Given the history of abundant salmon populations above Bonneville Dam, and the complexity of jurisdictions and interest groups whose activities have contributed to their demise, the Tribes conclude that significant actions must be undertaken immediately if we are to preserve our cultural heritage and treaty-guaranteed property rights. The preferred approach for managing these required activities is adaptive management. This approach combines the objective approach of scientific methodology with social and political decision making processes.

Adaptive management is a process consisting of identifying a problem, taking actions to address the problem, observing the results, and modifying the assessment of the problem and needed remedies. Adaptive management requires taking actions of a magnitude large enough to be likely to demonstrate measurable results in the face of inherent biological variability. It is a flexible process that does not require perfect knowledge to begin. It is self-correcting as new information is obtained.

An adaptive management approach to restoring salmon production in the Columbia River Basin above Bonneville Dam includes:

1. Initial assessment of the problem;
2. Formulation of goals, hypotheses about the nature of the problem(s), and needed solutions;
3. Identification of the expected results of the proposed actions;
4. Implementation of the proposed actions;
5. A monitoring program to observe the actual result of actions;
6. Communication of results among interested parties; and
7. Reevaluation of the problem definition and modification of management actions.

Resources for restoring salmon (time, money, manpower) are limited and there is much we do not fully understand about the impacts of society's actions on salmon survival at each life stage. These uncertainties about actions and their consequences often lead to debate and inaction for fear the "wrong" action will be taken and limited resources will be wasted or that actions will have unintended negative results. The result is the worst possible for salmon populations - they continue to decline toward extirpation. We must identify and resolve the most important of these uncertainties so we may make most effective use of limited resources to rebuild declining populations.

The most effective way to resolve critical uncertainty is by application of sound scientific methods. We must first realize, however, that science itself is a process or methodology, a way of discovering things, not a number, or a collection of facts (Orians 1969). The best science, then, is a rigorous process conducted over time, not the best number or fact at a particular time. The scientific method consists of formulating a theory or hypothesis, developing and conducting a test that would disprove the hypothesis if it were false, drawing a conclusion from the results of the test, and formulating new hypotheses and theories.

These technical recommendations are designed to accomplish the tribal anadromous fish restoration goals and objectives:

Goals

• Restore anadromous fishes to the rivers and streams that support the historical cultural and economic practices of the tribes. (These are generally areas above Bonneville Dam.)
• Emphasize strategies that rely on natural production and healthy river systems to achieve this goal.
• Protect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.
• Reclaim the anadromous fish resource and the environment upon which it depends for future generations.

• Within 7 years, halt the declining trends in salmon, sturgeon, and lamprey populations upstream of Bonneville Dam.
• Within 25 years, increase the total adult salmon returns above Bonneville Dam to 4 million annually and in a manner that supports tribal commercial as well as ceremonial and subsistence harvests.
• Within 25 years, increase sturgeon and lamprey populations to naturally sustainable levels that also support tribal harvest opportunities.
• Restore anadromous fishes to historical abundance in perpetuity.

Measures that we believe are needed and appropriate to achieve these objectives are set forth in the following hypotheses. For instance, the juvenile passage hypothesis calls for achieving a fish passage efficiency (FPE) at all mainstem dams of at least 80% immediately and at least 90% within eight years. The land use practices hypothesis is intended to protect and restore all existing tributary habitat, without any additional degradation over existing conditions.

There may be other actions that will achieve the objectives of this plan. The tribes are flexible on the details of specific actions as long as the end result, as measured by overall survival rates and fish abundance, is consistent with the above objectives.

The following hypotheses summarize the tribes' perception of the problem and their proposed initial responses. The hypotheses are organized within the life cycle stages of the salmon (Table 5B.1), beginning with the hypotheses affecting early life history stages (e.g., egg to juvenile survival). No prioritization of the importance of the hypotheses is implied by the sequence in which they are presented. Several of the hypotheses have both short term and long term phases. The long term reflects actions intended to be carried out in year eight of this plan and in succeeding years.

Cumulative effects of land use practices have had severe impacts on tributary stream systems (NCASI 1984; Stull and Emery 1985; Li et al. 1994). Logging, irrigation, road construction, grazing, mining, and urbanization have increased rates of sedimentation, elevated water temperatures, decreased instream flows, reduced bank stability, decreased the amount of large woody debris in stream channels, and reduced channel complexity (Chamberlin et al. 1991; Furniss et al. 1991; Hicks et al. 1991; Platts 1991). This degradation has reduced the capacity of tributary habitat to support naturally spawning salmonpopulations. For instance, widespread studies in the Idaho batholith indicate that egg-to-smolt survival is 2% - 10% of predevelopment levels (Scully and Petrosky 1991). In some areas the impacts have been so severe that salmon survival is effectively zero (Scully and Petrosky 1991, NMFS 1993). Further, the overall productivity of remaining stream reaches providing suitable habitat is impaired when these habitat units are geographically fragmented. Cumulative habitat degradation in salmon-bearing stream systems, originating in headwaters, tends to progressively reduce the production capability and eliminate the potential for supporting the historical diversity of life history forms of the species (i.e., those that depended upon environmental conditions found in the downstream portions of the drainage).

Improving or eliminating land use practices that degrade tributary habitat will allow watersheds to heal, and restore salmon productivity. Specifically, application of the Coarse Screening Process (Rhodes et al. 1994) to evaluate and guide land use practices will prevent further loss of habitat quality, will result in significant improvement in habitat quality and increase in habitat quantity, and will improve the egg-to-smolt survival of salmon in severely degraded habitat.

Short-term

• Enforce existing land use and water quality laws and regulations.
• U.S. Forest Service, Wallowa-Whitman National Forest: implement the Upper Grande Ronde Salmon Habitat Protection, Restoration and Monitoring Plan in the Upper Grande Ronde watershed.
• Apply the Coarse Screening Process and in-channel and land use standards (Tables 5B.2 and 5B.3) on public lands throughout all watersheds upstream from Bonneville Dam that are accessible to anadromous fish to restore watershed, floodplain, and riparian conditions, and to improve existing salmon-production capability of in-stream habitat.
• Use the Coarse Screening Process land management standards, and other appropriate approaches (e.g., as developed for the Walla Walla subbasin), to identify and guide actions on private lands to achieve the in-channel conditions needed to support healthy naturally reproducing salmon populations.
• Conduct baseline surveys of watershed and in-channel conditions by ground-based survey and aerial photographic methodology in all watersheds upstream from Bonneville Dam. The minimum set of monitoring parameters should be those identified as standards in the Coarse Screening Process. Additional monitoring parameters will be required for baseline and trend monitoring, effectiveness, and validation monitoring in salmon-bearing streams. Trend monitoring will be used to document recovery. Effectiveness monitoring is needed to assess whether practices employed in land management have expected results. Validation monitoring is needed to test assumptions and key models used in land management. Among these will be validation of a sediment delivery model. A recommended guide to monitoring parameters and methodologies is given in McCullough and Espinosa (1996).
• Monitor egg-to-smolt survival, total smolt production, and production per spawning pair in salmon-bearing watersheds.

• Re-survey watershed and instream conditions at appropriate intervals to document watershed recovery.
• Consider re-instituting low-impact activities in the watershed, floodplain, or riparian area when land use and instream habitat standards have been met. Do not revise land use standards to allow activities that have higher risk or foreclose management options until at least 90% of the managed watersheds in the Columbia River Basin either meet all biologically based habitat standards, or have shown a statistically significant improving trend (p<0.05) over at least a 5-year period, as documented by monitoring.

Short-term Present declining trends in watershed and riparian conditions will be slowed or halted.

Long-term Deterioration in in-stream conditions will cease. Measurable improvements will occur in most tributaries within a 10-year period of total rest. Full recovery will require a considerably longer period of time. The minimum set of monitoring parameters that need to be measured for all watersheds are those described in Rhodes et al. (1994). An extended set of monitoring parameters to be evaluated in selected, representative watersheds are described in McCullough and Espinosa (1996).

Survival rates for salmon and lamprey will increase and, given stable and/or increasing escapements, freshwater rearing populations will be large enough to provide a buffer against natural environmental fluctuations.

Watershed carrying capacity for salmon and lamprey will increase, natural communities and ecological functions will be restored, and fragmented salmon habitats will be reconnected by improvement in condition of degraded stream reaches.

Federal and state land and water management agencies: enforce existing land use and water quality laws and regulations.

Federal land and water management agencies and federal fishery managers: employ the Coarse Screening Process (Rhodes et al. 1994) in assessing consistency of land management actions with the goal of improving and protecting salmon habitat and populations.

Federal, state, and tribal land and fishery managers: develop various cooperative arrangements to accomplish the watershed and in-stream habitat restoration called for by the Coarse Screening Process (Rhodes et al. 1994).

Local Watershed Restoration Teams use the Coarse Screening Process as a tool to identify habitat problems and responses appropriate to local conditions.

Inadequate instream flows and sometimes the complete absence of water due to irrigation withdrawals have severely affected Columbia basin salmon. For example, within Idaho, inadequate instream flows and localized de-watering are significant problems in the Lemhi and Pahsimeroi rivers, the Salmon River mainstem, and several Salmon River tributaries.

Other significant Snake River tributaries include the Grande Ronde River in Oregon and the Tucannon River in Washington. In the Grande Ronde, except during spring run-off, water appropriations exceed average flow in all major streams of the basin. Studies have shown that salmonid production is directly related to the level of summer and fall flows in juvenile rearing streams. Although water rights for minimum stream flows for fish have been set at various locations in the Grande Ronde, the priority dates for these rights are too recent to provide any real protection for fish. Inadequate instream flows are also a significant constraint on fish habitat productivity in the Tucannon River basin. Other important Washington rivers in the Columbia basin where instream flows do not meet the needs of fish include the Methow and Okanogan, the Entiat, the Wenatchee, and the Yakima. Within Oregon, important rivers accessible to salmon where habitat productivity is significantly impaired by inadequate instream flows include the John Day and Umatilla.

Stream withdrawals for irrigation are not the only land use activities that adversely affect instream flows. Not surprisingly, groundwater pumping often reduces summer low flows (Rhodes et al. 1994). In addition, cattle grazing increases spring peak flows, while decreasing summer low flows. Cattle grazing decreases low flows by de-watering wet meadows by incised channels, increased overland flow due to compacted soils and reduced water storage in compacted soils (Rhodes et al. 1994). In general, mining, road construction, grazing, and tractor logging in wetlands disrupt wetland functions and reduce contributions to summer low flows (Rhodes et al. 1994).

Fish populations evolved, flourished, and provided large harvestable surpluses in watersheds with natural riparian areas and hydrologic regimes, including periodic flood events. Instream flows in the late summer were often fed by groundwater inputs, wetlands, and vegetated uncompacted riparian areas.

Establishment of instream flows and protection of riparian vegetation, wetland preservation, and prevention of soil compaction would provide sufficient water to maintain fish habitat for adult and juvenile passage, spawning, rearing, and maintain channel structure and riparian areas necessary for fish habitat to persist over time.

Short-term

• Mandate utilization of most efficient irrigation methods.
• Halt any additional consumptive withdrawal of water from salmon subbasins until adequate instream flows and tribal instream flow reserved water rights are protected.
• Assure that no consumptive uses are occurring in excess of the amount permitted.
• Meter groundwater and surface water withdrawals.
• Halt any further impairments of wetlands.
• Prevent additional soil compaction.
• Prevent removal of riparian vegetation.
• Prohibit activities that would contribute to the creation or maintenance of peak flows earlier or greater than those that would occur naturally.

• Establish instream flows designed to provide the full range of habitat conditions needed to provide healthy, naturally reproducing salmon populations.
• Identify, through negotiation or adjudication, instream flow water rights reserved by tribes' treaties.
• Implement actions to create wetlands, e.g., re-introduction of beavers.
• Implement actions needed to promote re-vegetation of riparian areas and de-compaction of soils where recovery is not occurring naturally.
• If necessary, initiate land management designed to return a watershed to a natural hydrologic regime, e.g., re-vegetation of areas adversely affected by past land-disturbing activities.

Short-term Halt the ongoing incremental losses of instream flows due to consumptive use or from land management activities that adversely affect natural watershed water storage and release processes.

Long-term Gradual improvements in the level of tributary instream flows. Increased spawning success and improved egg-to-smolt survival. As natural watershed processes are restored, more water will be available for instream and consumptive use year-round. Increased water use efficiency by existing consumptive users will, in some cases, result in greater water availability for additional consumptive uses.

Federal and state water managers are called upon to enforce existing water rights, implement moratoria on all additional withdrawals of water, meter water withdrawals.

Federal and state water managers must identify and assure implementation of best available water conservation methods.

Federal and state land managers must implement watershed protection measures to protect and improve natural watershed water storage processes. These efforts should be coordinated with federal and state water managers.

Federal and state water managers, along with federal, state and tribal fish managers must establish instream flows adequate to sustain healthy naturally reproducing salmon populations.

Some of the declining populations of naturally spawning salmon are at such low levels (e.g., spring chinook of the upper Grande Ronde River) that they may be extirpated before passive habitat restoration efforts yield significant benefits. Passive restoration involves curtailing or deferring activities that contribute to habitat degradation or forestall recovery. It is brought about by management that establishes riparian and roadless reserves and controls watershed-wide sediment delivery to streams to a level considered capable of allowing the stream channels to cleanse themselves of fine sediment, reestablish pools and channel morphology, and reduce embeddedness.

Active habitat restoration may be required in cases where watershed or stream restoration would not occur via natural processes for prolonged periods. However, past active restoration efforts (e.g., revegetating streambanks, providing instream structures, and obliterating roads) have frequently failed because of impacts (e.g., increased peak flows, sediment loads, and water temperatures) from cumulative actions elsewhere in the watershed (Beschta et al. 1991; Kauffman et al. 1993). Provided that land use standards are uniformly and consistently applied as described in Rhodes et al. (1994), including application of passive restoration techniques on a watershed basis, active watershed and riparian restoration (especially riparian planting of native vegetation, fencing, and road obliteration) will be an essential part of land management and restoration of in-channel habitat conditions.

Active habitat restoration is needed to maintain and increase productivity of some of the naturally spawning salmon populations in areas where habitat is most damaged (e.g., many portions of the Yakima, Grande Ronde, Umatilla, and John Day Rivers). When it is part of a comprehensive watershed-based program that addresses cumulative impacts to in-channel habitat condition throughout salmon-bearing stream systems, active habitat restoration will increase egg-to-smolt survival, increase the productive capacity of watersheds for salmon and lamprey, and help halt present declines in these populations. Volume II describes many active restoration measures needed in subbasins above Bonneville Dam.

Short-term

• Implement active restoration measures identified in the Subbasin Plans in Volume II. Develop a tribal watershed restoration trust fund to fund restoration actions and provide active coordination and participation in watershed restoration activities through the provision of no less than 1 FTE in each watershed. Ensure tribal participation and technical participation from the tribes in ongoing community based watershed councils to coordinate and implement watershed restoration actions. Organize community based watershed councils where appropriate.
• Develop, in cooperation with existing programs (e.g., Salmon Corps), active restoration projects in the Grande Ronde, John Day, and Yakima Rivers. Use, where appropriate, the Coarse Screening Process guidelines (Rhodes et al. 1994) and other techniques to:
• assist in the preservation and restoration of salmon populations identified as Badly Damaged and Declining by CRITFC (1992),
• reconnect fragmented habitat for Badly Damaged and Declining populations,
• address other problems identified in Volume II of this document, thereby restoring watershed-wide stream system integrity and improving chances for successful reintroduction to areas of extirpated salmon.
• Develop monitoring programs (baseline and trend, effectiveness, and validation at various geographic scales of resolution; see McCullough and Espinosa (1996) for discussion of necessary forms of monitoring) in association with restoration projects to document recovery trends in habitat condition and to further define relationships among land use, instream habitat condition, and salmon production. Use community based watershed councils to develop volunteer monitoring programs to be used in conjunction with other scientific monitoring. These programs need to identify key land use-salmon production interactions, and effective ways to improve watershed conditions that degrade or impede habitat condition and decrease salmon production; be oriented toward application of measures known to be effective in promoting instream habitat recovery; and provide quantitative evaluation of the magnitude of improvement and rate of recovery of habitat quality and quantity, and associated benefits to salmon and lamprey survival and production.

• Develop active habitat restoration and protection projects in additional watersheds as a part of ongoing and organizing community based watershed councils.
• Continue monitoring programs as needed for the purposes described in the short term.

Short-term Improvement in egg-to-smolt survival will be afforded some of the most threatened salmon populations (i.e., to those populations residing in watersheds selected as demonstration projects).

Long-term Assistance in rebuilding both the most seriously threatened salmon populations (e.g., Badly Damaged and Decreasing as defined by CRITFC 1992a) and also those populations that may be stable but confined to low production levels as a result of poor habitat quality/quantity or fragmented habitat. This is a result of improvement in habitat quality and quantity and stream system integrity. Survival rates and population densities for salmon and lamprey will increase, and thus restore a degree of buffering against natural environmental fluctuations.

The watershed productivity for salmon and lamprey will increase, and natural communities and ecological functions will be restored by increasing the quantity of usable habitat. In addition, connections will be reestablished among sections of fragmented salmon habitat, thereby improving stream system integrity.

By intensive monitoring of various representative stream reaches, entire stream systems, riparian areas, and watershed conditions in salmon-bearing watersheds, models used by land managers will be improved to better assist in controlling impacts or predicting improvements from restoration actions.

The ability to prescribe active restoration measures (e.g., plant species for revegetation) from identification of limitations to habitat recovery (e.g., riparian soil or hydrologic conditions) on a site-specific scale will improve.

Federal, state, tribal land and fishery managers as well as counties, local governments, and private landowners will be responsible for developing cooperative arrangements for land and water management activities that will increase salmon productivity using appropriate techniques. Monitoring must be used to ensure actions will provide increased productivity and to understand the connectivity of actions within the Columbia River Watershed.

Many naturally spawning salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin are severely depressed, declining, and will be extirpated unless effective remedial actions are taken immediately (Nehlsen et al. 1991; CRITFC 1992; Fryer and Mundy 1993).

Supplementation has been and is being used successfully to rescue endangered species such as the greenback trout (USFWS 1993), Lahontan cutthroat trout (USFWS 1992), and peregrine falcon (USFWS 1979, 1982) and for salmon in other locations (Figure 5B.2). Supplementation relies on the natural environment for the majority of the life cycle, and is less intrusive than expensive captive breeding programs. It is an appropriate tool for use with populations that are fragmented and declining, and where other remedial actions cannot be implemented quickly enough or on a scale that is large enough to halt further population losses. In these cases, survival of a portion of the natural population to the smolt life-stage would be increased by rearing in a hatchery. Conditions in the hatchery should simulate natural conditions as much as necessary to ensure that the original and supplementation groups are managed as one gene pool (Cuenco et al. 1993).

Supplementation has been successful in rebuilding salmon populations in Horse Linto Creek (Buck 1990; Farro 1993), and Red River (White and Cochnauer 1989; Cochnauer and Elam 1990). Volume II of this plan sets forth numerous tribal supplementation proposals. Guidelines and procedures for applying supplementation strategies to Pacific salmon have been developed (RASP 1992a; Cuenco et al. 1993) to ensure that the additional fish complement existing production and are able to survive and reproduce in the natural environment. Nevertheless, NMFS's policies on artificial propagation under the Endangered Species Act have prevented implementation of tribal supplementation projects.

Supplementation can be used to increase survival of naturally spawning salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin during the egg-to-smolt stage. This increased survival, in combination with other actions (e.g., passage protection and habitat restoration), is sufficiently large to halt and reverse present population declines.

Short-term

Implement supplementation projects that have met the screening criteria of RASP (1992b) and Cuenco et al. (1993). Volume II of this plan identifies supplementation actions for watersheds above Bonneville Dam. Table 5B.4 identifies facilities needed for broodstock and acclimation/final rearing for supplementation and reintroduction (hypothesis 5) actions called for in Volume II. High priority supplementation projects include:

• Entiat River spring chinook
• Methow Subbasin spring chinook
• Clearwater Subbasin (Meadow Creek, McGruder corridor) spring chinook
• Grand Ronde Subbasin (Catherine Creek, Lookingglass Creek, Upper Grande Ronde) spring chinook

Develop experimental and monitoring programs in association with these projects to study the relationships between natural and supplemented components of the populations.

Long-term

Continue the successful short-term programs and modify less successful short-term programs consistent with supplementation protocols.

Supplementation will 1) provide a refuge from severe environmental disturbance for a portion of native populations, 2) minimize further loss in genetic variability by stabilizing and potentially increasing the gene pool, and 3) restoring the role of salmon in affected ecosystems (Meffe and Carroll 1994; Brown 1995).

Salmon stocks at risk will be stabilized from further loss, with subsequent increases in abundance in naturally reproducing populations.

Supplementation projects will be coordinated through the U.S. v Oregon Production Advisory Committee according to the guidelines provided by Cuenco et al. (1993). Tribes and states will implement supplementation projects using the resources of the Mitchell Act, Lower Snake River Compensation Program, Northeast Oregon Production Project, Yakima Production Project, Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery, and other resources that may become available.

Salmon populations have been extirpated from many areas of the Columbia River Basin where productive spawning and rearing habitat remains (NPPC 1986; Nehlsen et al. 1991; CRITFC 1992). This has occurred for a number of reasons, including degraded tributary habitat, poor mainstem passage survival, and over harvest.

The present system of hatcheries was intended to replace salmon production lost when dams blocked formerly productive portions of the basin or flooded existing spawning areas. Although these areas were located in the upper basin, where tribal usual and accustomed fishing places exist, the majority of the mitigation hatcheries were located in the lower basin. Thus, the bulk of the fish produced by the mitigation hatcheries are not returned to the areas where the fish losses occurred and where tribal fisheries are located. Even where the hatcheries are located in the areas of loss, e.g., the Lower Snake River Compensation Program, mitigation was not always in-place, in-kind. Moreover, evaluation of these programs has been measured by the weight of smolts produced rather than the number of adults returned. As a result of these problems, tribal fishery needs are not being met, naturally reproducing stocks are in danger of being extirpated, resources have been optimized to produce smolt rather than adults, and the tribes' management authority over a significant portion of their historic fisheries has been diminished.

Supplementation can be used to reintroduce salmon to many areas from which they have been extirpated, given that suitable spawning and rearing habitat is available in the native range, and a suitable donor stock is available.

Short-term

Implement reintroduction projects that have met the screening criteria of Cuenco, et al. (1993) and RASP (1992b). Table 5B.4 identifies facilities needed for broodstock and acclimation/final rearing for supplementation (hypothesis 4) and reintroduction actions called for in Volume II. High priority reintroductions include:

Continue the successful short-term programs and modify less successful short-term programs consistent with supplementation protocols.

Total salmon production in the Columbia River Basin will increase through utilization of presently unused freshwater areas. The reintroduced populations may provide a buffer against extirpation and additional reservoirs of genetic resources.

Reintroduction projects will be coordinated through the U.S. v Oregon Production Advisory Committee according to the guidelines provided by Cuenco et al. (1993). Tribes and states will implement supplementation projects using the resources of the Mitchell Act, Lower Snake River Compensation Program, Northeast Oregon Production Project, Yakima Production Project, Nez Perce Tribal Hatchery, and other resources that may become available.

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