Recovery plan issued for U.S. Northwest
salmon, steelhead
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[October 28, 2016]
By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - U.S. fisheries
managers have unveiled a plan seeking to restore dwindling runs of
salmon and trout that migrate 900 miles up the Snake River from the
Pacific to spawning grounds in Idaho while leaving intact their greatest
barrier - four hydropower dams.
The recovery plan, proposed on Thursday, calls for a myriad of measures
to ease the increasingly treacherous passage of spring-summer Chinook
salmon and steelhead trout through the Snake, a major tributary of the
Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
The proposal hinges on a combination of efforts that include improving
stream habitat, enhancing water quality and installing structural dam
modifications along the Snake River system.
Such measures are designed to give newly hatched fish a better chance at
making the journey downstream to the ocean and enabling greater number
of adult fish returning from the sea to fight their way 7,000 vertical
feet back upstream to spawn.
Environmentalists have pressed for dam removal as the ultimate solution
to salmon and steelhead recovery.
The plan represents the latest effort by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration to stem the decline of the salmon and
steelhead runs, ultimately paving the way for their removal from
Endangered Species Act protections.
Snake River spring-summer Chinook were listed as threatened in 1992
after scientists determined the salmon's annual run in the Snake River
had dropped to 100,000 adult fish from more than 1 million, according to
the NOAA Fisheries agency.
Severe declines in Snake River steelhead, or ocean-going rainbow trout,
likewise saw them listed as threatened in 1997.
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In addition to physical obstructions posed by four federally
operated dams and reservoirs along the Snake River, salmon and
steelhead populations have been diminished by water pollution from
mining and farming, and reduced stream flows associated with
diversions for irrigation.
Some populations of spring-summer Chinook in the Snake River
watershed, including runs that once crowded a tributary creek of the
Salmon River in Idaho, have vanished.
The cost of implementing the proposed recovery measures is estimated
at $139 million, according to Rosemary Furfey, the Snake River
recovery coordinator for NOAA Fisheries.
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The plan came under immediate fire from conservation groups, which
faulted the measures as failing to more fully account for the
pivotal role dams play in the deaths of fish populations.
“We’ve got 20 years of mounting science that the dams are the
biggest problem and that dam removal is the surest way to recover
the species,” said Idaho Rivers United spokesman Greg Stahl.
(Editing by Steve Gorman and Michael Perry)
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