While on a recent trip to the Pacific Northwest coast – the lush, green part of the country that nurtured my love of nature as a child – I visited a couple of places where salmon spawn. After spending most of their lives in the ocean, they return to the same creeks and rivers where they were born to mate and lay eggs right around this time of year. Some, such as Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), die after spawning.
With a couple writer friends, I hiked through a part of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness on Mount Hood in northern Oregon, a still pristine temperate rainforest where Native Americans once gathered huckleberries and fished for salmon. It’s part of the BLM’s Wildwood Recreation Site. The federally designated Wild and Scenic Salmon River, runs through this region, full of spawning Coho and Chinook salmon. It’s part of the Cascade Streamwatch program where school students collect data and learn about stream ecology. The Salmon River runs into the Sandy River a couple miles downstream of the hiking spot, which empties into the Columbia River then out into the ocean. Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) conducts salmon surveys along tributaries of the Columbia River as part of a long-term monitoring project, explains ODFW biologist Kara Anlauf. During my recent trip, I also visited Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast, another hotspot for salmon research.
Talking about salmon species is complicated by the fact that biologists divvy up each species into several “evolutionary significant units” or ESUs that functionally behave as separate species. Because salmon return to the drainages where they were born, there’s little chance for interbreeding between ESUs, and scientists must manage their conservation separately. Each ESU is treated as separate species under the Endangered Species Act. “They often have distinctive life history traits and are genetically distinct,” explains NOAA fisheries biologist Laurie Weitkamp.
Of seven Coho ESUs on the West coast, five are in trouble. Only one is faring well – the Olympic peninsula ESU in Washington and another in southwest Washington is data deficient. The Central California coast population is endangered and the Lower Columbia River, Oregon Coast, and southern Oregon/northern California ESUs are threatened under the Endangered Species Act, while the Puget Sound population in Washington is a "species of concern." But in Alaska, coho - also known there as silver salmon - are going gangbusters!
The West Coast salmon management saga is fitting of an old Western movie with all its twists and turns. Building hydroelectric dams has permanently altered the way salmon spawn in some rivers, and the idea of ripping out dams to allow salmon to return to old haunts has been hotly debated. In addition to stream alteration, habitat destruction, logging and climate change have led to the decline of most West Coast salmon. Lawsuits and flared tempers have resulted from many stakeholders– Native Americans, loggers, government agencies, scientists, and the like.
Some 23 million coho smolts get released into the Columbia River every year from hatchery production but the fish can’t sustain their own population without help at this point in time. “Roughly 70-90% of the salmon production in the Columbia River is hatchery fish. The remaining 10-30% is natural production,” explains Weitkamp. Despite overall species decline, loads of coho are spawning this year - largely due to Mother Nature rather than human assistance. “We had exceptionally good ocean conditions in 2008--cold water, lots to eat, few predators and competitors -- so we think the marine survival was exceptionally high,” Weitkamp says. “Good ocean conditions largely result from Mother Nature, although we certainly contribute to bad ocean conditions with climate change, overfishing, pollution, etc.”
The governors of Washington, Oregon, and California wrote a letter urging the Obama admin to do a full-on top-to-bottom review of salmon management in the Pacific Northwest.It will be interesting to watch this unfold under the new administration. U.S. Judge Redden had rejected Bush’s salmon management plan as “business as usual,” and gave the Obama administration until September 15th to review biological opinions on 13 runs of salmon and steelhead trout.
You can also write NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco about federal salmon policy through the National Wildlife Federation website.
No comments:
Post a Comment