Related links: background and summary/comparison to BiOp

The mainstem amendments are part of the Council's comprehensive revision of its Fish and Wildlife Program. In the first phase of these amendments, completed in 2000, the Council reorganized the program around a scientific and policy framework including:

• a program vision, which describes what the program is trying to accomplish with regard to fish and wildlife and other desired benefits from the river;
• basinwide biological objectives, which describe in general the fish and wildlife population characteristics needed to achieve the vision and the ecological conditions needed to support the population objectives;
• implementation strategies, which will guide or describe the actions needed to achieve the desired ecological conditions;
• and a scientific foundation, which links these elements and explains why the Council believes certain kinds of actions should result in desired habitat conditions and why these conditions should improve fish and wildlife populations in the desired way.

These basinwide program amendments in 2000 set the stage for subsequent phases of the program revision process, in which the Council will adopt more specific objectives and action measures for the river's mainstem and the tributary subbasins. The Council will incorporate these specific objectives and measures into the program in part through a coordinated plan for the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers (as well as in locally developed subbasin plans for the more than sixty subbasins of the Columbia basin).

In March 2001 the Council initiated the process for amending the mainstem plan into the program. The Council described its expectations for the elements of the mainstem plan in the 2000 Fish and Wildlife Program, in the Basinwide Hydrosystem Strategies and the Schedule for Further Rulemakings. The mainstem plan is to contain the specific objectives and action measures that the program calls on the federal operating agencies and others to implement in the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers, including especially the operations of the hydrosystem, to protect, mitigate and enhance fish and wildlife affected by the development and operation of the hydroelectric facilities. The mainstem plan is to include objectives and measures relating to, among other matters:

• protection and enhancement of mainstem habitat, including spawning, rearing, resting and migration areas for salmon and steelhead and resident fish;
• system water management;
• passage spill at mainstem dams;
• adult and juvenile passage modifications at mainstem dams;
• juvenile fish transportation;
• reservoir elevations and operational requirements to protect resident fish and wildlife; and
• research, monitoring and evaluation.