**FINAL**

**Minutes of the 20 April 2004 meeting of the Oregon Coast Work Group
(OCWG) of the Oregon and Northern California Coast (ONCC) Technical
Recovery Team (TRT), Adair Village, Oregon**

**Attendance.** *OCWG Members:* Chuck Huntington, Kelly Moore, Tom
Nickelson, Gordie Reeves, Pete Lawson, Tom Wainwright; *Staff:* Heather
Stout, Justin Mills; *Visitors:* Kaitlin Lovell (Oregon Trout), Jeff
Lockwood (NMFS NW Regional Office), Kevin Goodson (ODFW).

The meeting convened at 10:20 am.

**1. Minutes.** Minutes of the 16 March meeting were approved with minor
corrections. Draft minutes of the full TRT meeting on 16 December (Santa
Cruz) were distributed; comments should be sent to Heather.

**2. Historical Populations Report.** A draft of the report was sent to
co-managers on Friday (4/16). Comments are due back on 17 May. Heather
will be working on the web setup (including text for visually-impaired)
for the next draft. Roll-out of the public draft is planned for the last
week in June or the second week in July. There was some discussion about
this timing in relation to the planned release of the revised hatchery
policy and listing decisions, and the role of the population document in
the state review process. Pete will draft a letter to the governor\'s
office regarding the latter issue.

**3. Hatchery Policy Update.** Pete will be attending a panel meeting in
Portland this week to apply the revised hatchery policy to update the
status of 27 salmon ESUs. Nobody on the TRT has yet seen the revised
policy, which is reportedly just in brief bullet-list form at this time.

**4. OWEB Changes.** The resignation of Geoff Huntington as director of
OWEB (Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board) was discussed briefly.
Huntington is expected to remain as director until a replacement is
approved.

**5. Viability Committee Report.** The viability committee is making
progress, although more slowly than they had hoped. Tom N. and Mark met
with members of the Interior Columbia TRT to discuss approaches to
viability. The committee is working on theoretical extinction
probability curves as a function of habitat productivity and capacity
using three different models. Tom N has gotten updated habitat survey
data for the mid-coast; more updates will be following shortly, so we
will have an improved basis for running the habitat-based model. There
was discussion of how to incorporate habitat changes into population
projections when assessing future extinction risk. Two suggestions were
made: 1) we could look at trends in populations at high and low points
in ocean cycles to estimate long-term trends in rate of change of
habitat productivity, or 2) we could look at trends in the land area of
mid-successional forests as an indicator of coho habitat quality.

**7. Limiting Factors Committee Report.** Justin has been working on an
exploratory analysis of habitat data at the 5^th^-field HUC (Hydrologic
Unit Code) scale, based on data compiled for the critical habitat
process. He has graphed (for each HUC) the deviation of several
characteristics from the ESU-wide mean; this gives a relative measure of
condition, but makes no judgement of what is good or poor. Discussion
focused on making it more useful by scaling habitat values to some
reference condition rather than the mean; Justin has tried using the
Oregon Plan benchmarks as a standard, but there are some methodological
problems. Other issues discussed included how to tie in fish abundance,
how to combine individual characteristics into a single measure of
habitat quality, and how to treat non-habitat factors in the report. No
progress has been made on the planned Tillamook case study.

**8. Task Reports.**

*State-Federal Coordination*. Rosemary reported (in writing) on progress
toward forming the Oregon coastal coho "stakeholder team," her
presentations to the Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association and
Siuslaw watershed council, and participation in a Salmon Anchor Habitat
Working Group.

*Web Site*. Work is ongoing to improve our web site. Agendas will
continue to be distributed by e-mail, because the lead time for web
postings is prohibitive. We will pursue including links to guidance and
press releases. The public draft of the historical populations report
will be posted in June or July.

**9. Future meetings.** Next meeting 18 May at Forest Science
Laboratory; this meeting will include a presentation by Michael Pollock
and George Pess on their model of beavers in watersheds. The June
meeting may be a full TRT meeting, location to be determined, but
tentatively on 29 June.

**11. Public Comment.** Regarding the exploratory data analysis, Kaitlin
Lovell questioned the apparently inverse relationship between spawner
abundance and the habitat characteristics. Discussion noted that many
factors besides habitat affect short-term changes in salmon abundance,
including regional variations in ocean survival.

Kelly Moore raised a question about how we use information developed by
the state in our analyses; do we need a process of documenting when and
how we use their analyses? This question will be further explored as
those analyses become available.

**Adjourned.**