Fish and wildlife Artificial Production Archive

Monday, August 10, 1998 | document 98-26

NWPPC Conference Room, Portland, Oregon

MEETING SUMMARY

MEETING REPORT

MEETING SUMMARY

· A SCHEDULE TO MAKE PROGRESS ON THE POLICY QUESTIONS --

Consultant Roy Sampsel led a discussion about when and how the committee will

determine the key policy and management questions to be addressed in its report. Liz

Hamilton of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association said the list of policy and

management questions currently before the committee needs to be pared down, and Lee

Hillwig of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted that the U.S. v. Oregon negotiations may

affect the committee's decisions. Some of the questions on the list, such as those that deal

with funding, won't be answered in the U.S. v. Oregon discussions, Sampsel said. If we have

a policy discussion, it's time to bring in the Northwest Power Planning Council and other

policymakers, suggested Doug Dompier of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish

Commission. Committee members decided they would identify which questions on the list

they consider to be priority questions. Let's have a report from committee members on

their priorities and talk about paring down the questions on September 14, said Sampsel.

Then let's schedule an extended-day discussion of the management and policy issues in

October in order to frame policy-level discussions to be held in November, he suggested. In

November, we'll have a "policy management engagement" with members of the Council and

other policymakers, Sampsel stated. Bill Towey of the Kalispel Tribe said the ad hoc

committee working on resident fish policy issues would supply its priority questions to the

committee for the September 14 meeting.

· INTERVIEWS PRODUCE ENLIGHTENING INFORMATION -- Bob Tuck of

Sampsel Consulting distributed a list of people he has interviewed and said the response he

has been getting is "100 percent cooperative, enthusiastic, and helpful." The interviews

have been "extremely enlightening," he reported. I'm getting a lot of information, and my

challenge is how to package it into a useful format for this group, said Tuck. He said he will

complete the rest of the interviews by the end of the month and will have a preliminary

draft of his section of the report at the September 14 meeting.

· DATABASE WILL DEBUT NEXT MONTH -- Duane Neitzel of the Battelle Pacific

Northwest National Laboratory handed out a summary of data sets collected to date and

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reported he had met with the Science Review Team (SRT). Almost all of the SRT's questions

relate to what fish are released from a hatchery and where those fish end up, he said.

Hatchery release and hatchery return data have been downloaded from StreamNet, and

hatchery recovery data from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, Neitzel

reported. Coded wire tag data are the data that will link release data to recoveries and

hatchery operations, he said. We have initiated a spreadsheet of data extracted from the

Integrated Hatchery Operations Team (IHOT) audit results, Neitzel explained. He said he

would meet again with the SRT on August 20 and would have the database on a computer

for the committee to examine on September 14.

· FEEDBACK ON THE IHOT SUMMARIES -- Sampsel noted that all the IHOT audit

summaries have been completed and asked for feedback on them. By taking the IHOT

summaries, the database, and the information from the interviews, we may be able to get to

some answers, but I don't know how to package it so that it's useful, commented Bob Foster

of the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. The audits are useful to tell what species can

be reared at what facilities, but not useful as a management tool, said Dompier. The

committee discussed the goals and contents of the audits, and Sampsel said the remaining

summaries would be sent out to the group by the end of the week.

· CLOSING REMARKS -- Committee members asked for a response from the SRT to

comments they submitted on the framework paper written by Jim Lichatowich. Sampsel

suggested that the SRT make a report on that at the September 14 meeting.

MEETING REPORT

HIGHLIGHTS

A Schedule to Make Progress on the Policy Questions

Interviews Produce Enlightening Information

Database Will Debut Next Month

Feedback on the IHOT Summaries

A Schedule to Make Progress on the Policy Questions

Consultant Roy Sampsel, who chaired the meeting, stated that the committee had discussed

a list of policy and management questions (Attachment 1) at the last meeting, and at that

time, several members said they wanted to confer with their agencies and then offer

feedback on dealing with those questions. He pointed out that Liz Hamilton of the

Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association wrote a memo (Attachment 2), suggesting that

the questions need to be pared down. She also said that at some point, it might be useful for

the committee to try to respond to the questions using "a facilitated writing format."

What do your agencies want to do with the management and policy questions? Sampsel

asked the group. We've begun a draft response to them, replied Bob Foster of the

Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. There are some questions that are redundant, and

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some that will require lengthy responses, but most can be addressed with short answers, he

said.

I agree with Liz that there are way too many questions, stated Doug Dompier of the

Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Somehow we have to get to the real issues,

he said, adding, I thought the Science Review Team (SRT) was answering these questions.

No, this committee created this list of management and policy questions, and now we are

trying to determine how they are going to be addressed, replied Sampsel. The SRT is

working on a list of science questions, he added. We need to determine the key policy and

management questions that this committee's report will address, Sampsel said.

Lee Hillwig of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) pointed out that the Columbia

River fish management plan negotiations under U.S. v. Oregon will have an effect on what

the PRC does. He suggested that the policy and management questions need editing. We

talked about how U.S. v. Oregon would inform this process at our last meeting, noted

Sampsel. We need to decide when to start talking about these questions, he stated. If you're

not ready, say so, Sampsel urged.

It's appropriate to address these questions now, but the results can't be cast in concrete,

responded Hillwig. As the U.S. v. Oregon process goes along, additional questions may

arise, and some questions may be answered, he stated. When do you think it is appropriate

to engage in a discussion on the management and policy issues? Sampsel inquired. Should

it be in the early fall, after the SRT has made its initial report? he asked. Liz suggested we

have a workshop to pare down the question list, and that may be a good idea, Sampsel said.

I'm not opposed to paring the list down, but I'd like to know when the Columbia River fish

managers will answer the questions and give the answers back to us, stated Jim Myron of

Oregon Trout. The principals will negotiate a new fish management plan, but they won't be

providing answers to the questions back to you, said Foster. The questions will not be

answered as a policy response externally, he stated.

The Columbia River fish management plan process will answer some of these questions, but

that process will last longer than this one, noted Tom Rogers of the Idaho Dept. of Fish and

Game. Some of the questions on this list, such as those dealing with funding, won't be

answered in the U.S. v. Oregon discussions, said Sampsel. Is it possible to have a discussion

on these policy and management questions external of the U.S. v. Oregon process, as far as

your management is concerned? he asked. If the answer is yes, we can look at a schedule for

talking about these questions; otherwise, we'll be left with these questions to deal with at

the end, Sampsel said.

Where and How to Zero In I

f we do a policy discussion, it's time to bring in the Council and other policymakers,

suggested Dompier. We are staff, he said. There are some major items on the table, such as

funding issues and the MOA on direct USFWS funding, noted Sampsel. There may be only

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four or five management and policy questions that you want to zero in on in this report, he

continued. The question is, what do you want that focus to be? What do you want to suggest

to Congress? Sampsel asked the group. For example, he said, do you want to recommend

expanding the Mitchell Act language to do more than hatchery O&M? Is that an issue you

want to get into? Sampsel asked. As for the funding issue, since the request for the Artificial

Production Review report came from a Congressional appropriations committee, I'd think

they would want this group to make recommendations for funding, he stated. Should we

have an expanded discussion on management and policy issues to narrow the list as Liz

suggests? he asked.

There are too many questions here, said Hamilton. It would take an eternity to answer

every one of them, she said. I suggested a facilitated document-writing process, which is a

real-time, computer tie-in process aimed at providing a product from a group effort,

Hamilton explained. But we can't do that until we pare down the number of questions, she

stated. I don't think these questions could be answered in that sort of process, said

Dompier. We are planning to use it for a Federal advisory committee in Washington, D.C.

next month, and we also used it in an Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife process, Hamilton

pointed out.

Flagging Priority Questions

Would an appropriate first step be to ask folks to identify which they consider to be the

priority questions that should be addressed in this report? asked Sampsel. He suggested the

group try to do that by the next meeting. I'm afraid if we don't start, we'll end up in April

and won't have made much progress on policy and management issues, which are as

important as the scientific issues, Sampsel stated. I think we can do it by September 14, said

Foster. The SRT went through a process to boil the scientific questions down to five or six,

and I think we can do something similar, stated Hillwig. The question is, in instances where

an agency or tribe "has ownership" in a question, it may say, we want that question, he said.

We need to make an effort to pare down the list of questions, but it will take a full-day

meeting, according to Hillwig. That makes sense to me, commented R.Z. Smith of the

National Marine Fisheries Service. The questions from the agencies and tribes are the most

important questions to be answered, stated Hamilton. It's time to engage the members of

the Northwest Power Planning Council on this, said Dompier. If we try to pare the list

down, people will still go to the Council with the questions they are interested in, he stated.

I'd rather see where the decisionmakers are on this, Dompier said.

Let's have a report from committee members on their priorities and talk about paring down

the questions on September 14, said Sampsel. Then let's schedule an extended-day

discussion of the management and policy issues in October in order to frame the

policy-level discussions to be held in November, he continued. In November, we'll have a

"policy management engagement" with members of the Council and other policymakers,

Sampsel said. We can decide who should be there -- whether it should be agency directors,

fish and wildlife committee chairs, etc., he stated. Those with economic interests on the

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river, such as utilities, might also want to participate, Sampsel said.

Bill Towey of the Kalispel Tribe pointed out there is an ad hoc committee working on

resident fish-specific policy questions. Should we supply our pared-down list of questions at

the September 14 meeting? he asked. Yes, replied Sampsel.

To the extent there are questions on the list that are not ripe, or that the agencies in the

negotiations won't or can't answer, they should be put on a separate list, suggested Myron. I

don't think there are any questions on the list that would prejudice the negotiations, stated

Foster. The answers from the U.S. v. Oregon negotiations need to be consistent with the

answers to these questions, stated Hillwig. The questions aren't the problem, he said.

So this group will have its material in by September 14, and in October, we'll have an

extended discussion of the management and policy questions in preparation for us to

engage in a discussion at the policy/management level during November, recapped

Sampsel.

Interviews Produce Enlightening Information

Bob Tuck of Sampsel Consulting handed out a list of people that he has interviewed

(Attachment 3). The response I've been getting is "100 percent cooperative, enthusiastic,

and helpful," he noted. The interviews have been "extremely enlightening," stated Tuck. The

retired agency people are pleased to have someone come and talk to them, he said. They

have shared many things about the history of fish and hatcheries in the basin, Tuck stated.

It's been extremely positive, and I'm getting a lot of information, he said. My challenge is

how to package the information into a useful format for this group, Tuck stated.

I am continuing the interviews and also pulling together historical documents, including

authorizing legislation, Tuck continued. It's quite a wide challenge, he stated. I'm concerned

about the "lack of memory" about what promises were made, said Hamilton. I'd like to see

where the authorizing legislation made commitments to fish people and see that reiterated

right up front in the report, she stated.

Are you taping the interviews? asked Bill Bakke of the Native Fish Society. If you are, I hope

there will be an attempt to archive the tapes, he added. All but the first two or three

interviews are on tape, and the disposition of the tapes will be up to the contracting

authority, replied Tuck. When will the interviews be completed? asked Sampsel. By the end

of the month, Tuck said. I hope to have a preliminary draft of the results available at the

September 14 meeting, he added. Sampsel said he would talk with committee chair John

Marsh about the disposition of the interview tapes. It's very important to make sure these

oral histories are captured, commented Bakke.

What's your timeline for resident fish interviews? asked Towey. I will be making resident

fish contacts in the next couple of weeks and will let you know the schedule, replied Tuck.

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Database Will Debut Next Month

Duane Neitzel of the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory handed out a summary

of the data sets collected thus far as part of the development of Section IV of the report

(Attachment 4). He said he had talked with Jim Lichatowich and members of the SRT and

that almost all of their questions relate to what fish are released from a hatchery and where

those fish end up. Hatchery release and hatchery return data have been downloaded from

StreamNet and hatchery recovery data from the Pacific States Marine Fisheries

Commission, Neitzel reported. He explained that he has source data from Washington,

Idaho, and the USFWS and has requested source data from other agencies. The temporal

component of these data varies by hatchery, with some going back to the 1950s, and some

only a couple of years, Neitzel said. The data that we have in our system is all anadromous

salmonids at this time, he noted. Coded wire tag data are the data that will link release data

to recoveries and hatchery operations, Neitzel said.

We have initiated a spreadsheet of data extracted from the Integrated Hatchery Operations

Team (IHOT) audit results, Neitzel continued. We have the IHOT summaries and are going

through the primary data from the audits, he said. We will meet with the SRT August 20 to

answer their questions, Neitzel stated. The SRT's main priority is the link between releases

and recovery, he said.

Will the hatchery release data you have show whether fish are released at a hatchery or in a

stream? asked Dompier. There are some cases where that's not clear, but a lot of the

information about whether releases were instream or not will be identifiable, Neitzel

replied. The usefulness of the data depends on whether a person can tell that, said Dompier.

That's where the debate is, and I hope that information comes out with this product, he

stated. We'll find that nearly all salmon are released at hatcheries, and they go back and

forth from the ocean to hatcheries, Dompier said. Hillwig commented that it would be

useful to tie this data into the information Tuck has gotten in the interviews. Tuck noted

that the interviews were not producing detailed information about where releases took

place. There is some of that information in the IHOT audits, and given time, you can ferret

it out, said Neitzel.

Things are starting to come together with the information from the interviews, Neitzel's

work on the database, and the IHOT summaries, said Sampsel. The question is, how do we

get the additional information we need and characterize where there is a lack of knowledge,

he stated. At the September 14 meeting, I will have the database on a computer for the

committee to look at, said Neitzel. He added that he plans to meet with Tuck to compare the

results of their work.

When you met with "the science folks," what were they interested in? Sampsel asked

Neitzel. Their main concern was looking at what's been released historically and being able

to correlate that with recovery, Neitzel replied. For example, what's been released from this

hatchery or from this watershed, and can I see annual or decadal changes for the stock, and

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what are the recovery and hatchery return data, he explained. Another way to put it,

according to Neitzel, is where have fall chinook been outplanted from the Columbia River

Basin and where they have returned and been recovered? That's the main line of their

questions, he said.

Did they ask whether mitigation achieved is a definition of recovery? asked Bakke. They

looked at the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan and utility mitigation and how it tied

back to mitigation goals, replied Neitzel. Did you discuss what fisheries a particular

hatchery is contributing to and the straying problems with hatcheries? asked Myron. Not

straying as much as hatchery operations -- how hatcheries are operated, the differences by

watershed and by stock, and how these are related to trends for release and recovery,

responded Neitzel. Ken Currens had a lot of genetic interaction questions, but most of the

discussion was about long-term trends, Neitzel stated.

Will straying questions be answered in looking at the recovery data? asked Myron. That's

difficult, said Neitzel. In many cases, it wouldn't show up, stated Foster. Maybe you could

get it if you had the PIT tag data, he added.

Sampsel asked the group if it had any advice for Neitzel about presenting the information.

I'd like to see where hatcheries are meeting their goals presented in a concise and

non-scientific manner, and to see what's happening at hatcheries that are more successful,

said Hamilton. The IHOT auditors asked about goals, and that set of data is in that

database, so we should be able to do that, stated Neitzel. I hope we'll be able to query the

database as questions come up, said Hillwig.

Feedback on the IHOT Summaries

Sampsel noted that all the IHOT audit summaries have been completed and asked the

group for feedback on the summaries distributed at the last meeting. The question is, are all

the questions being addressed that this group wants to see addressed, said Bakke. Our

ex-IHOT representative reviewed some of them and said the summaries are simply a more

condensed version of the IHOT audit -- that bits and pieces of information were pulled out

and condensed into a few pages, said Hillwig.

By taking the IHOT summaries, the database, and the information from the interviews, we

may be able to get to some answers, but I don't know how to package it so it's useful, said

Foster. I had a discussion with Inter-Tribe, and they asked how specific we would get in

dealing with specific facilities, reported Sampsel. I told them we hadn't gotten to that point

yet, he said. The audits are useful to tell what species can be reared at what facilities,

commented Dompier. They are not useful as a management tool, he added.

When I see goals stated in terms of eggs, fry, and smolts, there's no accountability, said

Hamilton. Are any goals expressed in terms of adult returns? she asked. Some hatcheries do

that, replied Neitzel. He noted that the IHOT audits included quantitative data for such

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things as rearing densities and temperature compliance and that the database will try to

provide such information. We'll get copies of the remaining summaries out to you by the

end of the week, said Sampsel. Closing Remarks

Given the IHOT summaries, and what the committee will get from Tuck and Neitzel,

Sampsel asked the group how it wants "to stack additional review and analysis of those

products" to help it deal with the policy and management questions. Is this getting close to

being a useful product for tribal managers? he asked Dompier and Si Whitman of the Nez

Perce Tribe. I just want it out of the way, replied Whitman. Dompier asked about a response

from the SRT to the comments he made on the Lichatowich framework paper. Foster said

he had also submitted comments and was expecting a response. Let's have a report from the

SRT on that at the September 14 meeting, suggested Sampsel. We'll get Foster's comments

on that paper out to the rest of the committee, he said.

On September 14, we'll decide how we will conduct the extended discussion at our October

meeting, which will lead to the policy management discussion in November, recapped

Sampsel.

Adjourn

Production Review Committee August 10, 1998 Meeting Attendees Bill Bakke, Native Fish

Society Doug Dompier, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Dani Evenson,

Sampsel Consulting Bob Foster, Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Jeff Gislason, BPA

Liz Hamilton, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association Lee Hillwig, U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service Rayola Jacobsen, Northwest Power Planning Council staff Jim Myron,

Oregon Trout George Nandor, Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Duane Neitzel, Battelle

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Tom Rogers, Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game Roy

Sampsel, Sampsel Consulting R. Z. Smith, National Marine Fisheries Service Bob Tuck,

Sampsel Consulting Si Whitman, Nez Perce Tribe Frank Young, Columbia Basin Fish and

Wildlife Authority

Participating by Telephone:

Bill Towey, Kalispel Tribe

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