Peter A. Bisson

Watershed Management and Pacific Salmon: Desired Future Conditions

Natural disturbances are an important part of the ecology of Pacific Northwest watersheds and create a diversity of aquatic environments to which different stocks of salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) and other native fishes have adapted over time. Objectives for managing habitat should be focused on maintaining the full range of aquatic and riparian conditions generated by natural disturbance events at landscape scales large enough to encompass the freshwater life cycles of salmon and other species. Because streams are dynamic, establishing fixed habitat standards for such parameters as temperature, fine sediment concentration, woody debris abundance, or pool frequency (especially when applied to limited stream reaches) is not likely to protect the overall capacity of watersheds to produce fish or to recover from natural or anthropogenic disturbances. Attempting to make streams conform to an idealized notion of optimum habitat through legal regulations or channel manipulations will not easily accommodate cycles of disturbance and recovery, and may lead to a long-term loss of habitat and biological diversity. Desired future

Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Fish and Wildlife Restoration Projects in the Columbia River Basin: Lessons Learned and Suggestions for Large-Scale Monitoring Programs

Abstract The year 2006 marked two milestones in the Columbia River Basin and the Pacific Northwest regions efforts to rebuild its once great salmon and steelhead runs—the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and the 10th anniversary of an amendment to the Northwest Power Act that formalized scientific peer review of the councils Fish and Wildlife Program and its varied individual projects. The authors of this article served as peer reviewers in the last decade. Restoration efforts in the Columbia River constitute a massive long-term attempt at fisheries and ecosystem restoration. In this article we examine some of the lessons we learned in reviewing the research, monitoring, and evaluation efforts of projects and their effects on advancing knowledge (i.e., adaptive management) in the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program, one of the most ambitious and expensive long-term ecological restoration programs in the United States.

13 – Return to the River: Strategies for Salmon Restoration in the Columbia River Basin

Returning the river to a more natural state runs counter to the management philosophy that has guided salmon restoration in the Columbia River Basin (CRB) for much of the 20th century. For this reason, restoration or improvement of the ecological conditions will require an examination of the values that underlie Columbia River management. However, the conceptual foundation provides a scientific basis for that debate. In the recent past, failure of the scientific community to resolve key restoration issues was often used to justify maintaining the status quo and avoid the necessary public debate over the social and economic costs of salmon recovery. However, expecting scientists to agree on each of the key questions is an unrealistic assumption. The healthy exercise of scientific debate should not be used as an excuse to hold progress hostage to the unattainable goal of a perfect scientific consensus. If the region is genuine in its desire to restore Pacific salmon in the Columbia Basin, continuing the status quo is not an option. The first step in developing a scientifically-sound restoration program for salmon is to clearly articulate the conditions needed for salmon relative to the regions salmon recovery goals. The next step is to determine what changes in the federal hydropower system and other uses of the river are needed to achieve these conditions. The next step is the difficult job of debating the cost and benefits of salmon restoration. Significant changes will require painful decisions, perhaps even congressionally mandated alteration of federal hydrosystem project operations. Other lesser changes might limit; however, not eliminate, the regions ability to use the Columbia River as a navigation corridor and to supply some irrigation needs.

Habitat Policy for Salmon in the Pacific Northwest

Earlier in the 20th century, habitat decisions were based on a belief that aquatic habitats could be manipulated with technology to benefit salmon, especially in terms of fish passage. The importance of riparian zones and biophysical watershed processes to salmon productivity was poorly appreciated. Recent events, coupled with an awareness of widespread habitat simplification, have changed this perspective. Spurred by passage of state forest practices acts, federal clean air and clean water acts, and the Boldt tribal fishing rights decisions in the 1970s, federal and state agencies recognized the importance of riparian zones as critical links between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The listing of the northern spotted owl and several stocks of salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) under the federal Endangered Species Act in the early 1990s prompted a team of scientists under a mandate from US President Clinton to suggest an ecosystem-based approach to habitat management that relied less on engineered habitat substitution and more on streamside buffers that preserved land-water interactions. This approach constituted a landscape-scale application of the principles of adaptive management in which conservative interim buffer guidelines (i.e., large buffers) could be adjusted if watershed analysis showed that smaller buffers would not be likely to harm aquatic resources.