited funds.

As the new production activities in the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program moved from planning into construction and implementation, the size of Bonneville’s direct fish and wildlife expenditures to implement the Program have grown, as has the proportion of that budget spent on artificial production. Partly out of lingering concern for the possible effects, and the high costs, of these state and tribal programs, Congress amended the Northwest Power Act in 1996 to add independent science review, public review, and Council recommendations into Bonneville’s decisions on fish and wildlife project funding. In the first two years of the new funding review process, the Independent Scientific Review Panel created by the amendment has deferred significant recommendations on the artificial production initiatives in the Fish and Wildlife Program pending the completion of the Artificial Production Review. But the Panel has indicated its uneasiness with the extent to which what the Panel considers should be small-scale supplementation production experiments have grown in number and size under the Program. The Panel’s report in the summer of 1999 may bring back to the surface the debates over these newest production efforts in the basin.
 
 

Vehicles for implementing developments in production policy — annual funding reviews and Endangered Species Act reviews

The funding review process that began with the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, described just above, is and will be one of the two main vehicles for implementing operational reforms in production policy. Recent conference committee language from Congress has extended the independent scientific/public/Council review procedure to all of the Bonneville fish and wildlife budget. The review process thus encompasses all of the federally funded production programs in the basin except the Mitchell Act programs (and a few stray facilities, such as the Warm Springs Hatchery). If we have the political will, production programs can be held to a rigorous set of performance standards as a prerequisite to funding, standards designed to improve survival, protect wild runs, and help rebuild naturally spawning populations, with compliance evaluated in part by independent technical panels — while making funds available to assure that the facilities the region desires can in fact be revised to meet the standards. For the purposes of providing a coordinated and consistent review of production programs against a set of standards, Congress and the region should consider incorporating the Mitchell Act programs (and the other exceptions) into the same funding review process. See the implementation recommendations in the text.

As demonstrated recently, Endangered Species Act review by means of biological opinions and incidental take reviews is other existing tool for realizing reforms in production actions, especially for one of the areas of concern — minimizing impacts to wild fish populations. The ESA reviews apply to all the major production programs in the basin, whether part of the funding review process described above and whether federal or not, allowing for a consistent and coordinated application of standards across the basin. And because we now have listings of different types of anadromous and resident fish in every part of the basin, program reviews to evaluate impacts to listed fish are really surrogates for the general issue of impacts to all naturally spawning populations. Because it is essentially impossible to operate a production program in the face of a "jeopardy" opinion, or without an incidental take permit, the biological opinions and permits have real power for implementing needed changes or at least for preventing likely harmful operations. They carry no funding to make changes happen, but they do provide leverage and priorities in deciding on funding.

Since 1995 the National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a dozen Biological Opinions on specific artificial production proposals and on artificial production programs in the aggregate, culminating in the March 1999 Biological Opinion on Artificial Propagation in the Columbia River that reviewed all federal and major non-federal salmon and steelhead production programs for impacts to the six types of fish then listed and that declared a jeopardy situation for the first time. The nearly simultaneous listing of five more species in the basin will require a further elaboration of the ESA analysis in a revised Biological Opinion. Moreover, in order to prepare itself for these biological reviews, the Fisheries Service has had to develop a number of useful technical memoranda, policy statements, and artificial propagation and genetics guidelines, another spur to wider policy reform. See Attachment 3.
 
 

Forums for revisiting decisions on whether, when, where and why to use the artificial production tool — including the Columbia River Fish Management Plan renegotiations, Council Fish and Wildlife Program amendment process, multi-species recovery planning under the ESA, and the Multi-Species Framework analytical process

The annual funding reviews and the ESA reviews of artificial production are and will be most useful in achieving changes in hatchery practices. They are not the best policymaking vehicles for deciding whether we want hatcheries to begin with, and where and for what purpose. As noted in the text, what the region needs are medium-term to long-term decisions and agreements at the basinwide and the subbasin or subregional (or ecological province) levels on what we want to accomplish in terms of fish and wildlife recovery in the basin as a whole and in each subbasin or subregion, and what strategies seem most promising for rebuilding naturally sustaining populations to healthy, harvestable levels — decisions and agreements based in the best available scientific knowledge of how river ecosystems function and how fish and wildlife populations survive and interact. Part of that decisionmaking process will have to include decisions on whether and how to use the artificial production tool in each subbasin as part of these strategies. Only when these larger questions are revisited and determined for some period of time can we definitively decide how best to invest our funds to reform hatchery practices.

The planning process described above is exactly what the system and subbasin planning process of the late 1980s was intended to achieve. That process foundered because of significantly changing circumstances (especially the first ESA listings) right as the process and the draft subbasin plans were nearing completion. The needs still exists, and the time may be ripe to return to the task.

There are three planning processes underway or soon to be initiated that could be vehicles for making these larger determinations and for how artificial production should fit within a broader recovery framework. The challenge will be to make sure that these processes do in fact engage the right questions and that the processes work in concert, not at cross purposes.

The first is the renegotiation of the Columbia River Fish Management Plan under the auspices of the federal district court as part of the U.S. v. Oregon harvest litigation. The Management Plan expired at the end of 1998, although the court extended the application of the plan until at least July 1999. The federal, state and tribal participants are known to be negotiating toward a revised set of population rebuilding objectives based in part on an understanding of a revised set of production objectives and expectations.

The first Management Plan agreement led directly to a Council Fish and Wildlife Program amendment process and the system and subbasin planning process. The renegotiated agreement could do the same. The Council will likely begin a Program amendment process later in 1999, the second possible vehicle for revisiting the basic decisions about the use of hatcheries. A plausible outcome of that Program amendment process could be a policy and biological framework, for the system as a whole and at least down to the ecological province level, on recovery goals and objectives, including decisions (or criteria to guide decisions) on whether, where, why and how to use the artificial production tool to try achieve these objectives. If completed and appropriately structured, the product of the Management Plan negotiations could once again feed as a recommendation into the Program amendment process. But the dynamics are different than in the mid-1980s, with ever-growing ESA concerns, a fish and wildlife budget agreement, independent science review procedures for implementing the Program, and especially a growing scientific and policy emphasis on ecological processes and not technological to rebuild fish and wildlife populations. The Management Plan renegotiations cannot take place in a vacuum — the negotiations and the results have to be sensitive to and coordinated with these other elements. The Fish and Wildlife Program has its own limitations, especially the too-tight focus on hydropower system mitigation in a basin with a multi-faceted problem, and the Council’s lack of direct implementation authority. A Fish and Wildlife Program amendment process that is not well coordinated with the other planning processes risks being irrelevant.

The third possible vehicle for addressing these larger questions about the use of artificial production could be multi-species recovery planning for the Columbia River basin under the Endangered Species Act. The National Marine Fisheries Service is focused at present on producing Biological Opinions that focus on particular actions that may threaten the existence of listed fish. But given the magnitude of the ESA problem after the most recent set of listings, the potential exists for taking a systemwide planning approach to recovery that could integrate a host of elements, decide on recovery objectives and approaches, and evaluate the use of the artificial production tool to meet these objectives. Like the other planning processes, ESA recovery planning has peculiarities and limitations, including a defined approach to recovery of self-sustaining population numbers that may be far too low to be relevant to what people want out of fish populations in the basin, and a focus on the weakest stocks when real systemwide recovery may depend on building from protected strong stocks. Thus ESA recovery planning without coordination and shared analysis with the other planning process is also just as likely to be largely irrelevant or to get cross-ways with the other planning processes and the identified needs in the basin.

To bring these planning process into a shared analytical and substantive focus, based on the best available thinking in ecological science, the Council recommends linking them all to the on-going Multi-Species Framework process. The Framework process grew out of recent reviews of Columbia basin fish and wildlife activities that highlighted the need for a fish and wildlife restoration effort based upon a framework of fundamental ecological principles, with the river (and relevant parts of the Pacific Ocean) understood as a system of interacting biological and physical components (the ecosystem). The Council joined with the other entities in the basin precisely to provide a coordinated and unified biological and social-economic analysis that will help decisionmakers define for more than the short-term a set of goals, ecological objectives and strategies for fish and wildlife recovery in the basin as a whole and at finer levels of geographic scale. Part of that analytical process will include, it is hoped, evaluating the efficacy of artificial production techniques in helping to meet broader defined recovery goals and objectives, which will in turn allow for informed decisions on whether and how to incorporate the use of the artificial production tool into basin and sub-basin objectives. The Council considers its final report on the Artificial Production Review to be consistent with and a contribution to the Multi-Species Framework process.
 

This report is based on a series of interviews conducted by Eco-Northwest (Bob Tuck) under contract with the Northwest Power Planning Council. The purpose of the interview project was to pull together information not available in data bases or official reports and to see what light such anecdotal evidence can shed on the evolution of hatchery policy. The interviews took place in the summer of 1998. Those interviewed were limited to current and retired federal and state fish and wildlife agency personnel that were involved in Columbia Basin hatchery management during the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Tribal personnel were not interviewed because during this time period tribes were generally not involved in hatchery management.

The questions asked in the interviews dealt with a wide range of topics. They included: historic reasons for the development of hatchery programs, the siting of hatcheries, how Mitchell Act-funded activities changed over the years, whether hatcheries have achieved their goals, the extent to which hatcheries have been evaluated, the role of research in hatchery programs, how hatcheries have affected wild fish populations, and why policies and practices changed over time. The "quotes" from the interviews that appear in this report have in some cases been edited for the sake of brevity and clarity.

The interviewees who were retired all had at least 20, and in some cases, more than 30 years of experience in hatchery management. In the spirit of gathering honest and frank answers, the interviewees were promised that their names would not be used.

This report sheds light on the social and political context surrounding hatchery development in the Columbia Basin, the changing status of fishery science, and the manner in which decisions concerning salmon hatcheries were made. Many of the people interviewed played key roles in the development and expansion of the hatchery system that took place in the Columbia Basin after World War II. Others interviewed are currently active in fisheries policy and programs. The report offers the opportunity to examine, through the eyes of some of those who were there, artificial production in the basin in the social, political, and scientific matrix that existed from 1945 to 1980.

One of the most striking themes that emerged from the interviews of the people associated with hatchery programs in the Columbia Basin in the 1945-1980 time period is the change in the "social matrix" since those years. This refers to the change in how artificial production is viewed, and the expectations society has for these programs, in the context of the development of water resources. This can be illustrated by an example given by one of the interviewees. A biologist recalled attending a public meeting in La Grande, Oregon during the mid-1950s. The purpose of the meeting was to take public testimony concerning the Hells Canyon complex of hydro projects, then in the planning stage. Besides the biologist, only one other person showed up -- another biologist, who worked for the state of Oregon. Not one other person bothered to attend: no environmental groups, no sport or commercial fish groups, no Tribal representatives. Today the "social matrix" has changed dramatically, and such a meeting would draw hundreds, there would be a protracted public process, and probably litigation.

The development of the hatchery system after World War II cannot be judged by today’s standards and concerns. It would be like judging a surgeon’s success in 1965 by today’s expectations. Such comparisons are unfair and misleading and may divert the region’s attention from focusing on the key policy question: how should artificial production be used by the region to meet goals and objectives society deems important today. In reviewing artificial production programs initiated between 1945 and 1980, it is important to keep in mind that those were different times, with different expectations and a different social and political context, as this report will illustrate.

It is also apparent from the interviews that hatchery personnel and management believed, very deeply, that they were performing a useful service for society, which had directed them to produce fish to sustain various fisheries as water resource projects were constructed throughout the region. There were few, if any, dissenting voices in the fisheries community, as these comments demonstrate:

"[In the 1950s and early 1960s,] I went to almost every Commission meeting. The commercial guys were happy as clams. And the sport fishermen were happy. Everybody was happy, nobody was really questioning what we were doing." -- Retired state agency employee

"It was just a matter of getting the most fish in the river primarily for the commercial catch. BCF [precursor agency to National Marine Fisheries Service] was thinking of the commercial catch. Most of the guys in the early Columbia River program came out of the states to run the program, and they were pointed directly toward the commercial fisherman. It was natural for them to say, ‘hey, we need more fish in the lower river.’ Wrong or right." -- Retired federal employee

"Certainly, I think the mindset has been trying to feed the harvest. I think that is probably somewhat wrong-minded. That ought to be a result of good production, not an end in itself. You get a lot of extra-good high quality fish that create the harvest -- it shouldn’t be the sole purpose." -- Current federal employee

Interviewees were asked about hatcheries achieving their goals and the extent of policy coordination they perceived.

"[We] had production goals for individual hatcheries in 1968, but if we found we could not do some things at a specific hatchery, [we] changed them. No one said a word; we justified the changes and moved on. There was not any coordination with the states on their operations." -- Retired federal employee

"If you are going to try and operate the hatcheries on the Columbia, they have to be operated as a unit. Can that be done? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. The states have the right to manage their fish and wildlife. Idaho does not think the same as Oregon, and Oregon does not think the same as Washington. The individual legislatures are managing the fish for each state, not the Columbia River. So you have a problem: fractured jurisdiction." -- Retired state agency employee

Regional Issues

Many of the comments and observations offered during the interviews touched directly on some of the major issues and concerns now being reviewed and debated by the region with respect to salmon recovery.

Stock Selection and Distribution

There is much debate, as well as divided opinion, about the selection of stocks for production in specific hatcheries and the introduction of stocks from one watershed to another. But in the 1950s and 1960s, there was little thought given to stock selection and related genetic issues. Such issues were simply not on the radar screen. The emphasis was to build fish runs in all possible areas and all possible stocks. Eggs, fry, smolts, and adults were distributed without regard to suitability of stocks, habitat conditions, impacts of transfers on other stocks, introduced or native, or other factors that today would be examined and analyzed. As a result, stocks were introduced into unsuitable areas, there were undoubtedly genetic impacts on native stocks, some introductions failed, introduced stocks fostered harvest on mix-stocks, and introduced stocks resulted in competition with or predation on native stocks.

"We also did not realize the tremendous potential for disaster that we had unwillingly brought upon ourselves by helter-skelter moving fish all over watersheds and hatcheries. We did a lot of things that we would not even consider now." -- Retired federal employee

"We spread coho and chinook all over. Spring Creek [hatchery on the Washington side of the Columbia River] probably donated more fall chinook to other hatcheries than any other hatchery."

"Broodstock for spring chinook at Carson [hatchery on the Washington side of the Columbia River] came from ladders at Bonneville Dam. Therefore, Carson spring chinook are a mixture of all upriver stocks. Carson spring chinook stock were then transferred to a number of hatcheries…Stock selection is one of the things that should be worked on. We spread fish all over." -- Retired federal employee

"The Spring Creek tulee stock is not pure. There have been some exchanges with other hatcheries." -- Retired state agency employee

"We had so many fish and we were probably worse on the Coast than they were on the Columbia, on transporting adults, fingerlings, juveniles everywhere. We even borrowed the Game Commission, got them involved, using their trucks too, because we had so many [fish] our trucks could not handle them all. We were in bed together, doing this, and nobody really questioned this, whether this was the right thing to do."

"As we started having more fish come back on the Columbia and the Coast, what do you do with all these extra fish? We’d struggled so hard to get a female to come back, now you had 10,000 come back -- what are you going to do with them? We were not going to kill them; we just were not going to kill them…We started hauling adults to other streams; we did the same thing on the Columbia as we did on the Coast."

"Some of the things we did were stupid. We were doing them basically because we did not want to kill; the old hatchery managers had a phobia; they just hated to kill a fish…They were not about to kill a baby fish. So, we just did what we thought was best. When a bunch of fish came back to Bonneville, we put them all up and down the Columbia…There was not much concern about stocks." -- Retired state agency employee

The selection of stocks at specific hatcheries was also heavily influenced by the desire to produce as many fish as possible, regardless of the impact on other hatchery or natural production. The overriding goal was to raise fish.

"[There was] tremendous pressure on hatchery managers to produce as many fish as possible." -- Retired federal employee

"The Cowlitz had a huge coho run, and I think the same thing occurred. Most of the smaller streams were chum streams. The selection of stocks was mostly hit or miss; if a hatchery had an empty period, we moved an appropriate stock in, we thought, and reared a lot of coho and chinook. Originally the main thrust of the Columbia River was fall chinook, but we did the same thing with them as the chum; raise them for 90 days, and then move coho in." -- Retired federal employee

Natural Production Impacts
Some fisheries managers apparently were lulled into thinking that natural production could be replaced by hatchery production. Hatchery personnel developed a deep-seated emotional attachment to the fish produced in the hatchery system that apparently went far beyond the responsibilities of the job. It was a continuation of the belief that man could improve on nature, conquer the wilderness, and bend nature to man’s use. Under such a belief system, there was little need to be concerned about development projects that reduced or eliminated natural production. The thinking was that hatchery production would allow harvest to continue indefinitely into the future.

"[The question of] disease became important in transferring stocks and such in the early 1960s, at least in the Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS]. At that time, there was a real thrust across the country for the USFWS to get trained biologists into the hatcheries, and by 1965, the Northwest region of the USFWS had eight hatchery biologists…TB and KD [kidney disease] were the two big killers at that time, and there was a thrust to get people trained to get management some kind of expertise in managing the hatchery fish in the hatchery. I can’t recall anyone ever talking about genetics, except to talk about Dr. Donaldson [of the University of Washington] and some of his studies."

"I don’t think I ever heard any discussion of wild stocks except whether or not there might be transfer of disease from hatchery fish to wild stocks, that’s the only thing I can ever recall."

Certainly none of this can be based on judging what people did at that time. I wouldn’t ever criticize because the information wasn’t there…Different times, different information available." -- Retired federal employee

"No one gave much thought to hatchery impacts on wild fish." -- Retired federal employee

"[In the 1950s and 1960s], lower river coho hatchery production drove harvest, and there was no consideration for wild coho. It was not a matter of evil people; that was just the way it was. The fisheries were booming, but the fisheries were probably too great on the wild fish. I think that we recognized that, but we were producing fish. We had big runs of big fish. We were living in heaven. Probably we mixed the stocks up." -- Retired federal employee

"It’s a tough one when you talk about what is the role of a hatchery. It depends on the role for that basin. What fits -- there are a number of issues along those lines. A lot of hatchery managers are rated just by how many fish they put out, in pounds. They are starting to swing away from that. If they get an outbreak of any kind of disease in the facilities, they might make a release a month early. They don’t want to have dead fish on site, better to have live fish in the river; some of them will survive. Some of the hard decisions the region has to make in those cases is that those fish ought to be buried. We ought not to be putting diseased fish in the creek…We put out just truckloads of BKD [bacterial kidney disease] fish in almost all the river basins. The Snake is littered with BKD hotspots. And we put out fish that test positive for BKD -- they return, but we’re still providing that pathogen out for the wild populations to deal with. It’s the wrong thing to do if you’re going to be managing a system for wild fish." -- Current federal employee

"Yes, the wild fish and its effect must be the first thing you look at. But it can’t be from the slant that we are going to have wild fish or nothing. You simply can’t impose that on the Columbia because you don’t have that many wild fish, and even if you had more wild fish, you have a distinct limitation on natural production capability, and that level in the Columbia is a ‘watching only’ level, not a use. So if you are going to use the fish in the Columbia, you have to use artificial propagation. Not just everywhere in unlimited numbers, but under a basin-by-basin approach. A unified master plan which we don’t have."

"They are not Oregon hatcheries or Washington hatcheries; they are Columbia River hatcheries. They should be looked at in that philosophy. [They should] all be programmed with the same people at the same time, utilizing the same information with commonly agreed upon goals."

"We have got to have a plan, and we have to have the backbone to enforce it." -- Retired state agency employee

Hatchery Siting
An issue that has been debated for some time involves why most of the hatcheries in the Columbia Basin ended up being located below Bonneville Dam. Some have alleged that this was a conscious decision to deprive the Treaty Tribes that reserved fishing rights in the Columbia River Basin of an opportunity to harvest fish, a "conspiracy," if you will.

In the interviews, there was little evidence to support the suggestion that hatchery placement was contrived to suppress salmon and steelhead harvest by Native Americans. The effect, however, was the same: hatchery production to replace natural production lost or damaged due to water-related projects was shifted far downriver, which denied Native American fishers access to this production. The justification for this shift of production downriver apparently was the tacit acceptance by the fisheries agencies that upriver production could not be maintained, and therefore, the only option was to put the production facilities downriver. Several interview comments in connection to the site selection of Mitchell Act hatcheries in the 1950s and 1960s were relevant to this issue:

"We tried to raise some production upriver but it did not work well, for the most part."

"[We] put production below dams to reduce mortality from hydropower system."

"The USFWS was trying to do right thing for all the groups on the Columbia River, including Tribes."

"[There was] little or no pressure from upriver fishermen in 1960s and 1970s."

"[There was] no overt action to move production downriver."

"The loss of smolts to predation was one of the reasons that people wanted to move the hatcheries downriver."-- Retired federal employee

"The early philosophy of the Mitchell Act was to concentrate on the location of hatcheries below the dams because Milo Bell [pioneering fisheries engineer in the 1930s] and others thought that we could not maintain large fish runs above all these dams, and I think they may have been right. So the main emphasis was on the lower river. I was accused by the Indians that the Mitchell Act favored lower river fishermen, but we did not think we could be successful above the dams."

"What we were doing was replacing natural production for the fisheries; therefore, put the hatcheries where they would suffer the least mortality -- the lower river. The [idea was to get] maximum amount of production for the least cost."

"Why put fish upriver and suffer all that mortality?"-- Retired federal employee

"There was not much thought about the Tribal harvest upriver because they were catching all the fish [they needed], and at Celilo, ‘well, you paid the millions of dollars, you flooded it, and you were done.’ It was a different societal mindset." -- Retired state agency employee

"The siting of some of these hatcheries wasn’t based on genetics, wasn’t based on the needs of the fish, it was based on hopefully getting enough water, the heck with the temperature, enough water to raise x numbers of pounds of fish."

Kooski [hatchery in Idaho] is absolutely the worst example of siting a hatchery…It was a separate authorization to build a hatchery put in by Frank Church [former Senator]. They had to have a hatchery, and they had to have it quick. Kooski was Frank Church’s baby. He got the money this year, and you better build a hatchery next year, because I’m running for election." -- Retired federal employee

The selection of hatchery sites and the coordination of Mitchell Act implementation are closely related subjects. While ideally, individual hatchery sites would be selected on the basis of biological analysis and program goals, the interview responses indicated that hatchery site selection was normally based on the suitability of the proposed water supply, rather than any consideration for appropriate stocks or program goals.

"For a lot of the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan hatchery siting, the Corps of Engineers worked with USFWS and Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. They were going to build new sites as much as they could, and the issue came down to water. It’s always where can you get good quality water, and they ended up buying Thousand Springs [hatchery in Idaho], and they ended up using Dworshak water for the Clearwater hatchery. Some of the satellites were located where they already had facilities. It seems like a lot of the sitings were being made primarily where the water was located…If I were to give it one theme, I think that would be it."

"With John Day mitigation, there was a very conscious decision on the part of the states in particular to provide half of the John Day mitigation program on the Washington side of the river and half on the Oregon side. They wanted to make sure that it was equalized between the two states. I suspect that type of discussion probably occurred in the Mitchell Act areas as well." -- Retired state agency employee

"Site selection and stock production were not biological decisions – [they were] more political…No one held our feet to the fire to meet the specific goals of the Mitchell Act."-- Retired federal employee

"Decisions as to production at various hatcheries was pretty much hop-scotch." -- Retired federal employee

Operations and Practices

The retirees recalled how things were done in the post-World War II period. For example, a retired state agency employee described an approach to controlling predation in the early 1950s:

"One of the best things that I thought I ever did was to buy each hatchery manager a new Remington pump shotgun, and every kingfisher, blue heron, and merganser that came, he was lucky if he got away. [Later] the Audubon Society got involved, and they had a rookery for herons down on Big Creek, and we had a hatchery two miles upstream. If you shot a bird, you got fired. Now they are covering all the ponds with netting."

The interviewees also talked about policies and practices at hatcheries, some of which, in retrospect, they wish they could have changed.

"I think the biggest mistake they made at Dworshak was forcing the fish to one-year rearing."

"I think another problem they had was to rear two different species of fish, fall chinook and coho, in the same [hatchery], at different times, of course. But to get rid of the fall chinook and bring coho in for the next year, I think that was a major problem. [They] got more production pounds and so on, but I think that was a major problem with regard to hatchery management."

"You had a few hatcheries, hither and yon, where a manager did something a little different from the norm…There was a manager at Skamania Hatchery [on the Washington side of the Columbia River] that had a program to improve the size of steelhead adults, with some success, I think…But generally, the production scheme was the same. Pick up the phone and say, ‘Gosh, I got to have a million eggs.’ ‘Okay, I got two million, how about taking two million? I want to get rid of them.’ It was just a common understanding, whether it was a fed, or a state, either state." -- Retired federal employee

"[In the early 1950s], the hatchery guys were feeding ground up parts of lungs and tripe and any animal part from a packing house that nobody else wanted. We would get some kind of meal from somewhere to mix with it. It was crummy feed, it milked up the water, and you had gill disease all the time; it was just terrible. [The Corps of Engineers] said we need a better food. We had some good nutrition guys, and that is how the Oregon moist pellet (OMP) got started. It was first introduced with the 1958 brood. From then on, we started having fish come back like gangbusters."

"I am sure the contribution of the hatcheries prior to the OMP and better hatchery practices was not that great. The old hatcheries boys used to say ‘when in doubt, kick them out.’" -- Retired state agency employee

"In the early 1970s, we started to become more aware of the importance of the environment that we were raising the fish in. We cannot raise an unlimited amount of fish in each cubic foot of water. Now these things seem obvious, but they were not that obvious then."

"Now we are doing a much better job with disease."

"Hatcheries have been blamed for a lot of problems, but are taking pretty good stuff forward, when they have the ability to do it themselves. Lots of times hatcheries are being asked to do things that they just can’t do, due to space limitations, financial limitations, you name it. And sometimes people do not want us to do things, they just want to give it lip service." -- Retired federal employee

"I just don’t believe that for the bulk of hatchery use, it was as bad as has been presented. For a lot [of the] period, it was not the hatchery manager that was making the decision. He was being told what to do, and in most instances in certain agencies told the right thing to do, and those changes were implemented."

"As a broad brush, it was stated that all hatcheries were bad, and all hatchery managers and all staff people were bad. That is not true, it was not true, and is still not true. Yes, in too many instances, hatcheries were used wrong. But for the most part, it was a result of the decisionmakers, not the person that was on the ground living with the fish everyday."

"Commissions or governors can still change policies or decisions. And those are still factors that influence the decisionmakers."

"A lot of the things that should have been changed have been." -- Retired state agency employee

The Use of Research

Research did not play a big role in hatchery management in the years they were working, the retired interviewees indicated. Their comments reflect mixed opinions about the application of research to hatchery programs.

"When we first started Dworshak hatchery, a genetics professor from Washington State came down, and he said ‘Have there ever been any genetics reviews to determine the difference between what you started with (we were starting with wild stock up there) and what happens 10 or 15 years later?’ To me, nothing like that had ever been done. But he pointed out that if you don’t do that, then you don’t know what’s occurred."

"Most of the time I would say it was true [that information gained from field studies was not woven into management discussions]. Each hatchery was a kingdom in itself, and the manager pretty much did what he wanted to do."

If they had studies on that particular hatchery that the manager or the hatchery biologist involved in did the work on, and they found out something, they would put that information to use at that hatchery. But very seldom did anybody over in this hatchery say, ‘well, gee, that’s a pretty good idea,’ unless it was equipment. Equipment they did, but if it had to do with fish, they’d say ‘that’s their fish, this is our fish. We’re going to do it as we know best for this fish.’"

"Certainly [there was] research that was used universally because of diet and nutrition…The Oregon moist pellet, that was certainly used universally."

"The big research going on at that time was nutrition and disease, and a little bit on operations of hatcheries. [There was] nothing to do with genetics…It had to do only with fish on the station, and then I don’t know if you can call the contribution studies research or not – a lot of money went into evaluating the contribution to the different fisheries. All that got was additional money for hatcheries for more production."

"I think there were studies dealing with time of release and looking at stocks so far as when to release them from hatcheries and looking at that evaluation for contribution. As I recall, there was never any real tying together of that information back to overall use of the information for the basin. There might have been some studies that went on as far as survival for a certain release. Again, you have to remember that they only looked at the fish that went out. They didn’t look at the conditions that prevailed at that time, what the ocean conditions were, what the harvest was when those adults came back. They were looking entirely at one little facet of the life cycle of that fish."

"The state of Washington on some of the lower rivers, I think Grays River Hatchery, had real poor rearing temperature so they moved. Because of the low contribution, they did change their production at Grays River during that warm water period…I’m not sure it ever made any difference as far as contribution, but they did attempt to make a change there." -- Retired federal employee

"Genetically, we didn’t know much. We knew we couldn’t take lower river stocks and move them upriver. Upriver stocks were geared to go upriver and not to be planted in the lower river, but that was about all we knew about genetics."

"I don’t agree that hatchery stocks are inferior; they come from wild fish…Some people are hung up on DNA analysis. I think they have overdone it. Genetic analysis may be a fad."

"A lot of good genetics is going on now. That is good, as long as you don’t use genetics to kill a hatchery with wild fish philosophies." -- Retired federal employee

"It really hurts me when they say hatcheries are crummy. We tried with our hatchery biology guys to make hatcheries as efficient and as good as we could."

"Every technique that went on in the hatcheries, we evaluated it and tried to do it better." -- Retired state agency employee

Measuring Success (Evaluation)

The pressure on hatcheries to produce as many fish as possible took many forms, not the least of which was the manner in which hatchery managers were evaluated.

[In the 1950s and 1960s],"evaluating hatchery managers was primarily limited to number and pounds of fish. This was the most unfortunate thing that ever happened." -- Retired federal employee

"It was a mistake to evaluate hatchery managers based on production. We were raising a lot of fish that were not healthy…The hatchery program was getting more technical by 1980, with greater emphasis on fish quality. But for a long time, we had a lot of unhealthy fish released. But the system promoted this type of production approach based on numbers alone." -- Retired federal employee

"Another problem is the transfer of people around and the really poor record-keeping. And one guy starts something and another guy looks at it and says ‘What were they trying to do?’ and that’s the end of it."

[In the 1950s and 1960s], "hatchery success was based on production numbers. At Spring Creek, they kept a record of how many adults came back, and if you could beat the last previous record of number of adults, number of eggs taken, well, that was good."

"Washington Department of Fisheries rated their managers on the number of pounds that they raised. They had a 1 through 4 rating system, and when a guy produced x numbers of pounds, he was a 1; if he got over that, he was a 2."

"All these guys that were managers at that time came out of the service. And you know darn well that during military service, World War II, they had some respect for discipline…There was somewhat of a fear between the manager and the person coming in, grading him,…that they better just toe the line and do what they were told to do…Keep the grass green, get x number of pounds out…We had good managers; we had bad managers. The bad managers probably didn’t produce good fish." -- Retired federal employee

"From the director down, there was not coordination in the system. It was left up to the hatchery manager. If the hatchery manager was worth his salt, he was doing the things you wanted. In too many instances, he was not, and it was a problem. You barely had enough dollars to produce the fish. You did not have any dollars for evaluation. The front office did not have any money, and that has been the problem with fish and wildlife since the inception. There was money to do something, but no money to tell you whether it was any good." -- Retired state agency employee

Recommendations

Many of the people interviewed believe that the region has a choice with respect to the future of salmon in the Columbia Basin. Their opinions fall into three categories:

• The region can re-open and re-establish historic anadromous fish habitat in the basin and close the artificial production facilities.

• It can close artificial production facilities and end up with essentially a "watchable salmon" population.

• It can use the artificial production system in the most intelligent manner possible, based on the best science, and maintain some harvestable salmon populations, consistent with the rebuilding of wild salmon and steelhead populations.

Various recommendations arose out of the interviews. They can be summed up as follows:

1. A regional consensus needs to be developed concerning expectations about artificial production, the replacement of natural production for fisheries, supplementation, and conservation of ESA-listed stocks.

2. The region needs to develop and enforce a comprehensive policy concerning the use of artificial production.

3. A regional wild salmonid policy needs to be developed, sub-basin by sub-basin.

4. The region should develop a regional genetics policy and a comprehensive hatchery operations policy.

5. The region should find a way to mold bureaucratic infrastructure to serve the biological needs of the resource and the policies adopted by the region, rather than the other way around.

6. The region needs a stable, long-term funding commitment to implement regional artificial production policy.

7. Artificial production decisions need to be based on long-term policies adopted by the region, not on temporary political trends.

8. Research needs to continue on better nutrition, better pathology techniques, and better rearing methods to improve the survival of juveniles after release.

9. Evaluations for hatchery managers should be revised to reflect their success or failure in meeting specific goals at artificial production facilities, not on numbers or pounds of fish.

Attachment 4: Artificial Production Programs In the Columbia River Basin