Independent Scientific Advisory Board

for the Northwest Power Planning Council

and the National Marine Fisheries Service

851 SW 6th Avenue, Suite 1100

Portland, Oregon 97204

ISAB@nwppc.org

A Review of Salmon Recovery Strategies 

for the Columbia River Basin

Peter A. Bisson

Charles C. Coutant

Daniel Goodman

Robert Gramling

Dennis Lettenmaier

James Lichatowich

Eric Loudenslager

William Liss

Lyman McDonald

David Philipp

Brian Riddell

ISAB 2001-7

August 22, 2001
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................III

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................................... IV

SUMMARY COMPARISON.................................................................................................................................. VII

INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................................ 1

MAINSTEM HABITAT AND PASSAGE........................................................................................................... 2

HABITAT

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ........................................................................................................................................ 3

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ..................................................................................................................... 4

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM........................................................................................................................... 5

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ........................................................................................................................................... 5

PASSAGE

CURRENT ACTIONS............................................................................................................................................ 5

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ........................................................................................................................................ 7

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ..................................................................................................................... 7

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM........................................................................................................................... 8

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ........................................................................................................................................... 8

SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

TRIBUTARY HABITAT................................................................................................................................... 11

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ...................................................................................................................................... 11

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ................................................................................................................... 13

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 18

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 19

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 20

HATCHERIES................................................................................................................................................... 22

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 22

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ................................................................................................................... 22

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ...................................................................................................................................... 23

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 23

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 24

HARVEST.......................................................................................................................................................... 28

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ................................................................................................................... 29

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ...................................................................................................................................... 30

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 31

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 31

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 32

MODELS, MONITORING AND EVALUATION............................................................................................ 35

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 37

BIOLOGICAL OPINION AND BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY .......................................................................... 38

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 38

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 39
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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CLIMATE, HYDROLOGY, AND WATER RESOURCES ............................................................................. 41

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 44

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 45

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ................................................................................................................... 45

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ...................................................................................................................................... 45

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 46

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS............................................................................................................ 47

GOVERNORS’ PLAN ......................................................................................................................................... 47

BASINWIDE RECOVERY STRATEGY ................................................................................................................... 48

BIOLOGICAL OPINION ...................................................................................................................................... 48

FISH AND WILDLIFE PROGRAM......................................................................................................................... 49

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................................... 49

LITERATURE CITED...................................................................................................................................... 52
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Executive Summary

Four documents containing strategies for recovering salmon in the Columbia River Basin have 

been issued recently: the Four Northwest States Governors’ Plan, the Northwest Power Planning 

Council’s 2000 Fish and Wildlife Program, the National Marine Fisheries Service 2000 Federal 

Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion, and the Basinwide Recovery Strategy (All-H 

Paper). These documents in the aggregate provide a federal and state agency roadmap for 

salmon recovery in the Columbia River Basin over the next decade. The four papers vary in the 

extent to which they are explicitly scientific, ranging from the technically detailed BiOp to the 

more general policy- and process-oriented Governors’ Plan. The purpose of this review is not to 

provide a thorough appraisal of the science contained in each of those documents individually. 

The question we ask in this review is: “Do these four documents collectively outline salmon 

recovery strategies that are likely to have a high probability of success?” In attempting to 

answer this question we considered different elements of the recovery documents, including the 

familiar “H” categories: Habitat, Harvest, Hatcheries, and Hydroelectric operations. In addition, 

we examined modeling and monitoring programs, climate and hydrology, and institutional 

arrangements.

Taken together, the four papers represent a realistic assessment of the problems facing salmon 

recovery in the Columbia River Basin. There is consistency in many of the kinds of recovery 

actions proposed in the documents, and the scientific bases for these actions are generally sound. 

However, the strategies as articulated in the papers usually lack details about how various 

recovery actions would be implemented (with the possible exception of actions related to 

mainstem passage) and as a consequence we were uncertain that the actions proposed in them 

will actually lead to salmon recovery. There is no doubt that the proposed strategies would result 

in some beneficial results for salmon, which is encouraging, but the status of many of the stocks 

has become very grave. Recovery documents containing explicit and quantified details are 

needed so that their sufficiency can be evaluated. We believe the four documents, collectively, 

fall short of providing this detail.

Two major positive trends distinguish the strategies in these documents from previous recovery 

plans: 1) they tend to reflect a functional ecosystem approach to salmon recovery, and 2) they 

make use of quantitative models to assess recovery actions, determine jeopardy, and to evaluate 

management alternatives. With regard to ecosystem health, the current documents emphasize 

landscape-based approaches and attempt to direct recovery actions at major components of 

salmon habitat in the Columbia River Basin. In contrast to previous plans, they address recovery 

of the estuary, tributary habitat, and features of mainstem habitat beyond water temperature, 

flow, and gas saturation. The documents propose a watershed planning process that tailors 

recovery actions to natural biophysical conditions of subbasins and provinces. The documents 

also acknowledge the importance of using natural conditions as a guide for restoration.

With regard to the use of models, the recovery documents place more reliance on mathematical 

simulation than previous plans. Extinction risk models developed by NMFS were used to assess 

jeopardy in the Biological Opinion, and the Cumulative Risk Initiative (CRI) model was used to 

assess impacts at different stages of the life cycle and to establish reasonable recovery 

alternatives. The Salmonid Watershed Assessment Model (SWAM), another NMFS model, is 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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intended for use in developing recovery actions for tributary habitat. The Northwest Power 

Planning Council uses the Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment (EDT) model to evaluate 

recovery strategies at the provincial and subbasin scales.

Conclusion

The ISAB believes the overall answer to the question of whether the four documents will lead 

collectively to salmon recovery actions that have a high chance of succeeding is probably no, 

although we do not wish to diminish the scientifically sound recommendations contained in each 

of them. We reach this conclusion for reasons that hinge on data gaps, conceptual gaps, program 

integration, and implementation of recovery actions. While we feel the strategies outlined in the 

documents offer some real advances in the science of salmon recovery, particularly with 

adoption of an ecosystem perspective and better use of models, important scientific data 

necessary to resolve critical uncertainties still have not been obtained. Shortcomings in program 

integration and implementation, inadequately addressed in the documents, are particularly 

troublesome because of the lack of clear institutional arrangements to carry the programs out. 

While implementation is not strictly a science issue, failure to clearly specify how recovery 

strategies would be achieved is a problem these documents share with many previous Columbia 

River Basin salmon plans.

Data Gaps. One of the fundamental shortcomings of salmon recovery planning in the Columbia 

River Basin has been the failure of management organizations to establish historical population 

and environmental databases. As a result, current recovery efforts rest on geographically limited 

data of varying quality and applicability. If reliable data collection protocols are not established, 

future comparisons to current data will have difficulty discerning whether population trends are 

due to real changes caused by management actions, changes in the environment unrelated to 

management actions, or just reflect the inaccuracy of historical estimates. This problem did not 

originate with the present generation of recovery documents, and in fact reasonable 

improvements in plans for future monitoring and evaluation are specified in some of them. This 

is a situation, perhaps unfair, in which it will be difficult to assess the effects of proposed 

management actions, and know whether to continue or change them, because baseline data are 

inadequate. To assume that monitoring strategies can be implemented in time to assess real 

changes in the 5-8 year time frame proposed in the Biological Opinion is unrealistic.

Conceptual Gaps. The salmon recovery documents too often fail to address important issues in 

a really meaningful way. Several examples are noteworthy.

ÿ Hatchery Reform. While all of the documents acknowledge the need for hatchery reform for 

a variety of reasons, it is not clear from them what they mean by hatchery reform, or how it 

should be implemented. There is a significant gap between concept and application. The 

four documents do not map a detailed strategy for reducing risks of harmful interactions 

between wild and hatchery fish, but instead defer to the Artificial Production Review (NW 

Power Planning Council Document 1999-15), which suffers from a similar lack of detail. 

The documents assume that supplementation will succeed in rebuilding populations and that 

artificial production will mitigate habitat loss – two frequent but unverified assumptions.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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ÿ Climate and Demographic Trends. While the documents acknowledge that environmental 

variation must be taken into account, they do not appear to be sensitive to the types of 

environmental variations that are systematic, that is, constitute probable trends. Two of these 

seem especially relevant to salmon recovery.

1. Climate Change. If current forecasts of climate change are correct, it is quite possible 

that hydrologic regimes in the region will change, probably with negative implications 

for recovery efforts. The documents appear to assume that the Columbia River Basin 

will remain within the range of climatic variations observed over the last century. They 

do not specify alternative actions if this assumption proves to be incorrect.

2. Human Demographic Changes. If current forecasts of human demographic trends are 

correct, increasing stress will be put on the basin’s natural resources and perhaps even 

more importantly, on the power demands of the hydroelectric system. This trend would 

have implications for any recovery program. We found few if any attempts to reconcile 

salmon restoration efforts with regional strategies for future population growth and 

development.

ÿ Tributary Habitat. The documents tend to lack a strong conceptual foundation for 

determining desired habitat conditions in a watershed, estimating the productive capacity of 

watersheds for salmonids, and evaluating restoration alternatives. Natural disturbances, 

usually viewed as undesirable, but in reality important for long-term salmon habitat creation 

and maintenance, are acknowledged in some of the documents. However, there is little 

indication of how managing the effects of natural disturbances such as wildfires and floods 

would figure in restoration programs.

ÿ Harvest. The documents do not provide the conceptual basis for establishing escapement 

goals for each production unit, prediction of adult returns, and plans for how harvest levels 

factor into conservation and recovery goals. All of the documents support selective fisheries 

based on retention of marked fish, but there are potential conflicts between such fisheries and 

the region’s coded wire tag program that has been fundamental to the management and 

conservation of wild stocks.

Integration. To be truly effective, recovery actions must be integrated in a way that 

strategically addresses problems occurring throughout the salmon life cycle. Plans can only be 

as effective as the weakest link in the chain of management decisions that influence life stage 

survival. Too often the four documents did not adequately consider interactions between policies 

that affect different salmon life stages in the context of the various Hs. For example, the 

potential interaction between habitat rehabilitation projects and population supplementation was 

not adequately addressed, nor was the potential effect of harvest on nutrient levels in salmon 

nursery areas discussed.

Implementation. In considering the four documents together, we found problems associated 

with implementing the proposed actions most troubling. There were several very difficult issues.

ÿ The level of institutional cooperation between state agencies, tribes, federal agencies, and 

private landowners needed to achieve salmon recovery in the Columbia River Basin is 

unprecedented. Fully implementing the proposed actions would require a level of 

cooperation that has never before been achieved, and the documents do not explain how this 

cooperation would be pursued. In particular, the documents reject mainstem dam breaching 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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in favor of aggressive tributary habitat restoration, but how coordination will occur between 

public, private, and tribal land managers to provide habitat improvement is inadequately 

addressed.

ÿ Details of recovery actions and implementation strategies are often lacking. In many 

instances the four documents present “plans to do planning”. The documents assume that 

details will be worked out sometime in the future in spite of the fact that it has not been 

possible to work them out in the past.

ÿ The documents do not provide strategies for dealing effectively with limited knowledge and 

high uncertainty in an adaptive management context. Typical management responses in the 

past have been to postpone potential recovery actions pending future scientific findings and 

actual population responses. Not acting is a decision and places the burden of proof on 

organizations attempting to conserve the resource (i.e., to demonstrate that a significant 

impact would be likely). Developing explicit strategies for dealing with high levels of 

uncertainty is a painful but necessary process.

ÿ None of the documents adequately explain the procedures and circumstances that would 

trigger a departure from their recommendations. As this report is being prepared, the 

Columbia River Basin is experiencing the most severe drought conditions since 1977 and 

many of the action items in the BiOp pertaining to operation of the hydrosystem have been 

recently modified to accommodate the need for electrical power production. However, the 

documents do not describe how or when such extraordinary circumstances might cause a 

departure from stated restoration strategies. Nowhere are environmental thresholds identified 

that would lead to significant changes in management actions, including abandonment of 

existing plans. Such a lack of specificity underscores our concern that these four documents 

may not have the collective strength to serve as a robust blueprint for salmon recovery in the 

Columbia River Basin.

Recovering salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin is an enormous undertaking, and 

the four documents represent a serious effort by state and federal agencies to develop a 

coordinated regional salmon strategy. Many of the scientific underpinnings of the documents are 

consistent with current ecological beliefs. The ISAB found relatively few instances in which 

they were clearly based on outdated science. Many passages in the documents appeared to be 

works-in-progress in which details, hopefully, would eventually emerge from subbasin 

assessments, experimental management, operational reforms, and research and monitoring. 

These details, of course, ultimately determine the documents’ successes or failures. We hope 

some of the ideas and suggestions in this review will be helpful to scientists and policy makers as 

recovery actions continue to evolve and monitoring programs are put in place.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Summary Comparison

The ISAB approached its task by asking questions of each document relative to factors important 

in salmon recovery, i.e., mainstem habitat, tributary habitat, hatcheries, harvest, monitoring, 

climate changes, and institutional arrangements. These questions are included in the following 

table as a way of framing our assessment of the plans’ collective likelihood of success. 

Additional details are found in appropriate sections of this report.

Table 1. Comparison of the four salmon recovery reports by topic area.

1. Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

Mainstem Habitat and Passage

The recovery documents recognize the issues of mainstem habitat (i.e., ecosystem structure and 

function) far more than did any earlier plans. The documents in aggregate are a significant 

response to the mainstem habitat and passage problem. Some aspects of the strategies represent 

a major evolution in thinking, while other proposed actions represent a continuation of previous 

recovery programs. The Governors’ Plan is essentially a statement of social (political) support 

for restoration activities. Next in level of detail is the Fish and Wildlife Program, which at this 

stage in its development is a statement of principles, goals, and general strategies. The 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy further outlines strategies, which are restated in a different format 

in the Biological Opinion. The course of action has a strong life cycle and ecological orientation, 

which represents a more realistic strategy than had been expressed previously.

The general optimism over the new plans for the mainstem depends, of course, on the level of 

implementation. The old plans had some action items and measures that were ecologically 

oriented as well but the action items were often ignored in practice. The action items needed 

now for ecological restoration are, for the most part, still largely feasibility studies. For 

restoration efforts to succeed these studies must be carried out and the proposed actions deemed 

feasible before full-scale implementation. In contrast, the traditional actions (e.g., flow 

specification, screens, transportation) have a momentum of past history that makes it more likely 

that they will be continued and even expanded incrementally, perhaps to the detriment of newer, 

ecologically oriented initiatives. For example, the artificial transportation program for smolt 

migration is still advocated in the Biological Opinion, despite a significant trend toward adopting 

an overall recovery strategy that moves toward natural ecological processes (either directly or 

through engineering designs that mimic nature), a direction the Independent Scientific Group 

termed moving toward more normative conditions.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Tributary Habitat

The Governors’ Plan and the Fish and Wildlife Program outline conceptual or procedural 

approaches to tributary habitat restoration but do not explicitly consider limiting factors or 

habitat performance measures. The BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy contain a much 

more substantive discussion of tributary habitat. The process for recovering tributary habitat 

relies heavily on a combination of modeling, interagency cooperation, and landscape assessments 

at the subbasin level. Real progress toward meeting regional goals could be possible if the EDT 

modeling effort of NWPPC is able to generate useful first-level subbasin assessments; if action 

agencies are able to agree upon robust and ecologically meaningful sets of performance 

standards; if there is adequate habitat and fish population monitoring; and if participating 

organizations can learn from past restoration failures and new scientific information. But a 

breakdown in any of these steps would significantly delay implementation of landscape-based 

restoration. Given current institutional programs, it is doubtful that monitoring will provide 

quantitative answers about the success of many tributary habitat restoration projects in meeting 

the goals of the BiOp within 10 years.

Hatcheries

The ISAB believes the answer to both questions is no. Little evidence is provided for 

anticipating that the hatchery reform measures proposed in the Artificial Production Review 

(APR) will improve salmon recovery. The BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy do not 

determine in a quantitative way the extent to which hatchery programs impact listed species. 

Since the magnitude of the impacts is unknown, any benefits from reducing the impacts of 

hatchery fish on native stocks are also unknown. Similarly, evaluations of existing 

supplementation and captive rearing programs provided in the documents are inadequate to 

determine if these activities can make significant contributions to recovery of listed species.

Harvest

The documents do not directly address harvest but rather assume that the changes in harvest 

management that have evolved over the past 10-20 years will continue, depending on the fishery 

and status of stocks. These changes include substantial reductions in the total exploitation rates 

on naturally spawning salmonid populations, fishing regimes responsive to changes in 

abundance, and management of total fishing mortality (i.e., catch plus associated incidental 

mortality). In general, the agencies preparing these documents are not responsible for these 

changes and do not regulate fisheries, with the notable exception of the NMFS or USFWS 

responsibility for jeopardy evaluations on ESA-listed fish. Consequently, authors of the 

documents cannot guarantee a continuation of harvest rate reductions assumed in their 

assessments, although if the productivity of the natural populations remains depressed, rates will 

likely increase. Each document supports the expansion of selective fishing techniques and, in 

particular, the development of mass-mark selective fisheries. The implicit assumption in massmark selective fisheries is that the total mortality of naturally produced salmonids associated 

with catch-and-release selective fisheries is less than the mortality in complete retention 

fisheries, and that the resulting harvest rate of wild stocks will be sustainable. Intuitively this 

assumption seems obvious, but it may not be.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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A related concern is the development of mass-mark selective fisheries and their potential impact 

on the Coded Wire Tag (CWT) program. The CWT program is essential to the estimation of 

total exploitation rates in fisheries by age and stock (natural and hatchery) and is the only means 

to measure these parameters. Yet continuation of the current rates of exploitation are the 

performance standards stated in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy. At this time, we are uncertain 

whether the viability of the CWT program can be maintained if mass-mark selective fisheries are 

implemented. The loss of information may be unacceptable to other fishery management 

processes outside of the Columbia River system. Obligations of the Pacific Salmon Treaty 

require that each country assess the aggregate exploitation rates over all fisheries and to ensure 

that this aggregate value is less than a maximum value stated in the Chinook Annex. It is the 

responsibility of each country to meet this requirement before additional harvest restraints could 

be requested through the Pacific Salmon Commission. 

Models, Monitoring, and Evaluation

The documents do not present sufficient detail with respect to monitoring. They are correct in 

identifying the need for a successful long-term monitoring program, but only a general outline 

for monitoring is given. Success depends on details of statistical design, and successful 

implementation will require the high level of cooperation called for, including give and take by 

all concerned: state and federal agencies, tribes, and private organizations. The recovery 

documents do not contain enough details for us to have confidence in the adequacy of 

monitoring plans.

Climate, Hydrology, and Water Resources

The documents do not adequately consider the interactions of climate and hydrology as they 

affect the natural and managed river system. Specifically, the importance of climatic variability 

from seasonal to interannual time scales in response to global climatic connections (felt primarily 

through variations in sea surface temperature in the tropics, which also affect ocean survival) is 

ignored. The documents also ignore the implications of long-term climate change, which is 

likely to result in permanent changes in the patterns of winter snow accumulation throughout the 

basin, and consequently the timing and amount of seasonal discharge. Implications for 

management of the reservoir system with an earlier spring freshet and reduced summer flows are 

likewise overlooked.

Institutional Arrangements

Based on the contents of the reports, the ISAB believes the answer to both questions is probably 

no. While the documents attempt to define the problems and identify desirable future conditions, 

and in some cases suggest measures to determine whether those conditions have been attained, 

they provide little guidance on how institutions can function more effectively to promote 

ecosystem recovery. With the exception of the Governors’ Plan there is no treatment in any of 

the documents of the probable trends in human population and economic growth and of the 

impacts these trends could have on the Columbia River Basin. In addition, there is almost no 

discussion of the complex institutional structure existing within the Columbia River Basin nor of 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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the ways elements of that structure might facilitate, impede, or otherwise influence planning 

processes and implementation of recovery actions. 

2. Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

Mainstem Habitat and Passage

The documents represent a significant change in the status quo. The current principles, 

justifications, and the specific recovery actions are strongly ecological and life cycle based, in 

contrast to technologically justified engineering fixes stressed earlier (e.g., specified flows and 

dam modifications). Many past efforts are also continued, but with a decidedly more ecological 

and life-cycle emphasis, e.g., an emphasis on more ecologically compatible surface bypasses and 

weirs for fish passage at dams rather than artificial screening systems. However, there are still 

vestiges of obsolete salmon biology in the Biological Opinion. For example, in section 6.2.9 it is 

stated that habitat features such as riparian vegetation, food, and rearing space are not needed by 

certain stocks in the mainstem. Such inaccurate statements have led to further simplification of 

the mainstem ecosystem based on a narrow view of protecting a few prominent stocks, when a 

return to habitat complexity is needed for the entire assemblage of diverse stocks and species.

Tributary Habitat

The greatest difference between the approaches outlined in the four documents and past tributary 

habitat restoration efforts is that these documents place much more emphasis on formulating 

landscape-based recovery strategies. This means that restoration projects will in principle be 

chosen on the basis of their overall contribution to recovery within the context of salmon life 

history needs (preferred habitats, seasonal movements) and the extent of habitat alteration 

(locations of habitat bottlenecks or high quality refugia) within the subbasin of interest. Whether 

implementation of tributary habitat restoration efforts under the strategies will represent a 

continuation of past programs or a real change in the status quo will depend on their ability to 

take advantage of recent improvements in knowledge of salmon life history and watershed 

processes. Agencies will have to achieve a level of communication and coordination that is 

unprecedented for such a large area, particularly because their mandates may occasionally 

generate actions that are contradictory. Habitat performance standards will need to transcend 

water quality hazard thresholds, the traditional approach, and take dynamic watershed processes 

into account. Subbasin plans will need to demonstrate a linkage between programs that show a 

concern for the entire freshwater life cycle of salmon rather than simply a collection of individual 

restoration projects. 

Hatcheries

The documents represent a continuation and evolution of past efforts. With regard to artificial 

production this may not be an entirely unavoidable or undesirable approach, at least in the short 

term. If an acceptable artificial production program is possible, designing or creating it is likely 

to involve occasional progress with many mistakes. Similarly, abandoning or substantially 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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curtailing artificial production, concluding that it is a failure, will only happen once stakeholders 

have exhausted their efforts to make it succeed.

Harvest

The documents propose both a continuation of the status quo and new initiatives. The general 

assumption that reductions in harvest impacts will be maintained is a continuation of past 

patterns. The development of more selective fishing techniques is an emerging idea, and is a 

significant change from the status quo. This change, however, has a number of concerns 

associated with it that were not fully discussed in the four documents.

Models, Monitoring, and Evaluation

With respect to harvest, hatcheries and hydropower, the strategies in the documents represent a 

continuation and evolution of past efforts in monitoring, evaluation and modeling. More 

emphasis is placed on monitoring and evaluation of management actions for improvement of 

tributary habitat for anadromous species and on the effects of hatchery produced fish on naturally 

spawning stocks. Also, more emphasis is being placed on monitoring reproductive performance 

of wild stocks throughout the Columbia River Basin, i.e., monitoring and evaluation of “fish 

coming in and fish going out” of natural production areas. 

Climate, Hydrology, and Water Resources

With regard to this topic the four documents do not present a meaningful change in the status 

quo. The inherent assumption in them is that the future will resemble the past. This assumption, 

which underlies essentially all water resource design and management in the Columbia River 

Basin and elsewhere, is now being called into question. 

Institutional Arrangements

The strategies in the documents represent primarily a continuation and evolution of past efforts. 

While agency plans have grown in detail and complexity, the primary focus is on desired future 

conditions, largely ignoring the institutional arrangements that have led to the current situation. 

Proposed recovery strategies, for the most part, rest on the assumption that top-down planning, 

informed by science, can restore productive salmon ecosystems. The Governors’ Report 

challenges this assumption, but presents little evidence that local planning will lead to a dramatic 

change in the status quo resulting in more effective salmon recovery actions.

3. Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

Mainstem Habitat and Passage

Recognizing that each report has its own specific objective, audience, and level of detail, the 

documents seem quite consistent about protecting and restoring habitat values in the mainstem 

and providing fish passage opportunities that better match natural migration needs. The 
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declaration of a flow emergency in 2001 that vacated the terms of the Biological Opinion and 

other recovery plans, however, raises important issues. What criteria are used to determine when 

fish recovery actions must give way to the need for hydropower? Some unwritten criteria were 

clearly exceeded in 2001. It would be useful to know what these criteria were, or alternatively, 

to see the plans establish a process for creating criteria explicitly for use in the future. The 

documents in aggregate are silent on such emergency criteria from the fish recovery perspective.

Tributary Habitat

The BiOp, Basinwide Recovery Strategy, and Fish and Wildlife Program outline a consistent 

course of action for tributary habitat restoration, and all three documents utilize independent 

scientific peer review (e.g., TRTs, ISAB, ISRP, RSRP) to provide external quality checks. The 

Governors’ Plan appears to be least consistent with the other documents. Although the section 

on habitat in the Governors’ Plan is brief, it is clear that it endorses restoration efforts designed 

by local organizations (watershed councils, city and county authorities) as opposed to efforts 

designed by large federal agencies. The Governors’ Plan, however, makes no mention of 

scientific peer review of local plans. 

Hatcheries

The answer to this question is yes, but the documents present a consistently inadequate course of 

action. For example, even though all four documents recognize a need for hatchery reform, none 

of them gives sufficient details describing specific reforms or plans of how to implement them.

Harvest

In general, there is a high degree of concordance among the four documents. They include 

strategies for maintaining conservative harvest levels and honoring treaty obligations.

Models, Monitoring, and Evaluation

Basically, the four documents are consistent in their call for aggressive monitoring and 

evaluation of management actions aimed toward recovery of threatened or endangered salmonid 

populations within ESUs and to support a sufficient abundance of anadromous salmonids to 

allow increased harvest. The ISAB suggests that Columbia River Basin managers (1) start with 

the present monitoring of harvest and the hydropower system, and add the first two tiers of the 

hierarchical plan identified in the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy for threatened and 

endangered fish species (including resident fishes) and their potential habitat, (2) continue the 

Council’s call for effectiveness monitoring of projects in the Fish and Wildlife Program 

consistent with Tier 3 monitoring in the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy, (3) implement 

the recommendations for monitoring of hatcheries called for in the ISAB review of performance 

standards for artificial production, and (4) re-evaluate the harvest and hydropower monitoring 

programs.
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Climate, Hydrology, and Water Resources

The four documents are consistent in that they assume that the future will resemble the past. All 

of the documents deal, in one way or another, with flow and flow augmentation issues in the 

Columbia River mainstem and major tributaries. Hence, even if not explicitly recognized, the 

use of historical observations to determine effects of altered operations implies an assumption 

about climate. None of the documents explicitly considers the implications of proposed changes 

on hydrosystem performance, particularly in low water years that are the basis for the critical 

period planning approaches used to determine firm power.

Institutional Arrangements

The four documents do not provide a consistent course of action with respect to institutional 

arrangements. Each of the documents has different goals and was inspired by somewhat different 

problems. The level of planning, key participants in identifying restoration priorities, and 

responsibility for monitoring and evaluation differs among the documents.

4. Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

Mainstem Habitat and Passage

For the most part, there was little in the four documents that described how management of 

mainstem salmon habitat and fish passage issues would be adjusted for changes in management 

actions with respect to the other Hs. Cross-linking of items in subsequent drafts of the reports 

could be useful for coordination within the Columbia River Basin. Thus, implementation of a 

certain mainstem-related Action from the Biological Opinion would be seen not in isolation (or 

worse, as a competitor with other strategies), but as responding to an element of the Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy, a principle or strategy in the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, and a 

general mandate in the Governors’ Plan. Although it might be seen as a bookkeeping exercise, 

such cross-referencing (including referencing the Tribal plan and Interior Columbia Basin 

Ecosystem Management Plan) could be the first step toward a mutually accepted, integrated, 

regional recovery plan.

Tributary Habitat

Tributary habitat recommendations in the documents, in general, are inadequately linked with 

recovery strategies in the other Hs. The Fish and Wildlife Program does, however, stress the 

need for supplementation to be linked to watershed condition and to be integrated into subbasin 

planning. The consequences of putting more water back into tributaries were not clearly linked 

to mainstem habitat management or water quality issues such as temperature and dissolved gas. 

The role of salmon carcasses as vectors of marine-derived nutrients in salmon-producing 

watersheds was not adequately linked to harvest and escapement levels in most of the 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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documents. Changes in habitat restoration tactics were not related to climate shifts or 

disturbance agents such as droughts, floods, or wildfires.

Hatcheries

Linkages are not adequately identified. Linkage between hatchery production and harvest level 

is recognized, but the problems of developing selective and terminal fisheries are not adequately 

considered. Comprehensive harvest management plans must also be developed to cope with 

hatchery production if marine survival rates improve. Linkage between habitats and 

supplementation is acknowledged, but how subbasin planning and habitat modeling will inform 

decisions on where and how much supplementation is warranted is not clear. The cumulative

detrimental effects of hydroelectric operations and other habitat conditions (e.g., water 

withdrawals) on mainstem habitats and how these effects limit the effectiveness of mitigation 

efforts using artificial production deserves more attention. A climatic regime shift producing 

abundant returns of salmon similar to those in 2000 and 2001 will undoubtedly create pressure 

for high harvest levels; how that pressure would be addressed was not articulated.

Harvest

Harvest is only one source of mortality in the life cycle of a listed population. The life cycle 

analyses and CRI analyses are appropriate means to integrate all sources of mortality during the 

life of these fish. More in-depth consideration of two issues could have strengthened the 

discussions of harvest. First, the extent of fishery impacts sustainable by a stock is determined 

by its productivity in the existing environment and the status of the spawning population size. 

To assess the appropriateness of harvest impacts for recovery requires establishing spawning 

escapement goals for each production unit (group of spawning populations), predicting adult 

returns expected in the next generation, and a management plan for harvesting surplus returns or 

harvest restraints to increase the spawning population sizes. The Fish and Wildlife Program calls 

for the development of these production plans (subbasin plans) but the empirical basis for these 

assessments in the basin is believed to be quite limited. Second, the ISAB is concerned about the 

identification of mass-mark selective fisheries as a harvest tool without considering potential 

ecological interactions between hatchery and naturally produced fish. Mass-marking of hatchery 

fish and the development of selective fisheries to utilize this production provide an incentive for 

maintaining large-scale production of hatchery fish. What is not considered in this plan, 

however, is the potential for ecosystem effects associated with the continued release of large 

numbers of hatchery-produced fish.

Models, Monitoring, and Evaluation

The four documents correctly identify the need for monitoring and evaluation of certain linkages, 

e.g., effect of naturally spawning hatchery fish on wild populations, effect of habitat 

improvement actions on returning numbers of spawners, and effects of supplementation on 

recovery of wild stocks. Generally, the documents continue to call for independent monitoring 

in the hope that effects of the linkages among the Hs can be evaluated. Examples of specific 

monitoring needs that have not received adequate planning include monitoring the effect of 

selective fisheries on wild stocks, monitoring natural survival rates of adult chinook in the ocean, 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

xv

and development of a permanent plan for monitoring of downstream survival of juveniles. In 

fairness to the documents, it is unrealistic to expect them to propose thoroughly monitoring and 

evaluating all linkages between the Hs. Given that limitation, the importance of identifying 

monitoring plans that respond to priority needs is all the more apparent.

Climate, Hydrology, and Water Resources

Linkages between climate, hydrology, and water resources and the various Hs are not adequately 

identified. Whereas there is some mention in the documents (especially the Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy) of the role of climate variability and change on ocean survival, it is basically ignored in 

the details of planning management actions except for changes in smolt transportation options 

during low flow years.

Institutional Arrangements

The four documents do not identify improvements in institutional coordination within the 

Columbia River Basin that would make actions surrounding each of the Hs more effective. A 

common view in the Columbia River Basin is that scientific research will identify and resolve

key uncertainties, and that once the necessary knowledge is obtained, effective decisions will 

become apparent. There are at least two difficulties with this belief. First, although new 

knowledge is always desirable and provides insight into unanswered questions, it invariably 

gives rise to new issues and consequently new uncertainties. Second, even if all the necessary 

data existed, it is unclear from the four documents that the institutional framework is adequate to 

utilize that information in appropriate ways to make and successfully implement decisions on 

salmon recovery. The region’s institutions may simply be developing recovery plans that are 

consistent with the current organizational framework. Insufficient attention has been devoted to 

improving the way institutions incorporate scientific information into recovery strategies, and to 

ways in which coordination of efforts undertaken by different organizations to improve each of 

the Hs can be made more effective.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Introduction

This report reviews approaches to salmon recovery put forward in four recent documents: the 

Four Northwest States Governors’ Plan (Recommendations of the Governors of Idaho, Montana, 

Oregon and Washington for the Protection and Restoration of Fish in the Columbia River Basin, 

July 2000, here termed the Governors’ Plan), the Northwest Power Planning Council’s Plan 

(2000 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, November 30, 2000, here termed the 

Fish and Wildlife Program), the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Biological Opinion (Final 

2000 Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion, December 21, 2000, here 

termed the BiOp), and the Federal Caucus Plan (Conservation of Columbia Basin Fish, 

December 21, 2000, here termed the Basinwide Recovery Strategy or All-H Paper). These 

documents in the aggregate provide a federal and state agency roadmap to salmon recovery in 

the Columbia River Basin for the years 2001-2010. In principle, the reports are in agreement 

about what measures should be taken in both the short- and long-term, and they are likely to 

provide the basis for allocating funds for salmon restoration projects.

There are other planning documents in the Columbia River Basin that are significant and 

important, but which are not reviewed here. These include tribal salmon recovery reports (e.g., 

Spirit of the Salmon Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi-Wa-Kish-Wit, June 15, 1995 draft), the US Forest Service 

and Bureau of Land Management’s Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan, 

referenced by the acronym ICBEMP (Interior Columbia Basin Final Environmental Impact 

Statement and Proposed Decision, December 2000), the USFWS Biological Opinion on FCRPS 

operations affecting bull trout and Kootenai River white sturgeon (December 21, 2000), as well 

as various state salmon strategy reports. Some of these documents are quite large and contain 

details about specific programs, implementation strategies, and monitoring.

The purpose of this review is to address just the four recent planning documents and answer the 

general question “Do these documents collectively outline salmon recovery strategies that are 

likely to have a high probability of success?” The ISAB considered the conceptual foundation of 

different elements of the recovery documents, including the familiar “H” categories: Habitat, 

Harvest, Hatcheries, and Hydroelectric operations (here included in a section on mainstem 

habitat and passage), as well as an examination of modeling and monitoring programs, climate 

and ocean conditions, and institutional arrangements. We did not review individual projects but 

rather evaluated whether the overall approaches expressed in the documents represented sound 

strategies in light of current scientific information. Each of the following sections contains a 

general summary and discussion of the salmon recovery documents. The conclusions of each 

section are presented as answers to a series of questions designed to evaluate the scientific 

adequacy, consistency, and integration of actions recommended in the reports.

The reports can be viewed at the following web sites:

Governors’ Plan

http://www.governor.wa.gov/esa/srn/recommend.pdf

Fish and Wildlife Program

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/2000/2000-19/index.htm

http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/2001/2001-8.htm

Biological Opinion

http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/1hydrop/hydroweb/docs/Final/2000Biop.html

Basinwide Recovery Strategy

http://www.salmonrecovery.gov/strategy.shtml
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Mainstem Habitat and Passage

Hydropower facilities and operations, primarily in the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers, 

constitute one of the Hs in the shorthand commonly used to categorize the several aspects of 

environmental changes affecting salmon recovery in the Columbia River basin. Hydropower 

facilities have traditionally been viewed as encompassing (1) the mainstem dams and reservoirs 

from Grand Coulee Dam to Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River and from the Hells Canyon 

Dam to the confluence with the Columbia River for the Snake River, and (2) the system of 

storage reservoirs used to reshape the annual runoff to better match annual power generation 

needs and provide flood control. Part of the system is federal (Federal Columbia River Power 

System; FCRPS) while the remaining is owned and operated by public utility districts. 

Anadromous fish are blocked in the Columbia at Chief Joseph Dam, the dam immediately 

downstream of Grand Coulee. Operations primarily consist of management of water flows and 

reservoir elevations to use the water supplied by natural runoff and retained in upstream storage 

reservoirs for hydropower production (mainstem reservoirs have little flood storage capacity). 

Releases from storage reservoirs also generate hydropower, which is integrated with the 

mainstem hydropower operations. These facilities and their operation have been viewed as 

affecting anadromous fishes, particularly salmon, by interrupting upstream and downstream 

passage (complete blockage at storage reservoirs), creation of reservoirs that alter migration rates 

(and timing), and effects on water quality, principally temperature and dissolved atmospheric 

gases. A broader view has emerged in the last half-decade or so. 

Although not identified by an H, there is another mainstem use that affects planning for salmon –

navigation. Navigation by barge between ocean ports and the “Inland Empire” extending 

upstream to Lewiston, Idaho requires stable water elevations in reservoirs and locks in dams. 

Use of the mainstem for navigation constrains management options for salmon in the mainstem 

in ways that are often greater than for its use for hydropower. 

Historically, a number of strategies have become engrained in regional planning for fish 

protection consistent with operating the mainstem hydropower and navigation system (and can 

be considered the status quo for gauging any changes reflected in the new set of plans). These 

strategies include fish ladders for upstream passage at mainstem dams, submerged screens in 

turbine intakes and their associated bypass facilities for downstream fish passage, regulation of 

reservoir elevations annually within a narrow elevation range (2-3 feet) partly to accommodate 

fish ladder elevations, flow augmentation from storage reservoirs to compensate in a small way 

during fish migrations for the major alterations created in the annual flow pattern (hydrograph), 

spill of some water over spillways during the downstream migration season to provide a 

migration route other than into turbine intakes, and collection of juvenile salmon at upstream 

dams for hauling by barge or truck (transportation) to points below the most downstream dam in 

order to fully bypass the stairstep of dams and reservoirs of the mainstem hydropower system. 

In addition to these implemented actions, several other actions have been included in previous 

plans but not implemented, including mainstem reservoir draw-down to speed migrations, and 

enforcement of annual rule curves for storage reservoir elevations that provide a compromise 

between water manipulations for downstream hydropower and the fisheries resources and 

recreation in the reservoirs. Each of these strategies had a technical/scientific basis that seemed 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

3

logical at the time it was initiated and enough supporting logic to continue, if implemented. 

Transportation was once seen as an emergency measure to counter especially poor migration 

conditions during low-runoff years, but barging and trucking smolts has become a mainstay of 

passage management in spite of a number of unanswered questions about its effectiveness. 

The mainstem issues are now broader than they were a decade ago. In the face of actual or 

imminent extinction of wild salmon stocks using the mainstem, and the necessity to produce ever 

more hatchery fish to yield acceptable harvest and adult returns, it was clear that a new paradigm 

or conceptual foundation was needed. Whereas the old paradigm considered the mainstem as a 

migration channel that needed structural or operational fixes, the new paradigm heralded by the 

Independent Scientific Group’s 1996 “Return to the River” considered the mainstem as habitat. 

The mainstem was recognized as an essential complex of habitat types needed for the life cycles 

of a diverse array of anadromous fish species and stocks. But the ecological functions of the 

mainstem had been so simplified and degraded by the dam-reservoir system that it needed to be 

restored, either by removal of dams or by structural and operational modifications that more 

closely simulated the typical functions. Major changes in thinking were needed, not incremental 

adjustments to old approaches that were demonstrably unsatisfactory or insufficient for recovery. 

The most controversial manifestation of the new perspective that considered the mainstem as an 

essential ecological support system for salmonids and other valued fish was the well-recognized 

drive to breach the four lower Snake River dams. Return to the River became not just a 

functional plea but a literal one as well -- to restore the free-flowing lower Snake River in its 

entirety from Hells Canyon Dam to the Columbia. Despite the decision to withhold that option 

until other alternatives are more fully explored (2000 Biological Opinion), that most drastic of 

fixes hangs over the region as strong motivation to seek and implement less socially disruptive 

but ecologically effective approaches.

This section evaluates whether a major change in perspective for the mainstem has been 

demonstrated by recommended actions in the current family of four management documents, the 

NMFS’s 2000 Biological Opinion on Operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System, 

the federal government’s Basinwide Recovery Strategy (including NMFS’s Volume 2, Technical 

Information), the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program documents available to date, and the 

Governors’ Plan. The critique of the strategies for the mainstem is divided into three parts, 

habitat, passage, and a summary that addresses the aggregate impression concerning the specific 

questions asked. 

Habitat

Biological Opinion

The 2000 Biological Opinion recognizes the significance of mainstem habitat for survival of 

salmon. Considerable attention is given to water management plans to ensure adequate flow for 

downstream-migrating salmon (Action 3) and providing a more natural spring hydrograph 

(Action 14). Included are water quality plans, primarily for temperature and dissolved gas 

(Action 5). Downstream migrants are to be monitored for the concurrence of high temperatures 

and disease (Action 141). Specific items are included to provide habitat for spawning of chum 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

4

salmon below Bonneville Dam, including flows (Action 15) and habitat modifications (Actions 

156 and 157). At a broader level, the BiOp calls for the Corps of Engineers to do a feasibility 

analysis of modifying its current system of flood control operations to benefit the Columbia 

River ecosystem, including salmon (Action 35). An objective of this analysis would be to 

reconnect the river with its floodplain and reverse riparian simplification. Agencies are to 

develop a pilot study to assess the feasibility of enhancing the function of ecological 

communities of the mainstem corridor, mainly to reduce predation losses and enhance survival 

(Action 105). BPA and other agencies are to survey mainstem habitats, develop plans for 

improvement, and initiate improvements in three reaches (Action 155). Extending into the 

estuary portion of the mainstem, the BiOp asks for inventory of estuarine habitat and restoration 

(Actions 158-163). The BiOp calls for monitoring of associations between salmon presence and 

habitat attributes (Action 180). Delayed mortality through the hydrosystem (extra mortality) is 

to be reviewed and studied by NMFS (Action 195). All transportation actions are to include an 

evaluation of delayed mortality of transported versus in-river juvenile migrants (Action 47). 

Delayed mortality is considered further below from the perspective of the effects of dam 

passage. 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The Basinwide Salmon Recovery Strategy, including its Volume 2, Technical Information 

(prepared by NMFS), explicitly recognizes the hypothesis in the Independent Scientific Group’s 

Return to the River (ISG 1996, 2000) that important gains in salmon productivity could come 

from increases in mainstem spawning and rearing habitat. The Strategy includes steps to test this 

hypothesis by improving mainstem habitats of the Snake and Columbia rivers and the Columbia 

River estuary. The report cites a study by Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and 

the U.S. Geological Survey (PNNL and USGS 2000) that identifies habitat modifications that 

have occurred and suggests actions with the most potential to restore mainstem riverine habitat. 

The Strategy outlines an action plan that would (1) develop a baseline data set; (2) develop and 

implement a habitat improvement plan that, insofar as possible, mimics the range and diversity 

of historical habitat conditions; and (3) develop and implement rigorous monitoring and 

evaluation that would guide the mainstem habitat program. Many examples of useful habitat 

improvements are given, such as excavating and reconnecting backwater sloughs, silted-in lateral 

channels, and alcoves; reestablishing and enhancing historical wetlands; acquiring and enhancing 

riparian zones; and stabilizing daily water levels below dams. The report specifically 

recommends actions to improve the spawning habitat for chum salmon in the lower Columbia 

River. 

The Columbia River estuary from the ocean to Bonneville Dam at river km 235 (mile 146) is 

singled out by the Strategy for more attention. Because relatively little is known about the 

estuary in relation to salmon life-cycle needs, a basic strategy includes (1) assessment, (2) 

adaptation of the current water-quality-oriented Lower Columbia River Estuary Program 

(LCREP) to the needs of salmon, (3) habitat acquisition and restoration, (4) floodplain 

restoration, (5) predator control, (6) education, and (7) a scientific monitoring and research 

program, focusing on a conceptual model describing critical linkages between estuarine 

conditions and salmon population structure and resilience. 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Fish and Wildlife Program

The 2000 Fish and Wildlife Program of the Northwest Power Planning Council expressly 

emphasizes a habitat focus. The Program “directs significant attention to rebuilding healthy, 

naturally reproducing fish and wildlife populations by protecting and restoring habitats and the 

biological systems within them.” Furthermore, the Program document states that protection and 

restoration of mainstem habitat conditions must be a critical piece of this habitat-based 

program.” The Program outlines a primary strategy of providing conditions within the 

hydrosystem “that most closely approximate the natural physical and biological conditions.” An 

element of this strategy is to “manage the hydrosystem so that patterns of flow more closely 

approximate the natural hydrographic patterns...” a feature that is essential to maintaining 

mainstem habitat features. It is an explicit strategy to “protect, and where possible, expand, 

mainstem spawning and rearing areas.” The current Program document does not go into detail 

about management of mainstem habitat. Rather, it stipulates that a “mainstem coordination 

plan” will be developed as a subsequent phase of the revision of the Program. This plan, to be 

completed by October 2001, is to contain measures for operation of the hydrosystem that mesh 

with the needs of the ESA-listed stocks. 

Governors’ Plan

Habitat reforms were key elements of recommendations for protection and restoration of fish in 

the Columbia River Basin by the Governors’ Plan. Although provided in general terms, the 

governors recognized the importance of available water, accessible habitat over and beyond 

current mainstem habitat (with considerations for reestablishing mainstem habitat upstream of 

the Hells Canyon complex), protection and enhancement of habitats in the estuary, and 

considerations of predation as a source of mortality during mainstem and estuary passage. There 

was emphasis on tributary habitats, with particular attention to watershed planning efforts in the 

interior Columbia Basin. 

Passage

Problems of fish passage at dams, both upstream and downstream, have received most of the 

attention and funding related to mainstem effects on anadromous fishes. This is not a subject, 

like mainstem habitat, that has lacked attention. This historical emphasis was justifiable, for lack 

of passage unequivocally ends a population’s existence. Such has been the fate of populations 

upstream of Chief Joseph (Columbia River) and Hells Canyon (Snake River) dams. The main 

emphasis was on upstream passage. The bioengineering of fish ladders since the 1930s has, on 

the whole, been a classic success story even though some problems remain (Clay 1994). More 

recently, downstream passage has come to the forefront as heavy losses of smolts were 

quantified, especially in passage through turbines (Whitney et al. 1997). 

Current Actions

Four notable areas of passage research have received attention recently. These are (1) reduction 

in turbine-induced mortality through development of more “fish-friendly” turbines, (2) 

development and testing of surface bypasses and collectors for creating passage routes for smolts 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

6

that more closely mimic natural migration and cause less delay, (3) improvement of upstream 

passage for lamprey, since these species do not pass conventional salmon ladders well, and (4) 

re-evaluation of adult upstream migrations for fallback of adult salmon at dams. 

Turbine-Induced Mortality

Mortality of 3 to 35% of fish passing through conventional Kaplan-type turbines in Columbia 

River basin dams has been well documented (Whitney et al. 1997). When migrating fish from 

the upper Snake River must pass eight dams, cumulative loss is high. Considerable effort has 

been spent on submersible screens to divert fish into bypasses at turbine intakes, but the 

protection provided still leaves many fish being killed or highly stressed in turbine passage 

(Mighetto and Ebel 1995). Recent attention has thus been directed at improving survival of fish 

passing through turbines by reassessing the engineering design of turbine blades and housings. 

Fish-friendly turbines are being developed by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department 

of Energy. The Corps has concentrated on minimizing the gaps between turbine blades and the 

housing, under the assumption that fish are being killed or injured by being forced through these 

gaps (NAI et al. 2000). Turbine runners (the blade assemblies) are slated for repair or 

replacement at most Columbia River dams over a several-year period, and upgrades for 

improved fish passage can be included. Such “minimum-gap runners” have been tested recently 

at Bonneville Dam. The Department of Energy is investigating two options, a minimally 

modified conventional turbine assembly and a new “Archimedes screw” design (Odeh 1999). 

The former could be implemented at current powerhouses; the latter would require a new 

powerhouse configuration. Both are at an early stage of prototype design and testing. 

Surface Bypasses

Observations that juvenile salmonids can be passed over dams readily in surface flows have 

stimulated development of surface bypasses (Whitney et al 1997; Johnson et al. 1997). Salmon 

migrants generally pass in spill when it is occurring. Surface sluices for ice and trash have 

passed a disproportionately high number of smolts compared to the amount of water spilled. 

Wells Dam, which has spillways on top of the turbines, passed large numbers of smolts in a 

small amount of spilled water. This was presumed to be because fish followed turbine-intake 

flows toward the spillways but then remained in the surface water to be spilled rather than diving 

into the turbine intakes. 

Despite a great deal of expense for design, construction and testing of prototype surface 

bypasses, performance has not met expectations. The main deficiency is the inability of the 

bypasses to attract fish to their entrances in the face of competing flows to turbine intakes or 

spillways. Studies are currently underway to improve recognition of the bypass entrances 

through induction of river-like turbulence as a guiding mechanism (Coutant 1998; Darland et al. 

2000). 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Lamprey Passage

Lamprey do not successfully use fish ladders designed for upstream passage of salmon. 

Although some are successful, the numbers are low enough that the lamprey populations are in 

steep decline. Lamprey adults are considered to be of cultural significance to native peoples and 

their juvenile stages have food-chain significance for Northwest river ecosystems. A small 

amount of research is being undertaken to improve ladders for lamprey passage (USACE 2000). 

Adult Passage

There has been renewed interest in adult salmon passage, particularly reevaluation of the 

accuracy of fish counts at dams, questions about inter-dam survival, and fallback of adults over 

spillways at dams. These problems have been addressed by research in the Corps of Engineers’ 

Anadromous Fish Evaluation Program (USACE 2000). 

Biological Opinion 

The BiOp addresses specific juvenile and adult survival levels during passage, both direct and 

indirect. The BiOp is “aimed at improving passage survival through the FCRPS dams and 

reservoirs” with actions related to spill, flow management, and improved passage facilities. 

Delayed mortality (extra mortality) as well as immediate mortality is to be evaluated both for inriver migrants and those transported (Action 47). Water management plans for flows emphasize 

assisting downstream migration (Actions 3, 14). Surface bypasses are to be included in projects, 

and the hydraulics of forebays studied to enhance attraction (Actions 85, 86). Fish-friendly 

turbines are encouraged (Actions 88, 89). Juvenile survival in the hydrosystem is to be 

monitored (Actions 185-190) and also in the estuary below Bonneville (Action 195). These 

examples are not comprehensive, but they give a flavor of the BiOp’s focus on passage issues. 

The BiOp is consistent with the Basinwide Recovery Strategy. 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The Basinwide Recovery Strategy includes actions to improve passage. Specific passage 

upgrades for juvenile fish and individual dams are recommended, including relocation of bypass 

outfalls, refined screens and bypass facilities, development of surface bypasses, spillway 

modifications and more effective spill, improved turbine operations and design, predator 

management, as well as habitat management in the mainstem and estuary. There are to be 

improvements in flows to aid migrating juvenile and adult fish. Flood control operations are to 

be adjusted to reduce risks to fish. Fish transportation is to spread the risk (mix transport and inriver migration), reduce trucking, and continue to study the delayed mortality issue. The report 

notes the need to have similar actions on the non-federal dams, although as part of the 

appropriate ESA consultations, FERC processes, and Snake River adjudication. The Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy is consistent with the BiOp. 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Fish and Wildlife Program

The Program recommends a much more biologically based passage program than in the past, 

with “actions to improve dam-passage survival that are biologically sound and economically 

feasible” and that benefit the “range of species in the river” (biological diversity) and that “fit 

natural fish behavior patterns.” Survival in the natural river is to be the baseline against which to 

measure the effectiveness of other passage methods. Fish passage efforts, as well as other 

hydrosystem operations, “should be directed at reestablishing natural river processes” with the 

strategy to “most closely approximate the natural physical and biological conditions.” Continued 

testing and development of surface bypass systems is called out, as is the relocation of bypass 

outfalls when problems with predation, injury, and mortality occur. Modification of turbines to 

enhance fish survival is encouraged. The habitat principles outlined above are applied to passage 

through reservoirs. While seeking to improve inriver conditions, the Council’s Program 

recognizes the value of smolt transportation as a transitional strategy, and endorses both a 

“spread-the-risk” approach of using both inriver passage and transportation, while giving priority 

to “funding of research that more accurately measures the effect of improved inriver migration 

compared to transportation.” As for habitat issues, the 2000 Program anticipates a more specific 

“mainstem coordination plan” by October 2001. 

Governors’ Plan

The more general Governors’ Plan acknowledges that the hydrosystem has been improved for 

fish passage but that the system still adversely affects fish survival. The plan supports further 

modifications to benefit fish, with expedited schedules. Preference is given to strategies that 

provide best survival in the river over transportation, which is seen as a transitional strategy. The 

importance of spill is recognized, as is the need to improve its use in terms of duration, timing, 

and quantity. Flow management is seen as a part of mainstem strategy. Although flow 

augmentation is controversial, there are positive attributes that need to be determined and used. 

Side effects, such as water quality issues need to be resolved. Cooperative agreements, such as 

those in place for the Hanford Reach, should be explored more widely. 

Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

Current salmon restoration documents recognize the issues of mainstem habitat (i.e., ecosystem 

structure and function) far more than did any earlier strategies. Specific approaches 

recommended in the ISG’s Return to the River are included as testable hypotheses for 

improvement of overall salmon survival. In addition, the more traditional approaches for 

monitoring and improving fish survival during hydrosystem passage are retained and expanded 

upon. These include spill, bypasses, intake screens, and transportation. In aggregate, the 

ecosystem and dam-fix approaches hold promise for increasing survival to levels consistent with 

population growth rather than continued decline. 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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The documents in aggregate are a significant response to the mainstem habitat and passage 

problem, and represent a major evolution in thinking. The Governors’ Plan is essentially a 

statement of social (political) support for restoration activities. This step is essential for success. 

Next in level of detail is the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, which at this stage in its 

development is a statement of principles, goals, and general strategies. More detailed courses of 

action are expected to follow as the Program is further developed. The Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy further outlines strategies, which are restated in a different format in the Biological 

Opinion (that also includes specific action items). The course of action has a strong life cycle and 

ecological orientation, which represents a more realistic strategy than had been expressed 

previously.

The general optimism over the new plans for the mainstem depends, of course, on the level of 

implementation. The old plans had some action items and measures that were ecologically 

oriented, too, but these were often ignored in practice. New action items for ecological 

restoration are still largely feasibility studies that should be completed and assessed. In contrast, 

the traditional actions (e.g., flow specification, screens, transportation) have a momentum of past 

history that makes it more likely that they will be continued and even expanded upon 

incrementally, perhaps to the detriment of the newer ecologically oriented initiatives. For 

example, the artificial transportation program for smolt migration is still advocated in the 

Biological Opinion, despite a significant trend toward adopting an overall recovery strategy that 

moves more toward natural ecological processes (either directly or through engineering designs 

that mimic nature), a direction the ISG termed moving toward more normative conditions. The 

ISAB has previously reviewed the transportation program, pointing out many problems with it as 

a recovery strategy for the long term. Only the operational recommendations to phase out truck 

transportation in favor of barging and extending the season to avoid selecting only peak migrants 

seem to have been heeded in the current plans. 

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The documents represent a significant change in the status quo. The current principles, 

justifications, and the specific recovery actions are strongly ecological and life cycle based, in 

contrast to technologically justified engineering fixes stressed earlier (e.g., specified flows and 

dam modifications). Many past efforts are also continued, but with a decidedly more ecological 

and life-cycle basis, for example, emphasis on ecologically more compatible surface bypasses 

and weirs for fish passage at dams rather than artificial screening systems. Previous recovery 

documents said little about mainstem habitat, whereas the mainstem is now recognized as having 

important habitat functions that can be managed uniquely.

However, there are still vestiges of obsolete salmon biology in the Biological Opinion. For 

example, in section 6.2.9 there are many notations that mainstem habitat features such as riparian 

vegetation, food, and space are not needed by specific stocks in the mainstem. Such inaccurate 

statements foster further simplification of the mainstem ecosystem based on a narrow view of a 

few prominent stocks, when a return to habitat complexity is needed for the entire assemblage of 

diverse stocks and species.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

Recognizing that each document has its own specific objectives, audience, and level of detail, the 

documents seem quite consistent about protecting and restoring habitat values in the mainstem 

and providing fish passage opportunities that better match natural migration needs. 

The declaration of a flow emergency in 2001 that vacated the terms of the Biological Opinion 

and other recovery plans raises further issues. What criteria are used to determine when fish 

recovery actions must give way to the needs for hydropower? Some unwritten criteria were 

clearly exceeded in 2001. It would be useful to know what these criteria were, or alternatively, 

to see the plans establish a process for creating criteria explicitly for use in the future. The plans 

in aggregate are silent on such emergency criteria from the fish recovery perspective. 

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

The documents could have done more to point out their mutual consistency, and perhaps point 

out a few items where they were inconsistent. Cross-linking of items in subsequent drafts could 

be useful for coordination within the basin. Thus, implementation of a certain mainstem-related 

Action from the Biological Opinion would be seen not in isolation (or worse, as a competitor 

with other strategies), but as responding to an element of the Basinwide Recovery Strategy, a 

principle or strategy in the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program, and a general mandate in the 

Governors’ Plan. Although it might be seen as a bookkeeping exercise, such cross-referencing 

(including referencing the Tribal plan and Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management 

Plan) could be the first step toward a mutually accepted, integrated, regional recovery plan. 

Finally, the dam breaching option is not dead, at least in the minds of a significant population of 

Columbia River Basin residents. These recovery plans will be held up continually to strong 

scrutiny with the breaching option as the standard for comparing ecological recovery in the 

mainstem. Whether or not that standard is realistic technically (i.e., will a drained reservoir 

readily return to a normally functioning river), it is certainly impressed into public perceptions. 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Tributary Habitat

The Fish and Wildlife Plan, and to a lesser extent the Governors’ Plan, tend to defer to the 

processes outlined in detail in the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy for protection and 

restoration of tributary habitat. It is in these two reports that most of the details regarding 

tributary habitat improvements are found.

Biological Opinion

All four documents divide Columbia River Basin freshwater salmon habitat into three zones: 

(1) tributary habitat, including all subbasins of the Columbia and their respective river networks 

(e.g., John Day River subbasin), (2) mainstem habitat, including the mainstem Columbia and 

Snake Rivers, and (3) estuary habitat, including the lower 235 km (146 mi) of the Columbia 

River above the river mouth. In terms of the number of identified action items in the BiOp, 

habitat actions account for 7.5% of the total (Figure 1). Approximately two-thirds of the action 

items are devoted to hydroelectric operations. This does not mean that funding for habitat 

improvements will amount to less than 10% of the Columbia River Basin salmon recovery 

budget, but rather that the BiOp was much more specific in terms of hydroelectric operation 

modifications than it was for other Hs.

Distribution of Action Items in the BiOp

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Development of 1 & 5-yr plans

Hydroelectric operations

Tributary habitat

Mainstem habitat

Estuary habitat

Harvest

Artificial propagation

Research, monitoring & evaluation

Percent

Figure 1. The distribution of action items specified by the December 21, 2000, BiOp 

among various salmon restoration categories.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Six tributary habitat action items are identified in the BiOp, representing 3% of the total. The 

objectives of these actions are given as follows.

• Water quantity – increase tributary water flow to improve fish spawning, rearing, and 

migration.

• Water quality – comply with water quality standards, first in spawning and rearing areas, 

then in migratory corridors.

• Passage and diversion improvements – address in-stream obstructions and diversions that

interfere with or harm listed species.

• Watershed health – manage both riparian and upland habitat, consistent with the needs of 

the species.

In abbreviated form, the six tributary habitat action items are:

Action 149: Bureau of Reclamation shall initiate programs in three priority subbasins per year 

over five years... to address all flow, passage, and screening problems.

Action 150: BPA shall fund protection of currently productive non-Federal habitat.

Action 151: BPA shall... experiment with innovative ways to increase tributary flows by, for 

example, establishing a water brokerage.

Action 152: The Action Agencies shall coordinate their efforts and support offsite habitat 

enhancement measures undertaken by other Federal agencies, states, Tribes, and local 

governments.

Action 153: BPA shall... negotiate and fund long-term protection for 100 miles of riparian 

buffers per year.

Action 154: BPA shall work with the NWPPC to ensure development and updating of subbasin 

assessments and plans.

These action items appear to be consistent with the stated objectives of the BiOp, Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy, and Fish and Wildlife Plan. Water quality and quantity are highlighted as 

priority resources for salmon recovery (Actions 149 and 151) and emphasis is placed on subbasin 

planning (Action 154) and riparian protection (Actions 150 and 153). Both the BiOp and the 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy accept the aquatic conservation strategies detailed in the ICBEMP 

preferred alternative for the Interior Columbia Basin, and in the Record of Decision for the 

Northwest Forest Plan for the Columbia River Basin west of the Cascade Mountains, as being 

adequate for salmon recovery on federal lands. However, there may be targeted projects on 

certain federal lands where outside funding (e.g., BPA) occurs. Many action items for tributary 

habitat, however, pertain to state, Tribal, municipal, and private lands. Although not explicitly 

stated in any of the four documents, the assumption is that tributary habitat on non-federal lands

tends to be of lower quality than in federally managed areas.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The short-term approach of the BiOp, Basinwide Recovery Strategy, and Fish and Wildlife 

Program is to undertake, as funding permits, an aggressive program to remove passage barriers, 

screen water diversions, increase streamflow, restore water quality, and protect high quality 

habitats through land purchases and conservation easements on non-federal lands. There seems 

to be little to question or criticize scientifically in this approach, as the benefits of each of these 

actions to salmon are readily apparent. Responsibility for implementing many of the actions 

falls largely on the Bureau of Reclamation, which will need considerable funding to carry out the 

objectives. Whether the actions are enough to make a significant improvement basinwide will in 

part depend on agency staffing and budgets.

The process for achieving long-term objectives of the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy 

(Table 5, pages 50-52 of Volume 1 of the Basinwide Recovery Strategy) rests heavily on 

subbasin assessment and planning, coupled with yet to be determined sets of habitat performance 

standards involving water quantity and quality, temperature, fine sediment, and large wood. The 

justification of this process, as opposed to imposing a blanket set of habitat standards and 

restoration guidelines throughout the basin, is that subbasin assessment and habitat standards can 

be tailored to the biophysical setting of the subbasin in order to produce habitat goals that are 

ecologically realistic.

Progress in achieving habitat recovery objectives will be measured by trends in the improvement 

of key habitat parameters: instream flows, amount and timing of sediment inputs to streams, 

riparian conditions, and habitat access. Accordingly, the condition of subbasins will be based on 

assessments using, for the most part, two diagnostic tools -- one carried out by NWPPC and the 

other carried out by NMFS. These tools, respectively, are Environmental Diagnosis and 

Treatment (EDT) and the Salmon Watershed Analysis Model (SWAM). EDT is an expert 

system and empirically based decision support model that relates environmental attributes to 

salmon life history-specific survival at the scale of a 6th-field hydrologic unit code (HUC). EDT 

analysis of Columbia River subbasins is currently underway and is schedule for completion in 

2001. SWAM is a coarse-scale model of the statistical association of salmon productivity with 

watershed characteristics at the scale of larger 4th- and 5th-field HUCs. SWAM analyses for 

several major Columbia River subbasins have been completed. Together, the outputs from EDT 

and SWAM are meant to inform subbasin planners about the current condition of the subbasin, 

and provide a basis for forecasting the relative improvement in salmon productivity that would 

result from different restoration options. According to the BiOp, these modeling tools will also 

be used to update CRI estimates of population change.

The ISAB is hopeful that the subbasin assessment process proposed in the Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy will succeed. It appears to be consistent with the goals of the Fish and Wildlife 

Program and, with limitations, the development of local recovery plans in the Governors’ Plan. 

One very important contribution of the salmon recovery documents, in terms of tributary habitat, 

is that they will force the region to undertake a thorough inventory of existing conditions so we 

can establish where we are now, where we want to go, and how we will get there.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Under the Basinwide Recovery Strategy, performance standards will be established for instream 

flows, amount and timing of sediment inputs to streams, riparian conditions (streambank 

integrity, large wood input, and channel complexity), and habitat access. The basis for 

establishing these performance standards is summarized in the following paragraph (Volume 2, 

page 14):

“... meaningful performance measures can be established to guide management. 

We will identify certain ecological problems that limit species productivity, steps 

that need to be taken to address these problems, and ecological and management 

indicators that allow us to judge whether the steps we are taking are successful. 

Because of the time needed to detect ecological and physical changes, 

management indicators showing that the right steps are being taken will be crucial 

for the first several years. Thus, both management and ecological indicators will 

be included in the habitat performance measures.

Ecological indicators must be related to the biological responses of the species of 

interest. Biological responses most sensitive to habitat changes are egg-to-smolt 

survival and the fitness of smolts. Linking these biological measures to 

performance standards that are good indicators of increases in salmon 

productivity (e.g., population growth rate) will provide the information needed to 

evaluate overall success. Performance standards can also be developed now that 

should be good indicators of increases in salmon productivity.”

These two paragraphs express a sense of optimism that tributary habitat recovery can be 

addressed by what amounts to a three-step process: (1) identifying environmental factors limiting 

salmon production, (2) establishing a quantitative relationship between egg-to-smolt survival and 

changes in each of the limiting factors, and (3) determining the effect of management actions on 

changes in each of the limiting factors.

Consider each of these steps, beginning with limiting factor analysis. Although it is not 

explicitly stated in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy, freshwater limiting factors for salmon 

populations in any given subbasin will not be known with a high degree of certainty and are 

likely to change from year to year. The documents suggest they will be identified using EDT, 

SWAM, or some other expert system tool. Being able to determine the relationship between 

changes in these factors and changes in egg-to-smolt survival requires actual data or a model. 

Since, for the most part, data will not be available within the subbasin and for the species in 

question, models of the incremental response of survival to changes in environmental variables, 

usually based on laboratory experiments, are likely to be employed. Finally, because of delays 

between restoration implementation and the condition of the presumed limiting factor (e.g., the 

time it would take a riparian zone to begin producing large wood for stream habitat after riparian 

grazing damage was ended), it is likely that models will be used to forecast expected 

improvements in the performance measures within the timelines of the BiOp and Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy.

Thus for each step in the process, management decisions will probably be based on response 

models. While this may be unavoidable, habitat managers should be aware of some potential 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

15

pitfalls. First and most important is the problem that any assessment of limiting factors will be 

constrained by the possibilities being considered. If only four factor categories are included in 

assessments (instream flow, sediment input, riparian condition, and habitat access), conclusions 

will point to one or more of these environmental factors as being limiting. Other potentially 

important factors, e.g., nutrients, are not even considered. This may or may not be a problem, 

but we will not know unless assessments are broadened.

Second, the current process outlined in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy is unclear about how 

interactions between habitat factors are treated. The effect of one factor on salmon survival may 

be strongly influenced by the state of other factors, and both EDT and SWAM will need to 

account for such interactions.

Third, most habitat models do not consider landscape-level disturbances, except perhaps as 

exogenous events that contribute to habitat degradation. While wildfires result in short-term 

increases in stream temperature and sedimentation, in the long term they serve the important 

ecological function of contributing new wood, coarse sediment, and nutrients to streams – all 

needed for salmon productivity. Provisions for restoring or emulating natural disturbances are 

not adequately addressed in any of the four documents, yet they were a major consideration in 

ICBEMP. None of the performance standards in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy is discussed 

in the context of natural disturbance and recovery. However, the Fish and Wildlife Program does 

acknowledge that watersheds are dynamic, and that recovery strategies should be matched to a 

habitat’s potential for regaining ecological functions.

Finally, the emphasis on modeling to establish performance standards and evaluate their efficacy 

can lead to modeling wars, in which putative relationships between environmental parameters 

and salmon survival are used to shape policy recommendations that serve different interests. 

Although the Basinwide Recovery Strategy expresses optimism that consensus can be achieved 

through the subbasin assessment and planning process it remains to be seen whether scientists in 

the region can agree on consensus performance standards for tributary habitats, as attempts to do 

this in the past have generally not been successful.

Streamflow

In a very basic sense, the documents correctly identify one of the fundamental habitat problems 

in the Columbia River Basin – there is not enough water to provide for salmon and all other 

potentially beneficial human uses. Taking action to improve water quantity and quality may well 

be the single most important step in tributary habitat recovery. Surprisingly, there are relatively 

few analyses of the relation between salmon productivity and streamflow, and those that exist 

were largely conducted outside the Columbia River Basin. Yet nearly all have identified a 

positive association between the quantity of streamflow available for juvenile salmon rearing and 

the rate of subsequent adult return (e.g., Smoker 1955; Scarnecchia 1981; Botkin et al. 1995).

Of course, the number of salmon returning to the Columbia River is strongly influenced by ocean 

conditions and other factors. In fact, the biological details of the positive association between 

discharge and subsequent run size are very much open to debate. Nevertheless, the relationship 

of fresh water quantity to salmon productivity does provide circumstantial evidence that 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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improving streamflow, especially during years when water is scarce, will aid salmon recovery. 

The phrase “just add water”, while certainly oversimplifying the needs of tributary habitat, may 

contain enough truth to anchor many restoration projects.

Whether the strategies are able to mount water conservation programs effective enough to really 

make a difference is another question, particularly during drought years such as 2000-2001 when 

water is scarce. Water in many important salmon-producing rivers in the Columbia River Basin 

is already oversubscribed, and much has been written about western water law and the attitudes 

of local landowners toward water buy-back programs. There have been successes, but there have 

also been failures. If the voluntary water brokerage program (Action 151) is to work, it will 

require considerable funding, strong BPA and BOR leadership, and most importantly, local 

political support. This will not be easy, and it may take decades to fully implement.

A second important unknown is whether federal agencies will be able to agree upon a 

methodology for estimating instream flow needs. The Basinwide Recovery Strategy states that 

in 2001 “BPA will fund development of a methodology for ascertaining instream flows that meet 

ESA requirements” (Basinwide Recovery Strategy, Volume 2, page 7). The most widely used 

methodology is currently the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM), but use of this 

method has also been widely criticized (e.g., Annear and Conder 1984; Mathur et al. 1985; 

Hatfield and Bruce 2000; Kondolf et al. 2000) if not thoroughly calibrated with local data. It is 

possible that EDT will be used to estimate needed instream flows, but this is not explicitly stated 

in any of the documents. The Basinwide Recovery Strategy also suggests that ESA and Clean 

Water Act Total Mean Daily Loading (TMDL) flow requirements be combined. This objective 

will require a high level of agency coordination.

Barrier Removal

All four documents also emphasize the removal of barriers to fish passage as an important shortterm tributary habitat remedy. In a sense removing an unnatural barrier is equivalent to adding 

water; in both cases new habitat becomes available. Although there have been many surveys of 

fish passage barriers in the Columbia River Basin, many more are needed, including assessments 

of barriers to upstream juvenile passage – one of the most overlooked aspects of fish blockage 

problems. State agencies and tribes usually take the lead in surveying non-federal lands, while 

the USFS and BLM do most of the surveys on federal lands.

Road crossings are an especially significant problem. A number of guidelines for adult salmon 

passage at road crossings exist. Recently, the USFS has developed a diagnostic tool for 

identifying passage problems at road crossings (see www.stream.fs.fed.us/fishxing) as part of its 

new road policy. Improved coordination and data sharing among federal and state agencies, and 

tribes, could speed the inventory process and facilitate identification of areas for priority 

attention. There are also other types of barriers that deserve attention including temporary pushup dams, permanent low-head dams for irrigation and livestock water, and dewatering that 

creates intermittently flowing channels.

Barrier removal constitutes a potentially powerful tactic for improving tributary habitat but if 

overall survival of a population is limited by degraded habitat in the lower reaches of the river, 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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improving habitat in the upper reaches will not solve the problem. However, it is worth noting 

that high quality habitats may be located upstream from natural barriers such as waterfalls. 

There will be inevitable pressure to provide fish passage around natural barriers, but doing so 

places native biota above them at risk when salmon and steelhead act as competitors, predators, 

or disease vectors. The ISAB cautions against providing passage around natural barriers until 

site-specific ecological consequences of doing so are understood.

Measures of Restoration Success

The habitat parameters suggested in Volume 1, Table 3 (page 40) of the Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy (stream miles meeting water quality standards, stream miles with adequate instream 

flows, stream miles opened to fish access, number of diversion areas screened, acres or miles of 

riparian habitat protected/restored) do represent useful measures of recovery success, and we 

hope serious efforts are made to inventory them on an ongoing basis. These performance 

measures are to be used in EDT analyses to estimate potential benefits from habitat actions and 

to gauge success “using a scientifically focused and rigorous evaluation program” (page 41). 

The ISAB notes that such a program has not yet been developed, nor have details of who will 

fund and carry out monitoring studies been given. We further note that the suggested 

performance measures deal mostly with streamflow, water diversion screening, and access. 

Other potential limiting factors (sediment, temperature, large wood, and habitat complexity) are 

not mentioned. While there are significant methodological problems in obtaining accurate 

samples of these other factors, ignoring them in tributary habitat monitoring programs seems 

risky. Perhaps a reasonable solution would be to fund intensive monitoring programs in 

subbasins that have been identified as priority areas for immediate restoration (Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy, Table 2, Volume 2, page 17) and including a broad suite of habitat variables.

Action 179 of the BiOp calls for completion of NMFS’ viable salmonid population (VSP) 

analysis by 2003. This analysis will include establishing recovery goals for each ESU, to be 

carried out by Technical Recovery Teams (TRTs). In Table 9.6-4 of the RPA chapter (page 9-

164), habitat capacity for each ESU is to be determined in 9-10 months, evaluation of multiple 

management options involving the four Hs is to be completed in 12-18 months, and based on 

subbasin assessments, to identify the principal factors responsible for population declines by 1.5 

years. This is an extremely optimistic timetable. Validation of the SWAM model, which 

estimates watershed capacity, will need to be completed in a wide variety of biophysical settings. 

Habitat capacity will vary from year to year in response to climate and disturbance frequency, so 

there will be wide variation around capacity estimates. As a result, predicting the incremental 

improvement in salmon production -- egg-to-smolt survival and smolt condition -- resulting from 

habitat restoration will have a very high level of uncertainty. Table 4 in Volume 2 of the 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy (page 33) estimates incremental increases in smolt production for 

five ESUs if overall habitat conditions were improved from “fair” to “good”. These estimates 

range from near zero to 80%, with an average variability in the estimate being on the order of 30-

50%. This contrasts markedly with incremental estimates of smolt survival improvements at 

dams (often given with two significant digits), where more data are available.

Finally, there are challenges in relating fish population response to management actions. On one 

hand, long-term records of abundance, e.g., spawner counts from index streams or experimental 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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watershed studies in which populations have been monitored over time, have proven quite useful 

for detecting trends (Hall et al. 1987; Hartman and Scrivener 1990; Kareiva et al. 2000). On the 

other hand, analyses of salmonid population variability have demonstrated the difficulty of 

detecting the signature of management effects such as habitat degradation or restoration activities 

(Lichatowich and Cramer 1979; Hall and Knight 1981; Hall 1984; Hilborn and Winton 1993). In 

the Pacific Northwest, multi-year salmonid population studies have estimated an average 

interannual coefficient of variation for coho, steelhead, and sea-run cutthroat trout juveniles, 

smolts, and adults to be approximately 50-60% (National Research Council 1996). In a separate 

and independent analysis of salmonid metadata from the Columbia River Basin, Ham and 

Pearsons (2000) estimated an interannual coefficient of variation for fall chinook, spring 

chinook, and steelhead adults of 70-80%. If these two fairly similar estimates approximate the 

interannual variability of anadromous salmonid populations, it will take two or more decades to 

statistically detect all but the most dramatic of changes in population responses to habitat 

restoration. Similar problems occur in trying to decipher management-related change in resident 

fishes (Rieman and Myers 1996; Maxell 1999). And this assumes that population estimates are 

accurate; if they are in error as is likely the case (Dunham et al. 2001), the ability to detect 

change is further limited.

There is also a time lag between physical cause and biological response that further complicates 

tributary habitat restoration assessment. Changes in land management may take decades to 

produce significant changes in stream channels or fish populations. In some cases, delayed 

responses are precipitated by rare natural events in watersheds where management activities 

occurred years before (Harding et al. 1998; Ziemer 1998). By the time changes are detected 

(assuming that we can even detect them) there is likely little that can be done (Montgomery 

1995).

This is not to say that fish populations should not be monitored. They should (Botkin et al. 

2000). Repeated population censuses are essential for trend detection and for certain types of 

environmental correlation analysis. However, abundance estimates will probably not yield 

answers to habitat restoration questions over time periods that are less than several salmon 

generations. Evaluating population performance standards is likely to be stymied by the 

inherently high levels of variability and the difficulty of achieving accurate censuses.

For all these reasons the ISAB is concerned that tributary habitat monitoring programs will not 

be up to the task of providing timely answers within the 3, 5, 8, and 10-year checkpoints 

identified in the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy. Without this information it will be 

difficult to accurately model population change using the CRI technique.

Fish and Wildlife Program

The Fish and Wildlife program, while conceptual in nature, has a very strong habitat emphasis. 

Each of the eight scientific principles providing the foundation for the program relates to some 

aspect of ecological function provided by natural habitats. The ISAB agrees that these principles 

are consistent with current scientific knowledge.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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The ISAB also agrees that the strategy of applying different habitat protection or recovery tactics 

to different parts of the landscape depending on whether habitat condition is currently “intact”, 

“restorable”, “compromised”, or “blocked” makes ecological sense. Such a hierarchical 

approach is similar to the approach recommended by the Natural Research Council in Upstream

(NRC 1996). The table outlining possible restoration strategies under different levels of habitat 

degradation is one of the few instances in any of the documents where habitat actions are linked 

to appropriate artificial production strategies. While the decision on what type of artificial 

production, if any, is needed in a given watershed is ultimately a policy call, it was gratifying to 

see an explicit connection between habitat condition and hatchery options.

The strategy of building outward from core areas of healthy populations in intact habitats is 

consistent with metapopulation theory, and is similar to the approach recommended in ICBEMP 

(for the interior Columbia River Basin) and the Northwest Forest Plan (for that part of the Basin 

west of the Cascade Mountains). The development of subbasin plans is highlighted in the Fish 

and Wildlife Program, and the procedure is essentially that described above for the Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy. The ISAB hopes that subbasin plans will follow the strategy outlined in the 

Fish and Wildlife Program and work toward building an interconnected network of good quality 

habitats along the river systems. The subbasin planning and development process, however, has 

not yet taken place so we have no basis at this time of judging how well subbasin plans will 

adhere to this principle.

Governors’ Plan

The Governors’ Plan is very general with respect to tributary habitat recovery. The primary 

emphasis is placed on enhancing partnerships between federal, state, and private habitat 

managers. The Governors’ Plan supports voluntary water conservation measures and “the 

development of water markets to effect changes among willing buyers and sellers”. The plan 

also endorses the creation of salmon sanctuaries; however, no details are given other than a 

comment that efforts should be focused on locations that promise the greatest benefits for fish.

In emphasizing the importance of local recovery planning, the Governors’ Plan seems to imply 

that tributary restoration strategies developed by local and tribal governments will be somehow 

more effective than federally imposed plans. No scientific reasons are given to support this 

assumption. The Governors’ Plan also asserts that state, not federal, authorities designate 

priority watersheds for subbasin planning.

With respect to federally managed lands in the interior Columbia Basin, the Governors’ Plan 

concludes that modifications to current management practices are needed. The statement that 

“the interior Columbia River Basin needs a balanced strategy that can provide for stable and 

predictable multiple-use management on federal lands for fish and wildlife and other uses while 

permitting needed flexibility, particularly on private lands” was very difficult to interpret but 

seems to affirm the states’ position that protection of fish and wildlife habitat on federal forests 

and rangeland should be held to a higher standard than on state-regulated lands.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

The Governors’ Plan and the Fish and Wildlife Program outline conceptual or procedural 

approaches to tributary habitat restoration, but they do not explicitly consider limiting factors or 

habitat performance measures. Because they lack technical details, it is impossible to judge 

scientifically whether they represent an adequate response to the problem. The Fish and Wildlife 

Program, however, does rest on sound ecological principles and identifies geographic subunits 

within the Columbia River Basin – ecoprovinces and subbasins – that bound bioregional habitat 

recovery planning. Some ecoprovinces roughly correspond to ESU designations for listed 

salmon, and it is gratifying to see analysis and planning efforts matched to the geographical 

distribution of target species. However, the Governors’ Plan and Fish and Wildlife Plan do not 

provide enough detail to answer the question of scientific adequacy.

The BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy contain a much more substantive discussion of 

tributary habitat. The process for recovering tributary habitat relies heavily on a combination of 

modeling, interagency cooperation, and landscape assessments at the subbasin level. The 

approach holds promise, but there are many pitfalls. If the EDT modeling effort of NWPPC is 

able to generate useful first-level subbasin assessments, if action agencies are able to agree upon 

robust and ecologically meaningful sets of performance standards, if there is adequate habitat and 

fish population monitoring, and if participating organizations can learn from past restoration 

failures and recent scientific information, real progress will be possible.

It is doubtful, however, that monitoring will provide quantitative answers about the progress of 

many tributary habitat restoration projects toward meeting the goals of the BiOp by 2010. That 

time period is just too short.

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The greatest difference between the approaches outlined in the documents and past tributary 

habitat restoration efforts is that the documents place much more emphasis on formulating 

landscape-based recovery strategies. This means that restoration projects will in principle be

chosen on the basis of their overall contribution to recovery within the context of salmon life 

history needs (preferred habitats, seasonal movements) and the extent of habitat alteration 

(locations of habitat bottlenecks or high quality refugia) within the subbasin of interest. The 

ISAB applauds this broad-scale approach.

The documents, for the most part, do not provide details but instead set forth general habitat 

goals. Whether implementation of tributary habitat restoration efforts under the documents will 

represent a continuation of past programs or a real change in the status quo will depend on their 

ability to take advantage of recent improvements in knowledge of salmon life history and 

watershed processes. The pitfalls of many current approaches are familiar to those who have had 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

21

a long history working in the Columbia River Basin. Consensus on anything related to salmon is 

nearly impossible to reach, and there is little reason to believe that tributary habitat issues will be 

any different from the contentious issues of dam breaching and hatchery operations. Agencies 

will have to achieve a level of communication and coordination that is unprecedented for such a 

large area, particularly as their mandates may occasionally generate actions that are 

contradictory.

Habitat performance standards will need to transcend water quality hazard thresholds, the 

traditional approach, and take dynamic watershed processes into account. Subbasin plans will 

need to demonstrate a linkage between programs that shows a concern for the entire freshwater 

life cycle of salmon rather than simply a collection of individual restoration projects. If these 

pitfalls can be avoided and habitat improvement actually speeds up, and if the Columbia River 

Basin enters a period of favorable ocean survival, increased adult returns may provide the fish to 

accelerate recovery of wild salmon populations in tributaries.

Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

The BiOp, Basinwide Recovery Strategy, and Fish and Wildlife Program outline a consistent 

course of action for tributary habitat restoration, and all three documents utilize scientific peer 

review (TRTs, ISAB, ISRP) to provide external quality checks. However, there was relatively 

little mention in any of the three documents about linkages with ICBEMP or Tribal habitat 

recovery projects, both of which may be significant depending on location. Coordination among 

action organizations will be critical to restoration success.

The Governors’ Plan appears to be least consistent with the other documents. Although the 

section on habitat in the Governors’ Plan is brief, it is clear that it endorses restoration efforts 

designed by local organizations (watershed councils, city and county authorities) as opposed to 

efforts designed by large federal agencies. The Governors’ Plan makes no mention of scientific 

peer review of local strategies. The ISAB suspects this approach will be likely to continue the 

status quo, and may well be at odds with regional habitat restoration efforts identified in the 

BiOp, Basinwide Recovery Strategy, and ICBEMP.

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

Tributary habitat recommendations in the documents, in general, are inadequately linked with 

recovery strategies in the other Hs. There was little discussion of how habitat restoration would 

be tied to supplementation, if at all, in most of the documents. The Fish and Wildlife Program 

does, however, stress the need for supplementation to be linked to watershed condition and to be 

integrated into subbasin planning. The consequences of putting more water back into tributaries 

were not clearly linked to mainstem habitat management or water quality issues such as 

temperature and dissolved gas. The role of salmon carcasses as vectors of marine-derived 

nutrients in salmon-producing watersheds was not adequately linked to harvest and escapement 

levels in the documents. Changes in habitat restoration tactics were not related to climate shifts 

or disturbance factors such as droughts, floods, or wildfires.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Hatcheries

Salmon recovery planning within the Columbia River Basin anticipates that hatchery origin 

salmon and steelhead will continue to play a prominent role both in maintaining harvest and in 

aiding in wild stock recovery, even though hatchery fish create a paradoxical dilemma for basin 

salmon management efforts. On one hand they are viewed as providing significant harvest 

opportunities, while on the other they are asserted to contribute to declines in wild populations 

through genetic (interbreeding between hatchery origin and wild salmon) and ecological 

(competition, predation, disease transmission, incidental over-harvest) interactions. 

Consequently, maintaining harvest of hatchery origin fish while simultaneously attempting to 

recover wild stocks is controversial. Individually and collectively, the four documents 

acknowledge the potential problems of using artificial production, yet propose to continue and 

even expand existing artificial production programs. To overcome that apparent dichotomy, the 

four documents all state a clear desire to reform the hatchery system. Unfortunately, the 

institutional structure required to design and implement such reforms does not appear to be fully 

in place. The Northwest Power Planning Council proposed basinwide hatchery policies in its 

recent artificial production review (APR) (NPPC document 1999-15). Most of the four 

documents endorse the APR policies and envision implementing them by using Hatchery and 

Genetic Management Plans (HGMP's) designed by the National Marine Fisheries Service. 

However, the details for implementing reforms at a basinwide scale are not yet developed.

Governors’ Plan

The Governors’ plan supports recommendations of the APR to significantly modify hatchery 

management practices in Federal and State hatcheries. Unfortunately, the specific management 

practices to be modified are not identified. The report endorses reviewing the purposes of each 

hatchery facility within three years to determine the facility’s future role in supporting fish 

recovery and harvest. This proposed review is consistent with an implementation action 

proposed in the Council's APR. The report also makes a number of additional recommendations. 

Regional managers should develop a basin-wide comprehensive supplementation plan, 

something not in the APR. Certain watersheds should be maintained as wild fish refuges that 

also would serve as controls for evaluating conservation hatchery efforts. Marking hatchery fish 

should be used as a means to facilitate a robust harvest program for hatchery fish. Terminal and 

selective harvests of hatchery fish should be explored. Excess fish produced by hatchery 

operations should not be harvested if that harvest could result in unacceptable take of ESA listed 

stocks.

Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The Basinwide Recovery Strategy summarizes studies that indicate the potential hazards of 

genetic, ecological, and harvest interactions between hatchery and wild salmon. Qualitative 

impressions of improvements for listed ESU's from anticipated hatchery reforms are presented 

and vary throughout the basin from providing considerable benefit for upper Columbia River 

steelhead to providing little benefit for upper Willamette winter steelhead. The plan concludes 

that hatchery reform effects cannot easily be estimated. Suggested reforms include developing 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

23

local broodstocks, eliminating inappropriate broodstocks, and minimizing hatchery straying 

rates. This document anticipates using HGMP's to implement reforms, as well as using captive 

brood and conservation hatchery programs for emergency interventions for up to 13 populations 

of steelhead, spring/summer chinook and fall chinook.

Biological Opinion

The BiOp anticipates off-site mitigation for FCRPS using hatchery programs for the production 

of salmon and steelhead as outlined in the Basinwide Recovery Plan reforms. Section 9.6.5.4 

(page 9-131) provides important guidance on monitoring hatchery fish in relationship to wild 

stocks and proposes that reforms should conform to NMFS' interim artificial propagation policy 

(Hard et al. 1992) and conceptual framework for conservation hatcheries (Flagg and Nash 1999). 

This monitoring section of the BiOp contains some of the clearest guidance for implementing

hatchery reforms. There is an acknowledgement that the appropriate reforms needed for specific 

hatcheries and for the protection of specific wild stocks are largely unknown, and that it will be 

difficult to ascertain a priori what effects reforms will have. Monitoring and evaluation is a 

necessary first step in the design of reforms. Actions given in the chapter on reasonable and 

prudent alternatives using off-site hatchery mitigation call for immediate reforms and 

modernization of many facilities/programs. Implementing these reforms before appropriate 

analyses are established appears contradictory to the monitoring section. Section 9.6.3 (pages 9-

115-119) recommends selective and terminal fishing to maintain harvest on hatchery fish.

Fish and Wildlife Program

The Fish and Wildlife Program’s approach to artificial production consists of several elements. 

Strategies focusing on the use of artificial production should be consistent with limitations of, 

and opportunities for, improving specific habitat conditions. Wild salmon refuges, harvest 

hatcheries, and conservation/supplementation hatcheries are envisioned. Refuges should be 

located where habitat is intact. Supplementation should be used to rebuild natural runs only in 

conjunction with habitat improvements, so that eventually the population would become selfsustaining. Supplementation programs should be designed and implemented only within the 

context of subbasin plans. Harvest hatcheries should be operated only in a manner that does not 

lead to adverse genetic, ecological effects, or excessive take of listed stocks in mixed fisheries. 

Artificially produced fish created for harvest should not be produced unless they can be 

effectively harvested in a fishery. Recommendations and policies of the APR should be 

implemented. Each hatchery and program should be reviewed within three years to determine 

consistency with the APR. Annual reporting of progress and a five-year assessment of 

implementing reforms is proposed. An artificial production committee is recommended to guide 

reforms and coordinate monitoring and evaluation across the basin.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

The ISAB believes the answer to both questions is no. Little evidence is provided for anticipating 

that the hatchery reform measures proposed in the APR will improve salmon recovery. We 

believe caution is warranted in putting too much weight on hatchery improvements until they 

have been adequately tested and evaluated, but that level of caution is not given in these 

documents. The documents do acknowledge that a number of problems exist with the way 

artificial production is being used. Unfortunately, because the magnitude of the problem is 

unknown, the benefit of implementing reforms is unknown. The intent of the APR policies and 

anticipated reforms is to reduce or eliminate adverse effects to wild fish from hatchery releases. 

Only the monitoring portion of the BiOp acknowledges that monitoring and evaluation is needed 

to design reforms adequately. Current reform suggestions for hatcheries are largely common 

sense and are supported by our understanding of the biology of Pacific salmon. The chain of 

authority that is needed to review the Hatchery Genetic Management Plans that are envisioned as 

serving to guide reforms and begin the monitoring of performance indicators is not clear.

Institutional mechanisms, including the Council's artificial production committee, are needed for 

establishing cooperation among State, Federal, and Tribal management efforts. The time frame 

in the documents for implementing reforms and evaluating their effectiveness seems 

unrealistically optimistic. The monitoring envisioned by NMFS for wild fish recovery would 

benefit from including the monitoring of hatcheries for hatchery reform design. Implementing 

this across state, federal, and tribal jurisdictions will take time. While the aim of reducing the 

adverse interactions between hatchery and wild stocks is certainly worthwhile, relying solely on 

containing these hazards is insufficient for managing their risks. Because failures of containment 

measures are probable, hatchery fish will inevitably have the opportunity to interact with wild 

stocks. Institutional procedures to detect containment failures and intervene with remedial 

actions are imperative but as yet not established. Maintaining harvest through selective and 

terminal fisheries for hatchery fish is a moderately high-risk proposal based on previous 

experience with anadromous salmonids. Decision makers have not built a mechanism into 

harvest plans that is designed to deal with any of the myriad inevitable unforeseen straying 

problems likely to arise. 

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The documents represent a continuation and evolution of past efforts. With regard to artificial 

production this may not be an entirely unavoidable or undesirable approach, at least in the short 

term. If an acceptable artificial production program is possible, designing or creating it is likely 

to involve occasional progress with many mistakes. Similarly, abandoning or substantially 

curtailing artificial production, concluding that it is a failure, will only happen once stakeholders 

have exhausted their efforts to make it succeed.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

Yes, but that approach appears inadequate. For example, even though all four documents 

recognize a need for hatchery reform, none of them provide details describing that reform or 

plans on how to implement it. The documents all assume that artificial production is quite 

capable of providing mitigation for habitat loss and that supplementation will succeed in helping 

to rebuild wild salmon populations. Unfortunately, neither of those critically important 

assumptions has been verified. 

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

Linkages are not adequately identified. Linkage between harvest hatcheries and harvest level is 

recognized, but the problems of developing selective and terminal fisheries are not adequately 

considered. Linkage between habitats and supplementation is acknowledged, but how subbasin 

planning and habitat modeling will inform decisions on where and how much supplementation is 

warranted is not clear. The cumulative detrimental effects of hydroelectric operations and other 

habitat conditions (e.g., water withdrawals) on mainstem habitats and how these effects limit the 

accomplishments of mitigation efforts using artificial production needs more attention. Based on 

observations from hatchery returns in the early 1960's, we anticipate that a Pacific Decadal 

Oscillation regime shift could produce abundant returns of salmon similar to those in 2000 and 

expected in 2001. Such returns of hatchery fish will undoubtedly create pressure for high harvest 

levels.

Additional Considerations

The Basinwide Recovery Strategy, Governors’ Plan, BiOp, and the Fish and Wildlife Program 

present similar strategies for the use of artificial production, anticipating or encouraging 

expansion of (1) terminal fisheries targeting hatchery fish, (2) selective fisheries through the use 

of mass marking, (3) supplementation to attempt rebuilding of depressed stocks, and (4) 

conservation hatcheries to include captive breeding for seriously depressed stocks.

All four documents assume, with little reluctance, that supplementation will succeed in 

accelerating the desired goal of salmon restoration. They either propose explicitly or at least 

imply that increasing artificial production is one means to overcome habitat shortcomings. This 

is an assumption with little supporting evidence. To overcome the risks associated with artificial 

production, all of the documents call for implementation of reforms in hatchery practices as 

outlined in the APR. We conclude that there is insufficient detail on how that implementation is 

to be accomplished, much less on how to deal with the many shortcomings inherent with the 

APR. The proposed end result is an increased investment in and reliance on artificial production 

as a viable strategy for salmon recovery. The ISAB believes there are serious limitations to this 

strategy that are neither examined nor explained by any of the four documents.

Many millions of hatchery-produced smolts have been released to supplement select Columbia 

River tributaries over the last decade. The ISAB is unaware of compelling evidence that 

increased natural smolt production or increased natural adult returns have resulted from these 

efforts. An independent assessment of the past decade of supplementation is overdue. That 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

26

assessment should include a summary of what is known about successes and failures of 

supplementation attempts outside of the Basin, as well as a thorough investigation of existing 

evidence from supplementation efforts within the Columbia River Basin. That assessment should 

also investigate what is known or believed about carrying capacities for juvenile salmon within 

various parts of the Columbia River System and throughout the different phases of the life cycle. 

If analyses are inconclusive due to a lack of appropriate past monitoring and evaluation 

procedures, the ISAB could help by identifying key components of data collection and 

assessment needed for success. The ISAB believes that it is essential to devise an appropriate 

large-scale experiment to measure the actual impacts of supplementation programs in the 

Columbia River Basin. 

All four documents explicitly recognize genetic and ecological risks associated with artificial 

production and acknowledge that past and some current programs continue with high-risk 

practices. All four documents deal with that issue simply by calling for implementation of the 

reforms outlined in the APR, and as a consequence, assume that the risks will be minimized. 

Unfortunately, the APR itself contains few details about what reforms are needed, much less how 

reforms are to be implemented. This lack of detail is a result of several data gaps. First, there is 

not a clear understanding of the different types of risks associated with each of a variety of 

different hatchery practices, e.g., selective breeding that has changed the makeup of originally 

native-source broodstock versus the use of non-native broodstock as a source for production. In 

addition, there has not been a good evaluation of the evidence to support the theoretical bases for 

those risks - at least not within salmonid fishes. Concern over risk is acknowledged in a vague 

sense, but priorities for dealing with those concerns are not established in practice or policy. The 

ISAB believes that a clear explanation of the genetic and ecological issues involved, as well as 

an extensive assessment of the evidence supporting the theory behind the associated risks would 

provide much guidance for artificial production in the Basin. 

Second, the four documents do not map out a clear strategy for reducing the risks associated with 

artificial production. They all simply rely on the implementation of the APR, which itself lacks a 

clearly prioritized strategy or method for implementation. Implementing reform requires a 

roadmap for change and a means of evaluating the relative success in instituting that change, two 

important components that are currently missing from the APR. A useful roadmap for change 

would require establishing a clear set of goals and objectives for artificial production, developed 

hierarchically from subbasin plans upward through a coordinated Basin-wide level. While a 

subbasin planning process is just now being initiated, we are not aware that coordinated artificial 

production planning is intended. As a result, that clear set of objectives does not yet exist.

Designing reforms and evaluating their progress toward meeting hierarchically based objectives 

for artificial production could be gauged by monitoring indicators established for artificial 

production. This activity is envisioned in the Council's APR. Indicators for artificial production 

should be designed to measure whether program goals are being achieved and to answer 

questions of uncertainty regarding artificial production practices. Indicators for evaluating 

artificial production require collecting standardized primary data through monitoring, calculation 

of the indicators, and evaluation of the results. Eventually performance standards for these 

indicators could be established. We do not believe that analysis of existing data is sufficient to 

establish performance standards for contemplated indicators. Currently the agencies and tribes 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

27

within the basin have agreed upon a generic foundation of indicators for artificial production. 

Some of these indicators, such as harvest numbers or rates, are fairly straightforward to calculate, 

although considerable care is needed to ensure that primary data collections are sufficient to 

calculate the statistics. For many of the conceptual generic indicators, such as comparisons of 

life histories between wild and hatchery fish, no established indicators exist. For these, design of 

indicators from primary data is required. The ISAB urges completion of the provincial and 

subbasin planning efforts, as well as the timely initiation of monitoring, so that an adequate and 

usable set of indicators and their performance standards can be devised to assist in guiding 

policy, suggesting important research, and creating public confidence in artificial production 

efforts.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Harvest

Harvest strategies are generally consistent among the recovery documents, but the topic of 

harvest definitely receives the least attention of the H’s in recovery planning. The latter follows 

for two reasons: each paper notes recent major reductions in exploitation on these stocks, to the 

extent that additional reductions have marginal value to most stocks; and, none of the lead 

agencies have a direct role in annual fishery management actions. As summarized in the 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy, regulation of ocean harvest occurs pursuant to the MagnusonStevens Fisheries Management and Conservation Act and the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and 

management of in-river harvest occurs under the auspices of the federal court in U.S. v. Oregon. 

In addition, NMFS or USFWS must authorize any harvest of ESA-listed fish. Even the new 

Pacific Salmon Treaty agreement was reviewed by the NMFS under section 7 for consistency 

with the ESA. In its biological opinion of November 1999, NMFS determined that the 

agreement met the ESA requirements. However, while the treatment of harvest may be limited, 

the importance of harvest management to recovery is paramount for the immediate short-term 

survival of populations and reflects the degree of change that has already occurred in the

fisheries and fishing communities. As stated in the Governors’ Plan, “Salmon fishing has 

decreased to a level that represents a mere fraction of what once occurred.” Maintaining these 

reductions in harvest impacts is a core assumption of recovery planning.

Consideration of harvest in these papers can be summarized as five major points:

• The extent of recent harvest rate reductions has been so extensive on most stocks that further 

reductions will not likely yield further major benefits (most harvest impacts on listed fish 

now occur in treaty-protected fisheries);

• Each paper recognizes the federal government’s trust obligation to provide meaningful treaty 

harvest, both today and in the future (best described in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy1);

• Each paper notes a reliance on the development of more selective fishing methods to provide 

for sustainable fishing opportunity while protecting the listed fish and allowing harvest 

expansion where feasible;

• The linkage between hatchery production, harvest, and recovery of natural production of 

salmonids is clearly acknowledged and is the major feature of integrated production planning 

in the 2000 Fish and Wildlife Program; and

• The specific example of developing selective fisheries for mass-marked hatchery fish is 

noted.

Concerning the specific documents, each provides a few specific additional comments but the 

most detailed treatment of harvest is contained in the Basinwide Recovery Strategy.

 

1

 “...the Strategy recommends an acknowledgement that there is an “irreducible core” of tribal harvest that is so 

vital to the treaty obligation that the federal government will not eliminate it.” “Where tribal fishing is involved, we 

recommend accepting a level of risk that is greater than the biology might strictly imply.” (page 55, Vol. 1, 

Basinwide Recovery Plan)
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Basinwide Recovery Strategy 

A few excerpts from the report encapsulate the treatment of harvest by the Federal Caucus (see 

sections 3.3 Harvest Actions, Volume 1; and Chapter 2, Volume 2, Harvest Element...). 

“The objectives of the harvest strategy are to buy time for other recovery 

programs and measures to take effect; preserve at least some fishing, particularly 

for tribal fisheries provided that doing so does not undermine the overall recovery 

effort; fully implement the 1999 Pacific Salmon Treaty Agreement; and develop a 

sustainable fishing strategy for the long term, with particular emphasis on 

selective fisheries.” (Page 53-54, Vol. 1)

“Therefore, the Federal Caucus recommends constraining harvest rates on listed 

salmon and steelhead at or, if necessary and effective for survival and recovery, 

below their currently reduced rates for 10 years or until the status of listed fish 

can support harvest increases. In addition, for those ESUs where harvest remains 

a significant source of mortality, further reductions of incidental take of listed 

species will be pursued through additional measures, possibly including but not 

limited to such measures as license buy-backs, gear changes, additional time and 

area restrictions, and selective fishing.” (Page 55, Vol. 1)

“Over the long run, harvest constraints cannot be relied on to solve the 

fundamental problems that cause natural salmon productivity to decline.” (Page 

54, Vol. 1)

Concerning assumptions of the supporting analysis, the Basinwide Recovery Strategy states that 

“productivity rates identified by CRI as necessary to achieve survival and recovery account for 

harvest impacts at current levels.” The potential for additional reductions in harvest impacts 

through development of more selective fishing techniques was not factored into these analyses. 

To assess compliance with the harvest strategy, the performance standards will be specific 

harvest constraints and the fishery plan as described in Volume 2 for fishery group (ocean and 

freshwater) and listed ESU. To assess compliance requires that ocean exploitation rate by stock 

and terminal harvest rates can be measured with sufficient accuracy and precision to compare 

against the recent values of these parameters. However, one type of selective fishing (markselective fisheries) is also a potential threat to the ability of management agencies to assess 

compliance with the performance standards. A mark-selective fishery involves the selective 

retention of mass-marked hatchery fish (marked by removal of the adipose fin) and release of 

unmarked fish including fish produced naturally and unmarked hatchery fish. Unfortunately, the 

selective retention of marked fish violates the fundamental assumption of the coded-wire tag 

(CWT) program that has been the basis of chinook and coho management for the past 25 years. 

Further, maintaining the viability of the coded-wire tag program is a commitment embodied in 

the Pacific Salmon Treaty. While the Basinwide Recovery Strategy notes the potential value of 

mark-selective fisheries, it also notes the risks to assessment and management capabilities:

“Furthermore, the statistical viability of the original CWT program relied on the 

assumption of randomness – a fish with a CWT was no more or less likely to be 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

30

killed in a fishery than one without the tag. A selective fishery, by definition, is 

non-random. Consequently, the ability of the CWT program to provide 

statistically reliable fishery and stock-specific information is threatened.” (Page 

49, Vol. 2)

Biological Opinion

The Biological Opinion largely defers consideration of harvest to the Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy, except for section 9.6.3 Harvest Measures. As stated, “this opinion addresses the 

operation and management of FCRPS, not harvest.” 

“Harvest management is not within the authorities of the Action Agencies; 

therefore, additional constraints cannot be imposed on fisheries by this biological 

opinion. Instead, this section outlines harvest measures the Action Agencies can 

facilitate to meet offsite mitigation goals for hydrosystem impacts and measures 

that may further reduce the take of listed species.” (Page 9-143).

Under consideration of Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives and to avoid jeopardy, harvest 

reform is defined broadly (Section 9.6.3.2). Harvest reform “includes implementing various 

kinds of harvest management reforms such as selective fishery management strategies (e.g., 

mark-selective fisheries), developing and applying alternative fishing methods and gear types, 

and creating or expanding fishing opportunities in areas or at times when listed fish are not 

present.”

This section also comments on the development of mass-mark selective fisheries, adding three 

important comments (page 9-145):

• “Mark-selective fisheries are not recovery tools, but rather means to allow fishing to 

continue.”

• “Existing management and assessment tools, including various models, analytical methods, 

procedures, and associated databases, will also have to be refined and/or replaced.”

• “Realizing the full potential of selective fishing depends on a number of elements, both 

technical and policy-level. Before the strategy would work in Tribal fisheries, social, 

economic, and cultural impacts would have to be addressed in ways the Tribes support.”

To develop and implement new selective fisheries, the BiOp specifies five actions (Actions 164-

168) committing the Action Agencies to: 

i) Assist in the development, testing, and deployment of selective fishing methods; 

ii) Work with other agencies to develop and implement methods and analytical procedures 

to estimate fishery and stock-specific management parameters (e.g., harvest rates);

iii) Implement and/or enable changes in catch sampling programs and data recovery systems; 

iv) Develop improved methods for estimating incidental mortality in fisheries (within a 

timeframe necessary to make new marking and selective fishery regimes feasible); and
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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v) Develop methods for crediting harvest reforms, and survival benefits they produced, 

towards FCRPS offsite mitigation2. 

Fish and Wildlife Program

The primary strategy stated in the Program (section III D.5) is to “assure that sub-basin plans are 

consistent with harvest management practices and increase opportunities for harvest wherever 

feasible”. The Program places a strong emphasis on sub-basin planning of fish production and 

integration of harvest management plans/capabilities with spawning escapement goals 

established for each species or stock, and hatchery production planning. Sub-basin plans are to 

determine the likelihood that adequate numbers of adults will return to “assure reproductive 

success and meet sub-basin goals for the next generation.” The strategies will also consider how 

to modify harvest practices if more adults are required or if there exists an opportunity for 

increased harvest, provided the harvest does not negatively impact other listed fish. Again, the 

Program identifies the development of more selective fisheries to provide for additional harvest. 

Further, the Council recommended six “practices” for harvest management, and will encourage 

the region's managers to adopt them (page 31, section III D5):

• Maintain an open and public process, allowing public observation of harvest and 

allocation discussions and timely dissemination of harvest-related information in a 

publicly accessible manner.

• Integrate harvest management to assure that conservation efforts made in one fishery can 

be passed through subsequent fisheries.

• Manage harvest to ensure the risk of imprecision and error in predicted run size does not 

threaten the survival and recovery of naturally spawning populations.

• Monitor in-river and ocean fisheries and routinely estimate stock composition and stockspecific abundance, escapement, catch and age distributions.

• Manage harvest consistent with the protection and recovery of naturally spawning 

populations.

• Biennially solicit scientific peer review of harvest management plans and analyses, 

starting in January 2002.

Governors’ Plan

Three key elements describe the regional approach envisaged in this Plan. Their suggested goal 

is to protect and restore production of salmonids and other aquatic species to sustainable and 

harvestable levels that meet the requirements of the ESA, the Clean Water Act, the Northwest 

Power Act and tribal rights under treaties and executive orders. Restoration, however, should 

occur while taking into account the need to preserve a sound economy in the Pacific Northwest. 

 

2

 Action 168 (item v above) is similar to the positive incentives clause in the Chinook Annex of the 1999 PST 

Agreement that allows reduction of incidental fishing mortality to be transferred to catch, up to 50% of the adult 

equivalent savings may be taken as catch following review by the Chinook Technical Committee.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Their preferred objective would be to benefit salmon through strategies and actions that 

emphasize and build upon natural processes. 

These statements are certainly similar to the other documents but may be interpreted as a 

stronger statement to restore harvest through natural production processes. The Governors’ state 

that they are committed “to support a recovery approach designed not only to achieve ESA 

delisting levels but also to rebuild the runs to levels that support treaty and non-treaty harvest.” 

However, they also acknowledge that restoration should not occur at any cost. The Governors’ 

note what they called a “Fifth H”, that being the impact of restoration on humans.

Concerning harvest specifically, this Plan comments on ocean harvest and harvest in the 

Columbia and Snake rivers. Ocean harvest has been addressed for ten years through the Pacific 

Salmon Treaty that has for the first time implemented an abundance-based ocean harvest regime. 

They note that additional reductions in ocean impacts may be achieved through more selective 

fishing, a license buyback program to reduce the current excess fishing capacity, and reduction 

of salmon bycatch in other fisheries. Within the Columbia system, the Governors’ support 

continuing current levels of tribal ceremonial and subsistence harvest but suggest that further 

reductions may be possible in commercial and non-treaty sport fisheries. Harvest rates in the 

latter fisheries should “be consistent with ensuring survival of the species and providing for their 

eventual recovery when combined with recovery actions in other sectors.” To achieve further 

reductions, they supported increasing the selectivity of mainstem harvest, research to develop 

better selective fishing techniques, and financial incentives.

The Plan also notes the need to modify hatchery production so that excess fish are not being 

produced where they cannot be harvested. But in other paragraphs, the Governors’ also promote 

the mass-marking of hatchery fish “to facilitate a robust harvest program for hatchery fish that 

pose threats to ESA-listed fish”, and the development of new terminal fisheries below Bonneville 

Dam and in Zone 6 (fishing area) to replace lost mainstem fishing opportunities. 

The Governors’ also supported strengthening law enforcement programs to ensure accountability 

and reduce illegal catch, and recommended changing existing sport fishing restrictions to 

concentrate on species that prey on, and compete with, salmon for food. Sport fishing regulation 

changes also should strive to minimize effects of exotic species on native species.

Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, sustainable ecosystems?

The documents do not directly address harvest but rather assume the continuation of changes in 

harvest management that evolved over the past 10-20 years, depending on the fishery and status 

of stocks. These changes include substantial reductions in the total exploitation rates on 

naturally spawning salmonid populations, fishing regimes responsive to changes in abundance, 

and management of total fishing mortality (i.e., catch plus associated incidental mortality). In 

general, the agencies preparing these documents are not responsible for these changes and do not 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

33

regulate fisheries, with notable exception of NMFS or USFWS responsibility for jeopardy 

evaluations on ESA-listed fish. Consequently, these agencies cannot guarantee the continuation 

of the harvest rate reductions assumed in their assessments, but it is unlikely that rates will 

increase if the productivity of the natural populations remains depressed. However, if 

productivity increases, ocean harvest rates on some chinook and coho stocks will increase within 

the PST, and we can expect substantial pressure to increase terminal harvest rates on natural and 

hatchery populations. Sensitivity of recovery to variation in total exploitation rates can be 

assessed but introduces a second major source of uncertainty.

Each document supports the development of more selective fishing techniques and, in particular, 

the development of mass-mark selective fisheries. The implicit assumptions in these techniques 

are that the total mortality associated with these catch-and-release fisheries is less than the 

mortality in retention fisheries, and that the resulting harvest rate will be sustainable by naturally 

produced salmonids. Intuitively these seem obvious ... but they may not be (as noted in Volume 

2 of the Basinwide Recovery Strategy). For example, what are appropriate mortality rates to 

apply to released fish, how variable are these rates between fisheries, seasons, stock, etc., what is 

the probability of multiple catch-and-release events per fish and what are the cumulative 

mortality rates? For severely depressed or unproductive stocks, what is the maximum 

exploitation rate that can be sustained and what is the cumulative mortality rate across all sources 

of mortality during its life cycle, can it sustain the mortality associated with even selective 

fisheries? No one can argue with the desirability of fishing more selectively and minimizing the 

mortality on listed-fish, but the potential benefits of selective fishing must be evaluated 

objectively and cautious expectations maintained until their utility can be assessed. Our goal is 

to restore healthy natural spawning populations. This requires controlling mortality throughout 

the life cycle of these species, not simply during one catch-and-release event in a new selective 

fishery. 

A related concern is the development of mass-mark selective fisheries and their potential impact 

on the CWT program. The CWT program is essential to the estimation of total exploitation rates 

in fisheries by age and stock and is the only means to measure these parameters. Yet 

continuation of the current rates are the performance standards stated in the Basinwide Recovery 

Strategy. At this time, we are uncertain whether the viability of the CWT program can be 

maintained if mark-selective fisheries are implemented. However, the loss of information will 

depend on the magnitude and location of the selective fishery and our ability to sample nonselective fisheries before and/or after selective fisheries. Further, the impact of this loss will 

differ depending on the status of the stock and the estimated exploitation rates. For example, if 

the rates are low and the stock is recovering then the loss of information maybe an acceptable 

cost of the recovery plan. Alternatively, if exploitation remains moderate and the stock is not 

recovering, then the loss would be more significant. Further, the loss of information may be 

unacceptable to other fishery management processes outside of the Columbia River system. 

Obligations of the Pacific Salmon Treaty require that each country assess the aggregate 

exploitation rates over all fisheries and to ensure that this aggregate value is less than a 

maximum value stated in the Chinook Annex. It will be the responsibility of each country to 

meet this requirement before additional harvest restraints could be requested through the Pacific 

Salmon Commission. 

 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

As discussed above, the answer to this is that the documents do both. The general assumption 

that current reductions in harvest impacts will be maintained is a continuation of past changes. 

The development of more selective fishing techniques is a continuation of emerging ideas, but is 

a significant change from the status quo. This change, however, has a number of concerns 

associated with it that have not been fully discussed in these documents.

Do the documents provide a consistent course of action?

Yes, as noted above, there is a high degree of concordance between the four documents. 

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

Harvest is only one source of mortality in the life cycle of a listed population. The life cycle 

analyses and the CRI analyses are appropriate means to integrate all sources of mortality during 

the life of these fish. More in-depth consideration of two issues could have strengthened these 

discussions of harvest. The extent of fishery impacts sustainable by a stock is determined by its 

productivity in the existing environment and the status of the spawning population size. To 

assess the appropriateness of harvest impacts for recovery requires the establishment of 

spawning escapement goals for each production unit (group of spawning populations), prediction 

of adult returns expected in the next generation, and a management plan for harvesting surplus 

returns or harvest restraints to increase the spawning population sizes. The Fish and Wildlife 

Program calls for the development of these production plans (subbasin plans) but the empirical 

basis for these assessments in the basin is believed to be quite limited. Secondly, the ISAB is 

concerned about the identification of mass-mark selective fisheries as a harvest tool without 

consideration of the potential ecological interactions between hatchery and naturally produced 

fish. Mass marking of hatchery fish and the development of selective fisheries to utilize this 

production provide an incentive for maintaining large-scale production of hatchery fish. 

However, what is not considered in this plan is the potential for ecosystem effects associated 

with the continued release of large numbers of hatchery-produced fish.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

35

Models, Monitoring and Evaluation

All of the documents expect that monitoring will provide data that allow evaluation of whether 

or not the goals and objectives of the strategies are met. The strategies include the realistic 

expectation that monitoring and evaluation will identify when performance standards are being 

met and, in general, when unforeseen problems arise. However, an implicit and sometimes 

explicit unrealistic expectation of monitoring is found in all of the documents. For example, the 

Governors’ Plan states “...standards should be crafted, wherever possible, in such a way that if 

improvement is not achieved, the performance standard [monitoring data] would be useful in 

identifying the problem.” The first of this sentence is a valid expectation of classical trend 

monitoring. The second part implies the hope that monitoring data will identify when a 

performance standard is not met, and that the same data will also help solve the problem. 

Unfortunately, strict monitoring programs are rarely able to meet this expectation.

Fortunately, all of the documents also implicitly or explicitly call for research to accompany a 

monitoring program. Evaluation (including modeling) then implies the combined analysis of 

monitoring and research data. 

Scope of Planned Temporal and Spatial Monitoring

Aggressive long term monitoring of the hydropower system, harvest, and hatcheries is implied in 

all of the documents. However, the documents avoid using the words “long term biological 

monitoring” as if there is a reluctance to endorse or commit to indefinitely monitoring habitat 

and fish populations. However, all the documents recognize the need for long term monitoring 

of biological resources to evaluate performance standards, identify the existence of problems, 

evaluate the results of management actions, and evaluate the results of individual projects. The 

need for long term biological monitoring will not go away even with recovery of endangered 

stocks.

The documents differ on the planned spatial extent of monitoring. The BiOp and Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy would seem to limit monitoring primarily to the current ESUs and habitat 

used by threatened and endagered species, while the Governors’ Plan would include habitat 

potentially available to anadromous species above Hells Canyon, Chief Joseph, and Grand 

Coulee dams. The Fish and Wildlife Program deals with the entire basin with the exception of 

Canada, Wyoming and Nevada.

Models and Data Gaps

The development of models sometimes gets ahead of the supply of data to assess the reliability 

of the models' predictions. In this case, the credibility of the science and model predictions may 

be undermined. The Fish and Wildlife Program contains a far-reaching plan for use of a 

scientific model for decision-making – the EDT expert system. This model will be used to guide 

project funding decisions by identifying which sets of interventions, primarily habitat restoration 

and protection activities, and artificial production, are believed to be most likely to result in 

higher salmon productivity for a given watershed. Because this model is an expert system that 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

36

has not yet been calibrated for its predictive power, the degree of validity of its results is 

unknown. The use of these results for current decision-making is nonetheless legitimate, if there 

is nothing better available for the purpose, as the ISAB has explained in its recent report on 

modeling (ISAB 2001-1). Still use of such a model constitutes a calculated risk, and the 

magnitude of the risk could be calculated more precisely if some statistically rigorous 

quantification of the validity of the EDT model were done. Such validation of EDT should be a 

high priority effort, and carried out as soon as possible. The need for validation testing of EDT 

should be an important organizing factor in the overall design of the monitoring program.

The NMFS use of models in the BiOp and Basinwide Recovery Strategy is of a more classical 

scientific nature, and has exhibited some noteworthy strength. Comparatively, the models used 

have been refreshingly simple, and their development, justification, and relationship to data has 

followed an approach of mainstream scientific method. Ideally, the same model would be used 

from selection of Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives to evaluation of recovery actions. 

However, different models with different assumptions, simplifications, and approximations have 

been required to get past data gaps.

Institutional Cooperation and Funding for Monitoring

All documents agree that success of a monitoring and evaluation program for biological 

resources is dependent on institutional cooperation, however, the only major commitment for 

funding is in the Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program. The Basinwide Recovery Strategy states, 

“Implementing this ambitious monitoring program will require an extraordinary degree of 

coordination among an enormous number of regional management agencies.” 

Storage and Retrieval of Data and Metadata

All documents agree on the need for access to primary data and metadata collected in the 

planned research, monitoring and evaluation. The ISAB endorses the Fish and Wildlife Program 

commitment to “...initiate a process for establishing an Internet-based system for the efficient 

dissemination of data for the Columbia River Basin. This system will be based on a network of 

data sites, such as Streamnet, Northwest Habitat Institute, Fish Passage Center, Columbia River 

Data Access in Real Time (DART), and others, linked by Internet technology.” Similarly, the 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy states that “...data collection will be conducted using standardized 

protocols, and the data recorded and managed in a regional database.” 

The documents recognize the need for elimination of duplication of effort. The Fish and Wildlife

Plan includes “...2) identify who will do the evaluation and on what schedule; 3) explain what 

kind of independent review will be incorporated if the main part of the monitoring and 

evaluation will be done by a main participant in the plan implementation; ...”. The Basinwide 

Recovery Strategy goes one step further and includes plans for publication of results in the peer 

reviewed scientific literature. The documents recognize that the key to elimination of effort in 

the evaluation/modeling stage and trust in the results is independent peer review. 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

37

Indicator Variables and Sampling Designs for Monitoring

The four documents correctly identify the need for a successful long term monitoring program, 

but only the outline of a blueprint for monitoring is given. The documents do not include the 

crucial details on how to scale up to the next level of a basinwide monitoring and evaluation 

program. 

Monitoring of Harvest

One of the pervasive common elements of the documents is a hope that the move toward 

selective fisheries will be effective as a way of trying to accomplish recovery of wild stocks and 

harvest of surplus hatchery runs. The Basinwide Recovery Strategy recognizes that major and 

expensive changes are going to be required to monitor harvest rates with the introduction of 

selective fisheries. This fact is recognized by some of the authors of the documents, but naïve 

statements are found elsewhere to the effect that measurement of harvest rates and escapement 

are straightforward, and are well developed.

Monitoring of the Hydropower System

Monitoring of the hydropower system is appropriately called for throughout the plan, to evaluate 

a long list of performance standards. 

Monitoring of Hatcheries

There is general agreement among the documents that performance standards for hatcheries 

should be aggressively monitored, but it is not yet clear exactly what will be monitored, or how 

the results of the monitoring will be analyzed to determine whether “hatchery reform” has been 

successfully implemented.

Governors’ Plan

The Governors’ Plan calls for an aggressive monitoring and evaluation plan including 

monitoring and evaluation of habitat potentially available to anadromous species above Hells 

Canyon, Chief Joseph, and Grand Coulee dams. The need for cooperation among States, Tribes, 

and Federal Agencies for monitoring and evaluation is recognized by the Governors’ Plan, but it 

stops short of committing the States to funding or resources for additional field monitoring or 

evaluation. Responsibility for actual monitoring and evaluation of recovery plans seems to be 

squarely placed on the Council and BPA in the recommendation, “Specifically, we recommend 

that the Council: Prepare an Annual Accountability Report: To better understand Bonneville’s 

expenditures in a basinwide context, and to improve accountability to the ratepaying public, ...”
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Biological Opinion and Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The documents acknowledge that there are uncertainties whether the proposed Reasonable and 

Prudent Alternatives will suffice to alleviate Jeopardy. The documents propose that aggressive 

monitoring be put in place to determine, by identified dates, whether the standards have been 

met.

Monitoring and evaluation of the effect of the hydropower system on anadromous fishes are 

called for, to evaluate a long list of performance standards. Also, strategies for additional needed 

monitoring and evaluation of the biological systems are most clearly spelled out in the Section 

2.2.11 of the BiOp and Section 7 of the Basinwide Recovery Strategy. These sections contain 

the same table and much of the same text. Although necessary details are not given, the vision 

for the design of monitoring and evaluation is appropriately hierarchical where data will be 

collected at three tiers of increasing detail. Tier 1 (establish current range and future changes in 

range of anadromous fish and broad environmental conditions every 3-4 years) and Tier 2 

(establish a more detailed picture of salmon abundance and trend and environmental conditions 

annually on a statistical sample of sites) are classical expectations of monitoring and go under 

various names such as: inventory monitoring, status monitoring, baseline monitoring, or trend 

monitoring (Bisbal 2001). Tier 3 (effectiveness monitoring) crosses over into “research.” In Tier 

3, more detailed data are called for to determine cause-effect relationships between management 

actions and salmonid populations responses.

These strategies seem to rely primarily on the cooperation of other agencies and the Council’s 

Fish and Wildlife Program for funding of monitoring and evaluation as indicated in the quote 

“The Strategy also commits the agencies responsible for the federal hydropower system to fund 

habitat, harvest and hatchery actions to mitigate for unavoidable mortality in the hydropower 

system, and to an aggressive monitoring and evaluation program to test assumptions, measure 

performance and reduce uncertainties over time.” 

Fish and Wildlife Program

The Council’s Fish and Wildlife Program concentrates primarily on monitoring and evaluation of 

individual projects funded by BPA. The expectation is that data from the individual projects will 

filter forward to provide information for monitoring and evaluation of attainment of goals and 

performance standards at the subbasin, province and basin levels. 

The Fish and Wildlife Program has a broad role for research with the expectation that it “... 

identifies key uncertainties for this program and its biological objectives and the steps needed to 

resolve them. The plan will identify major research topics, including ocean research, and 

establish priorities for research funding.” Monitoring and evaluation then includes the 

effectiveness of research to resolve key uncertainties.

The Fish and Wildlife Program recognizes the need for cooperation in establishing basinwide 

monitoring and evaluation and intends to “... initiate a process involving all interested parties in 

the region to establish guidelines appropriate for the collection and reporting of data in the

Columbia River Basin.”
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

39

Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

The documents do not represent an adequate response with respect to monitoring. They 

correctly identify the need for a successful long term monitoring program, but only provide the 

outline of a blueprint for monitoring. Successful monitoring implies that monitoring will be 

implemented on a sufficient scale, spatially and temporally, to deliver a large enough number of 

measurements of a specified precision to answer a question that is being asked. The documents 

fall short of identifying the amount of monitoring that will be necessary to obtain effective 

answers, and they do not specify a design to ensure that implementation is efficient. 

Furthermore, successful implementation will require the extreme level of cooperation called for, 

including give and take by all concerned. To be successful in a cooperative program, the States, 

Federal Agencies, and Tribes would need to reallocate staff and resources to a unified 

monitoring program that will meet the needs identified in the four documents. Unfortunately, the 

region has not had much success achieving the required level of cooperation because of 

disagreements over details. 

The ISAB encourages the individuals who may undertake the next level of planning to review 

the lessons learned in monitoring for abundance and distribution of coastal coho in Oregon and 

Northern California. Based on the review of current monitoring programs by the Independent 

Scientific Review Panel (ISRP) in the Columbia River Basin, many of the pitfalls in the original 

coastal coho salmon monitoring plan are still present in the Basin.

Models played a pivotal role in the decisions of the past year. The conclusion of Jeopardy is 

convincing, but the selection of Reasonable and Prudent Alternatives, and the evaluation of the 

adequacy of the recovery actions are less secure, mainly for lack of necessary data. The 

Council’s use of the EDT model has the potential to bring a welcome degree of coordination to 

the portfolio of projects funded by the Council and BPA. What needs more development in the 

use of EDT is a linkage to monitoring and research that will test the reliability of the expert 

opinion upon which EDT is based, and provision of a feedback loop that updates the EDT 

knowledge base with the results of that testing.

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The documents represent a change in the status quo in that more emphasis is being placed on 

monitoring and evaluation of management actions for improvement of tributary habitat for 

anadromous species (in particular for the threatened and endangered ESUs) and in the effects of 

hatchery produced fish on wild stocks. In general, more emphasis is being placed on monitoring 

of reproductive performance of wild stocks throughout the Columbia River Basin, i.e., 

monitoring and evaluation of fish in and fish out.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

40

With respect to harvest, hatcheries and hydropower, the documents present a continuation and 

evolution of past efforts in monitoring, evaluation and modeling.

Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

Basically, the documents are consistent in their call for aggressive monitoring and evaluation of 

management actions aimed toward recovery of threatened or endangered ESUs, and to support a 

sufficient abundance of anadromous salmonids to allow increased harvest. The ISAB suggests 

that Columbia River Basin managers (1) start with the present monitoring of harvest and the 

hydropower system, and add the first two tiers of the hierarchical plan identified in the BiOp and 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy for threatened and endangered fish species (including resident 

fishes) and their potential habitat, (2) continue the Council’s call for effectiveness monitoring of 

projects in the Fish and Wildlife Program consistent with Tier 3 monitoring in the BiOp and 

Basinwide Recovery Strategy, (3) implement the recommendations for monitoring of hatcheries 

called for in the ISAB review of performance standards for artificial production, and (4) reevaluate the harvest and hydropower monitoring programs.

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

The documents are correct to call for monitoring and evaluation of certain linkages, e.g., effect 

of naturally spawning hatchery fish on wild populations, effect of habitat improvement actions 

on returning numbers of spawners, effects of supplementation on recovery of wild stocks, etc., 

although important unresolved details remain. In general, the documents continue to call for 

independent monitoring of the Hs, i.e., monitor harvest, monitor habitat, monitor hatcheries, and 

monitor the hydropower system, in the hope that effects of the linkages among the Hs can be 

evaluated. Examples of specific monitoring needs that have not received adequate planning 

include monitoring the effect of selective fisheries on wild stocks, monitoring natural survival 

rates of adult chinook in the ocean, and development of a permanent plan for monitoring of 

downstream survival of juveniles. In fairness to the documents, it is unrealistic to expect them to 

thoroughly monitor and evaluate all linkages between the Hs. To adequately monitor and 

evaluate all linkages would create a ‘Grand Experiment’ to understand everything about 

anadromous fishes and their habitat, a worthy goal, but one that is hardly realistic. Given this 

realistic limitation of feasibility, it becomes all the more important to develop a concrete plan 

with a statistical design, to ensure that the monitoring that is undertaken does adequately address 

the priority questions.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Climate, Hydrology, and Water Resources

Climate is defined as “average weather”, i.e., the statistics of weather over a long period of time, 

for instance the long-term monthly average July maximum temperature, or total January

precipitation, or the frequency of cloudy days in September. While the vagaries of climate have 

often seemed random and unpredictable, recent advances in climate science point to a handful of 

regularly occurring hemispheric-scale patterns that impose some order on the climate system. In 

the Pacific Northwest, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the Pacific Decadal 

Oscillation (PDO) strongly affect climate on time scales of several years in the case of ENSO, 

and one to several decades in the case of PDO. ENSO is driven by sea surface temperature 

(SST) anomalies in the equatorial Pacific, while the PDO is driven by SST anomalies in the 

north Pacific. These phenomena tend either to amplify or mitigate cold-wet and warm-dry 

periods, which strongly affect various manifestations of climate (both on land and ocean) in the 

Pacific Northwest. The strongest deviations from “normal” conditions have occurred when the 

two phenomena act in concert, particularly when an El Nino event occurs during the warm phase 

of PDO (see Figure 2). 

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

400000

450000

19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000

Apr-Sept Flow (cfs)

Cool Cool

Warm Warm

Figure 2: April-September Average Naturalized Streamflow for the Columbia River at The 

Dalles. Solid horizontal lines are PDO phase average, crosses are El Niño years, circles are La 

Niña years, triangles are ENSO Neutral years. (Figure adapted from Hamlet and Lettenmaier 

(1999a))
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

42

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

18581872188619001914192819421956197019841998

(cfs)

Annual Flow

Linear (Annual 

Flow)

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

1900191019201930194019501960197019801990

(cfs)

Annual Flow

Linear (Annual

Flow)

1858-1998

1900-1998

Figure 3: Long-term trends in Columbia River streamflow at The Dalles, 1858-present (upper), 

1900-present (lower). (Data for 1858-1928 courtesy of David Jay and Pradeep Naik, Oregon 

Graduate Center, and for 1928-1998 courtesy of the Bonneville Power Administration)

The reverse is true, although to a somewhat lesser extent, for cold PDO and La Niña. 

Figure 2 shows how strongly these two modes of variability affect Columbia River streamflow. 

Most of the lowest flow years of record have occurred in the warm-dry state. While ENSO is 

now predictable with fair accuracy at least a year in advance, PDO changes, like the wellacknowledged one that occurred about 1977, are not currently predictable, except by persistence 

(that is, assuming next year’s state will be the same as this year’s). There is currently some 

evidence that PDO may have shifted from the post-1977 warm-dry state to cool-wet within the 

last five years, but there is as yet no strong consensus. Superimposed on the natural variability in 

climate and streamflow are long-term changes, now increasingly attributed to anthropogenic 

causes, such as burning of fossil fuels. In the Columbia River basin, annual average temperature 

has warmed about one degree C over the last century, a trend that is quite consistent across the 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

43

region. On the other hand, changes in precipitation over the same period are less apparent. In 

the historic streamflow record (when adjusted for the effects of irrigation withdrawals and 

reservoir storage), there is an apparent downward trend over the last half of the 19th century, but 

little or no trend since 1900 (Figure 3).

Projections by climate models (so-called General Circulation Models, GCM, of the coupled 

atmosphere-ocean-land system) all predict warmer conditions over the next century. The amount 

of warming that is expected over the next 25 years is comparable to that which has been 

experienced in the Columbia River Basin over the last century. Estimates of the amount of 

warming vary greatly, from as little as one or two degrees C over the next 50 years to over five 

degrees C. There is less consensus on precipitation, and even the direction of change is not clear 

although there is a weak consensus for a modest increase in precipitation (10-20 percent 

annually). Even given this range of scenarios, important information about likely effects on 

streamflow can be extracted. Using simulation modeling methods to construct hydrologic 

scenarios corresponding to several of the GCM projections for the Pacific Northwest, results like 

those shown in Figure 3 were produced. Figure 4 shows the resultant effects on snow 

accumulation in the Columbia River Basin. The overall effect in all such simulations is similar –

winter flows are increased due to more rain and less snow, the seasonal peak occurs earlier, and 

spring and fall flows are reduced relative to the current climate. Of course, specifics vary 

depending on the particular climate scenario, for some of the scenarios increased evaporative 

demand is more or less balanced by increased precipitation. The change in the time of peak flow 

depends on the amount of warming; the greater the warming the earlier in the year the peak 

occurs. More details are included in the Water Sector, and Pacific Northwest Regional, reports 

of the 2000 U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and 

Change.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

44

Figure 4: Mean Columbia River basin April 1 snow extent for base case (current climate), 2025, 

and 2045. (Figure adapted from Hamlet and Lettenmaier, 1999b)

Of the four documents reviewed – Fish and Wildlife Program, Governors’ Plan, Biological 

Opinion, Basinwide Recovery Strategy – only the Biological Opinion explicitly recognizes the 

effects of climate change on hydrology and water resources. However, this recognition is in the 

form of a justification for ignoring climate change effects, and assuming that the future will 

resemble the past (see below). All of the documents deal, in one way or another, with flow and 

flow augmentation issues in the Columbia mainstem and major tributaries. Hence, even if not 

explicitly recognized, the use of historical observations to determine effects of altered operations 

implies an assumption about climate. None of the documents explicitly considers the 

implications of proposed changes on system performance, particularly in low water years that are 

the basis for the critical period planning approaches used to determine firm power. A brief 

summary of relevant comments in the documents follows.

Fish and Wildlife Program

No mention is made of climate change as it affects riverine ecosystems or water management. 

There is an implicit assumption underlying statements about reservoir operations that future 

conditions will resemble the past, for instance, a strategy statement, “Manage the hydrosystem so 

that patterns of flow more closely approximate the natural hydrographic patterns, and assure any 

changes in water management are premised upon, and proportionate to, fish and wildlife 

April 1

Columbia

Basin

Snow

Extent
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

45

benefits.” The “natural hydrographic patterns” in this statement presumably are those that 

occurred in the pre-development past, not those that would be expected to occur in the future 

absent development effects. A statement regarding long-term planning that cites the need to 

revisit flood control requirements and other aspects of water management likewise carries with it 

an implicit belief that the future climate will resemble that of the past.

Governors’ Plan 

Climate is not discussed in the Governors’ Plan. With respect to flow management, there are, as 

in the 2000 FWP, implicit assumptions that climate will not change significantly. For instance, 

the statement “... additional water may be available for flow augmentation if flood control 

operations can be prudently altered. The Corps and NMFS should work with the region on a 

study to determine whether flood control rule curves can be reconfigured to allow shaping of 

flows to improve survival of migrating salmon and steelhead.” implies that future water 

availability will be as in the past.

Basinwide Recovery Strategy

No mention is made of climate with respect to hydrology and reservoir operations; the only 

mention of climate has to do with changes in ocean survival of salmon.

Biological Opinion

The BiOp likewise ignores possible effects of climate change (and/or changes in patterns of 

variability), but makes this assumption explicit in Chapter 9: “The approach to estimating the 

outcomes of alternative project operations implies that hydrologic conditions recorded in the past 

are reasonable estimates of future conditions. The longer the historical period of record used, the 

more likely the simulation will capture the range of future conditions likely to occur. Although 

there is growing evidence that the earth’s climate is changing, it is unlikely that such changes 

would substantially violate the assumption that future hydrologic conditions will be similar to 

past conditions during the 10 years this biological opinion will be in effect”. Although this 

assumption may be defensible with respect to the 10-year time horizon of the BiOp, it fails to 

recognize that changes in climate (especially effects of shifts in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, 

see above, and to a less extent effects of long-term climate change) have already substantially 

affected historic observations.

Implications of this assumption pervades the document elsewhere, especially in Chapter 3, 

“Proposed Actions”, e.g., “Libby reservoir would be operated throughout fall and winter to 

achieve a 75% chance of reaching flood control elevation on April 10”; “Grand Coulee ...would 

operate during January through April 10 to ensure an 85% confidence to refill to flood control 

election” ... All estimates of probabilities are based on historical period of record, which may 

not be representative. No attempt is made or proposed to account for effects of climate change. 

On the other hand, in Chapter 6 of the BiOp (“Effects on habitat in Columbia River mainstem, 

estuary, and plume: “) it is recognized that “Recent model studies ... indicate that the volume 

and timing of water and sediment delivery have changed ... even after the effects of climate 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

46

change ... are taken into account.” Hence, while there is some recognition of the effects of past

climate change on the estuary, and by implication that future changes might occur as well, there 

is no similar recognition of the effects of climate change on operation of the reservoir system.

Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the 

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA 

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

The ISAB believes they do not adequately consider climate and hydrology. The issue is basically 

ignored.

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The ISAB believes the documents do not represent a meaningful change in the status quo. The 

inherent assumption is that the future will resemble the past. This assumption, which underlies 

essentially all water resource design and management in the Columbia River Basin and 

elsewhere, is now being called into question. 

Do the documents provide a consistent course of action? 

The documents are consistent in that they assume that the future will resemble the past.

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

The ISAB believes linkages are not adequately identified. Whereas there is some mention in the 

documents (especially the Basinwide Recovery Strategy) of the role of climate variability and 

change on ocean survival, it is ignored in the river system.

CRITFC has been investigating alternate operating policies that return the river’s flow regime to 

an approximation of the natural hydrograph (strong spring freshet). This would be done, in part, 

by altering the flood rule curves to reflect the flow regime in a warmer climate, i.e., more winter 

flow, less in the spring and summer. The result is that less winter/spring drawdown for flood 

control is needed, allowing more flow augmentation in the spring and summer. This would 

represent a departure from existing reservoir operating policy, but is consistent with a “return to 

the river” philosophy reflecting more normative flows. It is notable that none of the salmon 

recovery documents explicitly mention possible changes in operation to reflect climatically 

altered flow regimes.

In general, climate change is likely to represent an additional stress on the system – earlier runoff 

in the spring, and reduced summer flows, which would generally be detrimental to salmonid 

survival, unless mitigated by altered reservoir operation. River temperature effects have not 

been addressed at all. None of the documents addresses the implications of climate change on 

salmon restoration, and only one (the BiOp) makes the assumption of stable climate explicit with 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

47

respect to its effects on the river system. The Basinwide Recovery Strategy, while recognizing 

the role of climate (in particular, decadal scale variations) on ocean survival, does not address 

effects of climate variability and change on survival in the river. 

Institutional Arrangements

In the energy and water appropriations legislation for 1996, adopted November 13, 1995, 

Congress directed the Northwest Power Planning Council to report to Congress within 180 days 

"regarding the most appropriate governance structure to allow more effective regional control 

over efforts to conserve and enhance anadromous and resident fish and wildlife within the 

Federal Columbia River Power System." As a part of the process designed to meet this charge, 

the Council convened a workshop on February 1-2, 1996, with participation by individuals 

representing a diverse set of interests to analyze alternative approaches to the governance of fish 

and wildlife in the basin. One of the most striking findings of the workshop was:

“The greatest failing in regional governance of fish and wildlife, expressed 

repeatedly by workshop participants, has been the failure to implement 

plans. It was generally agreed that actions must be taken if salmon 

recovery is to be effective. For this to occur, the objectives of plans must 

be simplified. Those charged with carrying out plans should be 

accountable for doing so promptly and effectively.”

This same concern is evident four years later in our examination of salmon recovery documents. 

Nowhere in any of these documents is there a clear pathway to implement the processes outlined 

as necessary for recovery or to attempt to analyze the institutional barriers that may lie in the 

path of implementation. Indeed, to provide a chance for any of the recovery documents to 

succeed requires unprecedented cooperation among federal, state, tribal, local agencies and 

governments, and a variety of non-governmental stakeholders. Simply to assume that this 

cooperation will be forthcoming, however seems to ignore the history of the Columbia River 

basin.

Governors’ Plan

The Governors’ Plan is organized around the Hs of human activities that influence fish and 

wildlife survival, but also recognizes what the document calls “the 5th-H, the impact of these 

actions on humans.” While the document is very general in nature and provides few suggestions 

on how to actually implement suggested changes, it does mirror the concerns of the workshop 

quoted above and focus on accountability. There are three specific recommendations concerning 

accountability. They are that the NW Power Planning Council:

1. Prepare an annual accountability report "...to clearly document progress toward meeting 

fish and wildlife mitigation goals, and how ratepayer money is being spent."

2. Consider shifting contract management "...to a neutral entity."

3. Establish a coordinated information system.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

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Basinwide Recovery Strategy

The Basinwide Recovery Strategy attempts to address specific actions comprehensively and 

includes a number of processes aimed at facilitating the implementation of the recovery program, 

including:

• Continue and expand the Federal Caucus

• Establish a habitat team

• Establish a Memorandum of Understanding among federal agencies

• Continue the Regional Forum

• Coordinate harvest and hatchery activities with habitat and hydropower activities

• Coordinate with other regional entities

• Collaborate with others on science

• Initiate recovery planning

• Use performance standards

• Coordinate federal budgets

• Monitor and evaluate progress

The discussion associated with these processes is so general, however, that it provides very little 

guidance for actual program implementation. The most attention is devoted to the establishment 

of a Memorandum of Understanding among federal agencies, but the institutional elements that 

exist within the basin include far more than the federal agencies involved (see below).

Biological Opinion

The Biological Opinion rejects dam breaching in favor of aggressive tributary habitat 

improvement, hatchery reform, hydrosystem modifications, and other measures, coupled with a 

rigorous midpoint review of progress toward restoration goals in 2005 and again in 2008. In 

section 9.4 Development and Implementation of the 1- and 5-Year Plans, there is a call for more 

planning. The strategy for implementation is:

“The Action Agencies, coordinating with NMFS and USFWS, shall annually 

develop 1- and 5 -year plans to implement specific measures in hydro, habitat, 

hatcheries, harvest, research, monitoring, and evaluation needed to meet and 

evaluate the performance standards contained in this biological opinion.”

This statement is followed by twelve additional points itemizing the need for more planning 

documents. There are two fundamental assumptions behind this strategy.

1) That the Action Agencies, coordinating with NMFS and USFWS, that to date have had 

difficulty designing and implementing successful recovery plans, are going to be 

quickly able to do so now.

2) That the Action Agencies, coordinating with NMFS and USFWS, are the appropriate

set of organizations to guide recovery efforts.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

49

There is mention of input from the tribes or other entities, but the process by which this would be 

accomplished is unclear.

Fish and Wildlife Program

The Fish and Wildlife Program addresses all of the Hs, but relies most heavily on mitigating the 

effects of hydropower operations on fish and wildlife. The program hinges on a broad 

framework consisting of a vision, scientific principles, biological objectives and strategies laid 

out at the basin level, with plans to move into planning and implementation at the subbasin level. 

Implementation primarily focuses on funding projects that support priorities identified in the 

planning process. While some of the implementation strategies are quite specific, such as the 

development of a funding agreement for land and water acquisition, the mechanism for how 

priorities determined in the planning process will result in actions on the ground is unclear.

Summary

Do the documents in aggregate represent an adequate response to the problem? Do the

documents describe a course of action that is likely to achieve regional goals such as ESA

delisting, harvestable fish, and sustainable ecosystems?

The ISAB believes the answer to both questions is no. While the documents individually attempt 

to define the problems and desirable futures states, and in some cases measures of whether those 

states have been attained, they provide little guidance on how to move from one state to the 

other. With the exception of the Governors’ Plan there is no treatment in any of the documents 

of the probable trends in human population and economic growth and of the impacts these trends 

could place on the entire basin ecosystem. In addition, there is almost no discussion of the 

complex institutional structure existing within the Columbia River Basin and the ways elements 

of that structure might facilitate, impede, or otherwise interact with planning processes or the 

implementation of recovery actions. These include:

1. The legal structure surrounding each of the four H's, e.g.

Columbia River Compact

US. v. Oregon

US. v. Washington

Endangered Species Act

Magnuson Act

Pacific Salmon Treaty

2. Organizational stakeholders, e.g.

NMFS

NWPPC

Corps of Engineers

Pacific Fisheries Management Council 

Pacific Salmon Commission

Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission

State, Tribal, and other federal agencies
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

50

3. Public stakeholders, e.g.

Private land owners

The Port of Lewiston

Environmental groups

Various political groups

4. Inter-agency Agreements and Cooperative Agreements

Arrangements to facilitate cooperation and uniform action among organizational 

stakeholders

5. Mechanisms for Public Input

Public meetings, hearings, etc., to provide for public input

6. The courts 

Which, perhaps because of the breakdown of 4&5, is where recovery decisions are often 

made

Do the documents in aggregate represent a change in the status quo or a continuation of past 

efforts?

The documents represent primarily a continuation and evolution of past efforts. While agency 

plans have grown in detail and complexity, the primary focus is on desired future conditions, 

largely ignoring the institutional arrangements that have led to the current situation. The 

strategies also primarily rest on the assumptions that top-down planning, informed by science, 

can restore productive salmon ecosystems. The Governors’ Report challenges this assumption, 

but presents little evidence that local planning will lead to a dramatic change in the status quo 

resulting in more effective salmon recovery actions.

Do the documents provide a consistent course of action?

The ISAB believes the documents do not provide a consistent course of action with respect to 

institutional arrangements. Each of the documents has different goals and was inspired by 

somewhat different problems. The level of planning, key participants in identifying restoration 

priorities, and responsibility and monitoring and evaluation, differ among the documents.

Are linkages among strategies for dealing with the 4 H's adequately identified?

The ISAB believes the documents are not adequately linked as they relate to the institutional 

structures in the Basin. A current view in the Columbia River Basin is that scientific research 

will ultimately identify and resolve key uncertainties, and that once we have the necessary 

knowledge, we will be able to make and implement appropriate decisions. There are at least two 

difficulties with this belief. First, although new knowledge is always desirable and can provide 

needed insight into critical uncertainties, new knowledge invariably gives rise to new problems 

and questions, and consequently new uncertainties. In complex and variable systems like the 
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

51

Columbia River Basin, ecosystem uncertainty is always high. In effect, while we can advance 

understanding of salmon ecology, we will always be faced with the requirement for new 

knowledge to address new uncertainties. Second, even if we had all the necessary knowledge, it 

is unclear that we have the institutional framework to assimilate that knowledge and use it in 

appropriate ways to make and successfully implement decisions on recovery.

The region simply may be developing recovery strategies that are consistent with the current 

institutional framework. There has been little systematic attention devoted to the way in which 

the various institutional entities within the Basin might be modified to facilitate better 

implementation of recovery strategies. The exception to this appears to be the workshop 

conducted by NWPPC and NMFS in January 1996. Unfortunately, although that workshop and 

the resulting Council report produced some interesting alternative approaches for implementation 

and dispute resolution, these alternatives do not appear to have been incorporated into the four 

documents the ISAB examined.
ISAB 2001-7 Recovery Strategies Review

52

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