[Senate Hearing 111-833]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-833
S. 817, THE PACIFIC SALMON STRONGHOLD CONSERVATION ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, AND COAST GUARD
of the
COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE,
SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 15, 2010
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and
Transportation
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SENATE COMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, SCIENCE, AND TRANSPORTATION
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Chairman
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas,
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts Ranking
BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine
BARBARA BOXER, California JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada
BILL NELSON, Florida JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
MARK PRYOR, Arkansas GEORGE S. LeMIEUX, Florida
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
TOM UDALL, New Mexico SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
MARK WARNER, Virginia MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
MARK BEGICH, Alaska
Ellen L. Doneski, Staff Director
James Reid, Deputy Staff Director
Bruce H. Andrews, General Counsel
Ann Begeman Republican Staff Director
Brian Hendricks, Republican General Counsel
Nick Rossi, Republican Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OCEANS, ATMOSPHERE, FISHERIES, AND COAST GUARD
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington, OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine, Ranking
Chairman ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii GEORGE S. LeMIEUX, Florida
JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia
BARBARA BOXER, California DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey
MARK BEGICH, Alaska
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 15, 2010................................... 1
Statement of Senator Cantwell.................................... 1
Statement of Senator Begich...................................... 25
Witnesses
Reeves, Dr. Gordon H., Research Fish Biologist and Team Leader,
Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, U.S.
Department of Agriculture...................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Rahr, Guido, President and Chief Executive, Wild Salmon Center... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 9
LaBorde, Sara, Special Assistant to the Director, Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife; and Chair, Salmon Stronghold
Partnership.................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 17
Childers, Joe, President, United Fishermen of Alaska............. 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Appendix
Response to written questions submitted to Dr. Gordon H. Reeves
by:
Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 35
Hon. Olympia J. Snowe........................................ 38
Response to written questions submitted to Guido Rahr by:
Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 39
Hon. Olympia J. Snowe........................................ 44
Response to written questions submitted to Joe Childers by:
Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 50
Hon. Olympia J. Snowe........................................ 52
Response to written questions submitted to Ms. Sara LaBorde by:
Hon. Maria Cantwell.......................................... 53
Hon. Olympia J. Snowe........................................ 58
S. 817, THE PACIFIC SALMON STRONGHOLD CONSERVATION ACT
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THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and
Coast Guard,
Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m. in
room SR-253, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Maria
Cantwell, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARIA CANTWELL,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WASHINGTON
Senator Cantwell. Good morning. The Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Oceans,
Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard will come to order.
Welcome, everyone. We are glad you are here today to have a
hearing on the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act, and
we appreciate all of you being here today to give testimony on
that important piece of legislation.
Wild Pacific salmon are central to the culture, economy,
and environment and identity of the Pacific Northwest and have
played a key role in our region's history. For centuries,
American Indian tribes of western northern America have relied
on salmon for their livelihood, well-being, cultural and
spiritual connection that today remains as strong as ever.
As an icon of the Pacific Northwest, wild salmon are at the
heart of what identifies my home State of Washington and the
surrounding region. And today salmon continue to be a vital
part of our communities up and down the Pacific coast providing
billions of dollars of economic activity and thousands of jobs.
In Washington State, commercial fishing for salmon generated
over $26 million in revenue and supported over 500 jobs in
2006. That same year, Washington's sport fishing generated $130
million in economic activity. And in Alaska, the salmon
stronghold runs in Bristol Bay alone are estimated to support
over 5,500 full-time jobs and direct economic expenditures of
over $3 million each year.
That is why I have worked so hard for the salmon recovery
programs and funding, including the increase in the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund. Since its inception in 2000, the
Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund has allowed us to focus
our efforts in various counties, conservation districts, and on
average, remove over 200 barriers to fish passage and open up
nearly 500 miles of habitat each year. That is 2,200 barriers
removed and over 4,000 miles of habitat restored. I will
continue to fight to protect and increase the salmon recovery
fund, but more needs to be done.
Current Federal salmon recovery efforts are focused heavily
on salmon listed on the Endangered Species Act, basically
seeking to restore what we have lost. While recovering depleted
populations is essential, we cannot forget that it is also
important to protect the healthy salmon populations we still
have. For salmon stocks that are still healthy today, it is
much smarter, more cost effective to preserve them now before
their populations dip low and trigger the Endangered Species
Act and their protections. Rather than waiting until after they
have run into trouble, act now.
Ultimately, saving the Pacific salmon is not just about
recovering threatened and endangered stocks, it is also about
protecting healthy populations. That is why last year I
introduced legislation that we are here to discuss today, the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009. And I am
proud to say that this legislation was introduced and
cosponsored by every Senator from the Pacific coast states,
including Senator Murkowski, Senator Murray, Senator Wyden,
Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, Senator Merkley, and Senator
Begich.
I am also pleased that a companion bill is making its way
through the House of Representatives with Representative Mike
Thompson as the lead sponsor and support of 42 cosponsors.
The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act was written
to achieve a simple goal: to ensure the survival of the Pacific
salmon by making sure that our healthy salmon populations get
the protection they deserve.
It is a stunning fact that the States of California, Idaho,
Oregon, and Washington are roughly 20 percent of the salmon
habit and support the salmon abundance. The State of Alaska, as
a regional stronghold, produces more than one-third of all
Pacific salmon in North America.
This legislation will protect these critically important
wild salmon strongholds. By establishing a cooperative public/
private salmon stronghold partnership, this bill will break
down the old barriers between Federal, State, and tribal
governments, private landowners, and non-governmental
organizations. It will streamline and coordinate our efforts
toward a unified, clearly defined, science-based approach for
conservation of salmon stronghold populations. And it will
establish a much-needed grant and technical assistance program
to leverage private dollars in support of targeted, high-impact
projects in the stronghold watersheds. Establishing this kind
of voluntary, incentive-based program will bring people
together to accelerate the highest priority conservation
actions needed to shore up our network of healthy salmon
populations, serving as a buffer against our future losses
among vulnerable stock. Restoring the threatened and endangered
salmon in the Pacific Northwest is an imperative as wild
Pacific salmon are a true icon of western northern America. It
is time to increase funding for recovery efforts but also
essential that we bring into focus prevention. And it is time
to adopt the kind of comprehensive solution that can solidify
wild Pacific salmon's rightful place for generations to come.
We are going to turn to our witnesses. We are glad that Dr.
Gordon Reeves, a Research Fish Biologist for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest
Research Station from Corvallis, Oregon is with us. Welcome.
Mr. Guido Rahr, President and CEO of Wild Salmon Center,
Portland, Oregon; Ms. Sara LaBorde, Special Assistant to the
Director for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife;
and Mr. Joe Childers, Immediate Past President of United
Fishermen of Alaska and the Co-Vice Chair of the Advisory Panel
for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Welcome to
you all and we are glad you are here.
I see my colleague and a cosponsor of this legislation.
Senator Begich from Alaska is here. Senator Begich, would you
like to make a statement before we turn to our witnesses?
Senator Begich. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. No. Let
us go right to the witnesses. I think you summarized very well
the importance of the legislation. And it is exciting to see
this step moving down the road. So I will just look forward to
witnesses and then some questions from that point, if that is
OK.
Senator Cantwell. Great. Thank you.
Dr. Reeves, welcome, and please pull the microphone up.
STATEMENT OF DR. GORDON H. REEVES,
RESEARCH FISH BIOLOGIST AND TEAM LEADER,
PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESEARCH STATION,
U.S. FOREST SERVICE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Dr. Reeves. Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the
Committee. My name is Gordon Reeves, and I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the science
that underlies the Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009.
I am a Research Fish Biologist with the PNW Research
Station in Corvallis, and I have held that position for 27
years. I have published 75 papers on the freshwater ecology of
Pacific salmon and trout in the Northwest and Alaska. I also
had a short career as a commercial fisherman while I was in
graduate school at Humboldt State University.
The primary focus of my testimony is on the science that
underlies the salmon stronghold concept. Therefore, I will not
be speaking to the bill itself.
Protecting populations and their ecosystems is a primary
principle of conservation biology. Depressed populations and
degraded ecosystems are much more difficult to conserve and
recover than are productive, intact ones. Conservation,
therefore, is most successful when proactive actions are
directed at populations before they decline and ecosystems
before they are degraded.
The establishment of a stronghold network is premised upon
principles of systematic conservation design, and these
principles include comprehensiveness, which is the extent to
which the network protects the desired level of biodiversity
and abundance; irreplaceability, the inclusion of areas or
populations that are necessary to achieve the conservation
goal; and efficiency, which is meeting the desired goals in the
most effective manner while minimizing the amount of area
involved.
Tools based on these principles have been developed by
scientists from the Forest Service, the Wild Salmon Center,
other NGO's, and universities. And they will provide the
ability to identify and develop a scientifically sound
stronghold network.
In dealing with climate change, the potential effects of
climate change are relatively minor compared to environmental
variations native fish have faced historically. However, change
is now occurring more rapidly than in the past and follows a
period of extensive and fairly rapid ecosystem alteration.
Consequently, these fish no longer have the intact network and
the associated diversity of habitats and environmental
conditions or the genetic and life history diversity potential
to respond to changes that they did historically.
Creating networks of watersheds across large spatial scales
could be a key component of providing opportunities for native
salmon and trout to respond to these stressors. Salmonids are
most likely to persist in such networks because they will
provide a diverse habitat that allows for greater species,
genetic and phenotypic diversity, and they will have the
ability to absorb catastrophic disturbances without the loss of
entire populations.
A network of strongholds that is distributed across the
Pacific Northwest and Alaska will also provide important
ecological services to the local communities and other areas.
The foundation of the salmon network approach is well
embedded in principles of conservation biology and has the
potential to help prevent further declines of native salmon and
trout and the ecosystems in which they reside. Additional
strongholds would complement and expand the existing network of
strongholds which are generally limited in size and
distribution and would increase the overall effectiveness of a
network system. In the longer term, such a network would have a
good potential to contribute to the persistence of strong
populations, the recovery of depressed populations, and to
provide a suite of ecological services to the local
communities.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify, and I would be
happy to answer any questions you might have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Reeves follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Gordon H. Reeves, Research Fish Biologist and
Team Leader, Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S. Forest Service,
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member and members of the Subcommittee,
my name is Gordon Reeves. I very much appreciate the opportunity to
appear before you today to discuss the science that underlies the
Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009. I am a research fish
biologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the U.S.
Forest Service in Corvallis, OR and have held this position for 27
years. I have a Ph.D. in fisheries science from Oregon State University
and a Master of Science in fisheries from Humboldt State University. I
also worked as a commercial salmon fisherman in northern California
while I was in graduate school. I have published more than 75 papers on
the freshwater ecology of various species of Pacific salmon in the
Pacific Northwest and Alaska and on the impacts of land management
activities on the freshwater habitats of these fish. I was involved
with the development of options for managing Federal lands in the
Pacific Northwest and Alaska and evaluating their effects on Pacific
salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) and other aquatic organisms.
The primary focus of my testimony is on the science that underlies
the salmon stronghold concept therefore, I will not be speaking to the
S. 817 itself. More than 29 percent of the estimated 1400 populations
of native salmon and trout in the contiguous western United States have
been lost (Gustafson et al. 2007). Currently, about one third are
listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. As
a result, the conservation of these fish is the focus of much effort by
scientists in Federal and state agencies, universities, NGO's, and
private industry. Initial conservation efforts were directed at habitat
units, such as pools and riffles, and small segments of streams.
However, no fish species or population unit was recovered sufficiently
to be removed from the Endangered Species list and these approaches
were judged to be ineffective (Williams et al. 1989). In the early
1990s, Moyle and Yoshiyama (1994) advocated for the focus shifting to
watersheds with a particular emphasis on intact watersheds. It was also
recognized that recovery and protection efforts should focus on
ecological processes, and not solely on in-channel conditions (e.g.,
Reeves et al. 1995, Gustafson et al. 2007). These approaches have been
echoed by several researchers and managers since that time, but there
are few examples of where this approach has actually been applied,
particularly on a large spatial scale. Perhaps the best examples are
the key watersheds, which are part of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy
of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) that guides management on Federal
lands within the range of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis
caurina). Key watersheds had currently good habitat, the best potential
to respond to restoration, or were municipal water supplies (Reeves et
al. 2006). The purpose of the former two types was to aid in the
recovery of listed fish. Ten years after the implementation of the
NWFP, the proportion of key watersheds (70 percent) whose condition
improved at a greater rate than that of non-key watersheds (50
percent). The primary reasons for this were: (1) restoration efforts
were focused in the key watersheds rather than dispersed; and (2)
watershed analyses provided a basis for any management activities
undertaken and helped reduce the risk of negative consequences.
Principles of Conservation Biology
Protecting populations and their ecosystems is a primary principle
of conservation biology. Conservation is most successful when proactive
actions are directed at protecting populations before they decline, and
protecting ecosystems before they are degraded (McGurrin and Forsgren
1997), which is the foundation of a stronghold strategy. Populations
that are in decline are much more difficult to conserve and to recover
than are productive, intact ones. Focusing efforts on intact
populations, where they exist, is a prudent component for the long-term
conservation of native salmon and trout (Gustafson et al. 2007).
The identification and selection of a stronghold network is
premised on principles of systematic conservation design, which are
well established in the scientific literature (see Soule and Terborgh
1999). These include: (1) comprehensiveness--the extent to which the
network protects the desired level of biodiversity and abundance; (2)
irreplaceability--the inclusion of areas or populations that are
necessary to achieve the conservation goals; and (3) efficiency--the
network is designed to be the most efficient manner that achieves the
conservation goals while minimizing the area involved. An integrated
suite of planning tools based on these principles has been developed by
scientists from the Wild Salmon Center, other NGO's, the Forest
Service, and universities. These tools can provide stakeholders and
other interested parties the ability to identify and develop a
scientifically sound stronghold network.
Native salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska occupy
a wide geographic range over a wide variety of environmental
conditions. The fish are uniquely adapted to local conditions, and it
is difficult for populations from one area to survive in other areas
(Waples 1991). Examples of local adaptation include resistance to
disease, timing of return to freshwater, and size and age at maturity
(Hodgson et al. 2009, Quinn 2005). These differences among populations
are recognized by responsible management and regulatory agencies and in
the status designation under the Endangered Species Act. As a result,
it is important that the design and establishment of a stronghold
network be focused at ecoregional levels in order to maintain this
variability of locally adapted populations and to have the greatest
chance of success.
The Challenge of Climate Change
The potential impacts of climate change pose a threat to native
salmon and trout, particularly weak populations, in the Pacific
Northwest and Alaska. These fish are particularly vulnerable because of
their dependence on both freshwater and marine ecosystems. Potential
impacts in the marine environment include: (1) changes in the thermal
regime and timing and intensity of upwelling; and (2) increased
acidification. Likely impacts on freshwater ecosystems include: (1)
alteration of flow and temperature patterns; and (2) more frequent
disturbances such as wildfire and drought (Hamlet and Lettenmaier
2007). The primary cause of decreasing summer flow is increasing air
temperatures, which are decreasing snowpacks and melting existing
accumulations earlier in the spring (Regonda et al. 2005; Stewart et
al. 2005). As a result, streams runoff 1--3 weeks sooner than they did
historically (Regonda et al. 2005; Stewart et al. 2005) and subsurface
aquifers provide less groundwater for stream flow late in the summer
and early fall (Hamlet et al. 2005). There will be wide variation in
the expression of potential impacts of climate change within and among
watersheds in any given area. Additionally, there will be large
variation among regions. The average annual air temperature increase in
the West has been 0.8+C; warming rates have been faster at higher
elevations and more northerly latitudes, and slower at lower elevations
and southern latitudes (Diaz and Eischeid 2007).
The likely consequences of climate change for salmon and trout
include changes in the: (1) behavior and growth of individuals
(Neuheimer and Taggart 2007); (2) phenology, growth, dynamics, and
distribution of populations (Hari et al. 2006; Rieman et al. 2007); (3)
persistence of species and fish communities (Hilborn et al. 2003); and
(4) functioning of whole ecosystems (Moore et al. 2009). The
vulnerability of salmon and trout species and population units to
climate change will depend on the characteristics of the species or
population, and local environmental conditions, as well as past habitat
alteration, fragmentation, and loss (Hodgson et al. 2009). Larger, more
productive populations have a better likelihood of adapting to climate
change, in part, because of the inherent genetic and phenotypic
diversity within them (Hodgson et al. 2009).
The potential effects of climate change are relatively minor
compared to the environmental variation native fish have faced over
time (Waples et al. 2009). However, change is occurring more rapidly
than many of the past changes (IPCC 2007) and is following a period of
extensive and fairly rapid ecosystem alteration. Consequently, these
fish no longer have the historical intact networks and diversity of
habitats and have reduced genetic, life-history, and evolutionary
potential to respond to the impacts of climate change.
Conserving and creating networks of watersheds across large spatial
scales could be a key component of providing opportunities for native
salmon and trout to respond to a number of stressors. Salmonids are
most likely to persist in larger and more complex habitat networks
(Fausch et al. 2006, Greene et al. 2009). Large networks are more
likely to provide diverse habitat required over the life span of these
fish, the complexity and area to absorb catastrophic disturbances
without loss of entire populations, and greater species, genetic and
phenotypic diversity (Fausch et al. 2009).
A network of strongholds that is distributed across the Pacific
Northwest and Alaska will also likely provide important ecological
services to the local communities. These include protection of other
aquatic species, production of clean water for drinking and irrigation,
natural flood control, sites of carbon sequestration, and opportunities
for recreation.
Conclusion
The foundation of the salmon stronghold network approach is well
embedded in the principles of conservation biology and has the
potential to help prevent further declines of native populations of
salmon and trout and the ecosystems in which they reside. Additional
strongholds would complement and expand the existing network of
strongholds, which are generally limited in size and distribution, and
would increase the overall effectiveness of the network. In the longer
term, such a network would have good potential to contribute to the
recovery of populations that are currently depressed. This network
would likely be the base for Pacific salmon and other native fishes to
respond to the challenges of adapting to climate change and where
important ecological services are provided to local communities, the
region, and the Nation.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I would be happy to
answer any questions.
References
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Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Dr. Reeves.
We will just go down the line, and we will wait until all
the witnesses have given their testimony. Then we will go to
questions.
So, Mr. Rahr, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for
all the work that the center has been doing, and we look
forward to your comments.
STATEMENT OF GUIDO RAHR, PRESIDENT AND
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, WILD SALMON CENTER
Mr. Rahr. Madam Chair, members of the Subcommittee, I very
much appreciate the chance to testify today. In my testimony,
my views are of the President of the Wild Salmon Center. We are
an international, science-based conservation organization.
The Chairman. Mr. Rahr, just bring the microphone a little
closer to you. Thank you.
Mr. Rahr. My name is Guido Rahr. I am the President of the
Wild Salmon Center, an international, science-based
conservation organization dedicated to protecting wild salmon
ecosystems across the north Pacific.
In my testimony today, I will briefly explain why enacting
the Salmon Stronghold Act is necessary for the survival and
health of wild salmon.
First of all, I want to emphasize that there are many
important endangered species in the Pacific Northwest, but wild
salmon have a disproportionate impact on the health of both the
ecological and social human communities where they live.
Scientists have a term for species that have this kind of
impact, and it is called the ``keystone species.'' Wild salmon
are a keystone species for the watersheds that flow into the
north Pacific. They bring in tremendous amounts of marine
nutrients which support over 100 species that depend upon wild
salmon, the runs that have come in and spawned. They are also
one of the top three revenue-generating seafood products,
supporting tens of thousands of jobs and generating $3 billion
in personal income. So salmon are really important for the
health of the ecological and economic systems of the north
Pacific.
Also, salmon really unite the people of the north Pacific.
We and our fellow nations across the north Pacific are part of
the salmon ecosystem. We identify ourselves with salmon. They
are part of our way of life and they really represent the north
Pacific. They are very much an important icon in our lives.
Now, currently globally we are losing the battle to save
wild salmon populations over much of their range. Wild salmon
have disappeared from much of Europe and the eastern United
States. Japan has no more healthy wild salmon runs. It appears
that the Korean peninsula is in the same shape. And now
southern British Columbia is seeing their populations in some
cases faltering. The Fraser River sockeye collapsed last year,
for example. In the western United States, salmon have
disappeared from 40 percent of their native range, and one-
third of our populations are now listed for protection under
the Endangered Species Act.
Despite a concerted effort to recover salmon, no species
has been removed yet from the Endangered Species list.
Now, today in the Pacific Northwest, we are at a
crossroads. There are two big driving forces that are going to
determine our ability to protect salmon over the long run, and
one is the impacts of climate change and the other is the fact
that our human population is doubling roughly every 40 years.
So in 40 years, we could have twice the impacts and competition
for the resources that salmon need.
Unless we are able to implement a realistic, long-range
strategy to protect our rivers from these and other threats, we
will likely join a growing number of places in the world where
wild salmon and all that they symbolize are just a memory.
But we still have some healthy wild salmon populations, and
these are the strongholds, places like Alaska's Bristol Bay,
the Olympic Peninsula of Oregon, and northern California, the
Smith River, for example, in northern California.
The key is going to be prevention, being able to anticipate
the threats that these watersheds face and implement programs
to protect them over the long term.
Unfortunately, our current governance structure, which is
constructed to respond mostly to the crises of the day, is ill-
equipped to invest and lead us to prevent the threats that we
see before us. The main direction to the agencies is driven by
the Endangered Species Act. We need, in addition to that work,
an additional approach to protect the strongholds, a
preventative approach. The Salmon Stronghold Act represents
precisely the leadership that we need. The Act establishes a
critical missing component in Federal salmon policy, providing
Congressional direction to focus Federal resources on the
conservation of these strongholds.
History has shown that it will be less expensive to act now
than to invest heavily later in having to recover these
populations. If we succeed, we will be leaving our children
some of the most beautiful rivers and a miracle of healthy wild
salmon runs and something they will be very grateful for.
In conclusion, I want to express my support for the
leadership of Senator Cantwell in introducing the Salmon
Stronghold Conservation Act, which has broad support throughout
the western United States, and we stand ready to do anything we
can to help pass this Act into law.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rahr follows:]
Prepared Statement of Guido Rahr, President and Chief Executive,
Wild Salmon Center
Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you today to provide my views on the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act (``Salmon Stronghold Act'').
My name is Guido Rahr and I am the President and Chief Executive of the
Wild Salmon Center, a science-based, international conservation
organization dedicated to protecting the healthiest and most productive
wild salmon ecosystems across the Pacific Rim. I was the first full-
time staff member of Wild Salmon Center at its inception in 1998 and
initiated the organization's effort to identify and protect the
remaining ``strongholds for native salmonid fish along the Pacific
Rim,'' a very new concept in salmon conservation at the time. I have a
Masters of Environmental Studies from Yale University and 22 years of
experience developing programs for regional and international
conservation organizations, including Oregon Trout, the Rainforest
Alliance, the United Nations Development Programme, and Conservation
International. I am the founder of the World Conservation Union Salmon
Specialist Group, led the creation of new salmon and river conservation
organizations in the United States and Russia, and have written
numerous publications on salmon conservation, most notably ``A
Proactive Sanctuary Strategy to Anchor and Restore High Priority Wild
Salmon Ecosystems'' (Rahr, et al. 2006).
In my testimony today, I will explain: (1) why enacting the Pacific
Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act is critical to maintaining and
increasing the long-term abundance and diversity of wild Pacific salmon
in North America, and (2) how U.S. leadership can stimulate action from
other Pacific Rim salmon-bearing nations, whose cooperation is vital to
protect our salmon fisheries. If there is one message from my testimony
today that I hope stays with you, it is this: Congressional direction
is absolutely necessary to implement a winning, science-based salmon
conservation strategy. Enacting the Pacific Salmon Stronghold
Conservation Act (``Salmon Stronghold Act'') will provide the critical
missing link in current salmon conservation and management policies by
harnessing public and private efforts to protect North America's
healthiest wild salmon rivers, and the communities and wildlife that
depend on them.
I want to acknowledge the extraordinary leadership and support of
the bill's co-sponsors, Chairwoman Cantwell and Senator Murkowski--two
Senators who were among the first to recognize the value of
preventative action to avoid paying billions of dollars in watershed
restoration costs down the road. I also want to commend the other six
original co-sponsors of the bill, which included each and every West
Coast Senator.
The Economics, Ecology and Culture of Wild Salmon Ecosystems
Healthy wild salmon ecosystems provide myriad ecological, economic
and cultural benefits. Ecologically, salmon are what is known as a
``keystone'' species, a key link in the food web upon which over 137
other species depend, including bears, eagles, orcas, and other
wildlife (Cedarholm, et al. 2000). Salmon even provide valuable
nutrients to our forests and plants through the decomposition of their
nitrogen-rich carcasses.
Salmon are also an ``indicator'' species, informing us about the
health of our freshwater and marine systems. Not coincidentally, many
of our most productive salmon rivers provide our communities with
critical ecological services, such as clean drinking water, flood
control, irrigation and pollution filtration. Abundant and diverse
salmon populations tell us that our system is healthy and will continue
to provide those and other valuable services.
Salmon are a highly migratory and transboundary species, which have
a tremendous impact on the ecological health of communities around the
northern Pacific Rim. They create thousands of truly sustainable jobs,
generating billions of dollars of economic value, while providing an
important component of food security as they are a nutritious and
natural source of protein for local consumption and export.
Accordingly, salmon require international cooperation with other
salmon-bearing nations across the Pacific Rim.
Finally, more than any other species, salmon connect the people to
the oceans and rivers of the Pacific Rim. They are deeply embedded in
our identity, and are a primary source of food and cultural identify
for native peoples across the Pacific Rim.
A More Strategic Approach to Salmon Conservation
Today, in the western United States, we are at a crossroads. Salmon
are now extinct over 40 percent of their native range, and many other
salmon populations have declined to the point that they are protected
under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Fortunately, there are still
river systems that are home to relatively healthy wild salmon and
steelhead populations. These are the ``salmon strongholds'': the crown
jewels of productive salmon ecosystems. While they are the best of what
we have left, without pro-active planning and management, they may be
next in line to suffer the threats that have caused the decline of so
many other salmon populations.
Scientists predict that the impacts of climate change will both
decrease the flow of water in our rivers, and heat them to the point
that many systems will not be habitable for salmon and steelhead. In
addition to the effects of climate change, the human population of the
Pacific Northwest is predicted to double by the year 2040, potentially
doubling not just the demand for the fish themselves, but doubling the
demands on the clean water and healthy forests needed to support wild
salmon runs.
Unless we are able to implement a realistic long-range strategy to
protect our rivers from these and other threats, we likely will join
the growing number of places in the world where wild salmon and all
that they symbolize and provide are just a memory. Our ability to learn
from the past and establish a comprehensive and strategic approach to
salmon conservation will likely determine whether future generations
can continue to enjoy the many values these extraordinary species
embody.
The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009
Today, our scientists have a deeper understanding of what wild
salmon need to thrive and prosper than ever before. Reduced to its most
elemental components, salmon require:
1. Sufficient natural and healthy functioning river systems,
estuaries, and marine habitat to live out their life cycle;
2. Harvest management that enables enough wild salmon to return
to the spawning grounds of their home rivers, and protection
from the ecological impacts of large scale releases of juvenile
salmon from hatcheries; and
3. Genetic diversity to build resilience, adapt to
environmental conditions, and evolve.
Current Federal salmon policy only partially addresses these basic
needs, largely through the Endangered Species Act (recovery of salmon
populations listed as threatened or endangered; implemented through the
Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund), the Magnuson Stevens Fisheries
and Management Reauthorization Act (setting national standards to
conserve and manage anadromous and other high seas migratory species to
prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, and facilitate long-
term protection of essential fish habitats), and the U.S.-Canada
Pacific Salmon Treaty (promoting international cooperation for bi-
national salmon harvest allocations and a ban on high seas salmon
fishing).
One critical missing component in this policy is a Federal focus on
the conservation of healthy wild salmon ecosystems--salmon
strongholds--as a preventative, proactive approach. We have invested
millions of dollars in salmon recovery efforts, but these efforts alone
will not be sufficient to prevent the need for future listings or
safeguard against future declines. It is also important to note that
while salmon recovery is a vital element of our Federal salmon
conservation strategy, no salmon population to date has been recovered
and removed from the Endangered Species list. While recovery proceeds,
we must ensure that our healthy wild salmon populations remain intact.
This approach will save hundreds of millions of dollars in future
restoration costs and emergency funding.
The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009 creates this
essential policy by directing Federal resources toward conservation of
the healthiest and most productive wild Pacific salmon strongholds in
North America.
Protecting Strongholds Implements a Key Principle of Conservation
Biology--
Safeguard Core Centers of Abundance and Diversity
Approximately two-thirds of historic salmon populations persist
around the Pacific rim, and wild Pacific salmon remain incredibly
diverse, with at least 50 evolutionary significant units in just the
lower 48 (Augerot, 2005). Yet, only a small percentage of globally
significant wild salmon rivers currently enjoy protection. For those
that remain unprotected, a wide range of conservation strategies must
be employed to sustain their productivity (Pinsky, et al. 2009).
The Salmon Stronghold strategy applies rigorous scientific analyses
to the following three steps:
1. Identifying ``stronghold'' rivers based on levels of
abundance and diversity of wild salmon and steelhead
populations within each salmon ``ecoregion'' throughout the
species North American range;
2. Optimizing the most efficient combination of rivers
necessary to conserve the greatest range-wide abundance and
diversity; and
3. Investing in the ``highest conservation value'' actions in
strongholds to maintain ecological function by addressing
factors that limit the salmon population health and prevent
emerging threats.
There is broad agreement among scientific colleagues in and outside
of government that the identification and protection of a portfolio of
salmon strongholds represents a critical plank in any broader salmon
conservation and management strategy.
Cooperative Conservation--a Public-Private Model for Maintaining
Healthy
Watersheds
Federal land managers and regulators often have responsibilities or
interests in coastal watersheds, but seldom does a single government
entity have jurisdiction or management authority over an entire
watershed or salmon ecosystem. It is more often the case that
watersheds are ``managed'' by multiple entities, including Federal and
state agencies, Tribes, and, of course, private landowners and water
management authorities. Coordinating these entities for a shared
purpose is complex, but absolutely necessary to ensure watershed
function and resilience.
The Salmon Stronghold Act brings all of these players to the table
around voluntary, incentive-based efforts to ensure that salmon
strongholds retain and increase the benefits they currently produce.
Wild Salmon Center and its conservation partners have worked closely
with local communities to protect watersheds through many strategies
and tools, including supporting sustainable fisheries and working
landscapes. Leveraging the efforts of non-governmental bodies who
champion these models will make Federal policy more effective and has
the potential to generate significant private resources.
Several conservation organizations, including those participating
in the North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership (Stronghold
Partnership), have worked closely with cities, towns, Tribes, timber
companies, farmers, ranchers, and commercial and recreational fishers
to find mutually beneficial solutions to complex land management and
resource issues. This approach is producing encouraging results in
areas once paralyzed by dispute and mistrust.
Expanding these efforts beyond their current recovery focus to find
voluntary solutions to conserve healthy wild salmon rivers should be
encouraged and enabled by Federal policymaking. The Salmon Stronghold
Act will create the framework enabling key stakeholders to coordinate,
cooperate, and innovate to implement science-based conservation and
management plans in salmon strongholds.
The Model Works--The North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership
Now in its fourth year, the Stronghold Partnership has demonstrated
that a broad and diverse group of stakeholders is dedicated to ensuring
that strongholds continue to provide valued ecological, economic, and
cultural benefits. The first step in this partnership has been an
ongoing effort among a diverse group of salmon experts to identify
strongholds. Collaborating closely with Federal and state agencies and
non-governmental organizations represented on the Stronghold
Partnership Board, salmon experts operating at the watershed level have
worked diligently to score and rank their wild populations. This
collaborative effort, which continues to take place throughout the
salmon bearing states, has not only ensured that strongholds are
identified accurately but also yielded a broad understanding among
local partners of the goals of the Salmon Stronghold Act.
The ``watershed-level'' buy-in that this collaborative process has
fostered allows stakeholders in identified strongholds to leverage
stronghold designation, and access resources provided under the Act to
achieve local conservation goals. This has already been demonstrated as
partners in several pilot strongholds have actively sought to
participate in the program, and begun to leverage stronghold status to
identify critical needs, determine conservation strategies, and
implement innovative projects. Technical and financial resources made
available as a result of the Stronghold Act will provide vital support
to these local and regional partners, ensuring that preventative
strategies reach the ground.
The Salmon Stronghold Act--What Difference Will It Make On The Ground?
Given the significant Federal resources already invested in salmon
conservation, partners introduced to the Stronghold Partnership
regularly ask what needs the Partnership--and the Act which supports
it--meet that cannot be met through other programs.
First and foremost, the Board will focus resources provided
under the Act on activities that promote the development and
implementation of prevention-based strategies in strongholds.
These proactive approaches to salmon conservation will
explicitly complement the restoration-based principles advanced
through current Federal investments in recovery.
Second, the Salmon Stronghold Act authorizes technical and
financial support to advance cross-cutting, programmatic
initiatives. Programmatic initiatives include the development
and refinement of conservation policies and management
strategies that address threats and reduce limiting factors
across multiple strongholds.
Third, the Act will direct the Federal agencies to help lead
and coordinate the development and implementation of prevention
based strategies and programmatic initiatives.
Prevention-based Strategies in and across Strongholds
In the Pacific Northwest, partners in several salmon stronghold
river basins have already identified specific needs that must be met in
order to prevent the decline of healthy watersheds and strong salmon
populations. However, the very fact that these rivers are ``healthy''
today has made it extremely challenging for local partners to garner
the resources necessary to meet these needs. For example, the
magnificent Smith River in Northern California has united a broad and
diverse group of stakeholders to maintain its outstanding water quality
and habitat, yet the Smith rarely qualifies for Federal or state
funding because it has few species (one) listed as endangered, and it
is not included on the 303(d) list of impaired water bodies. As a
result, because the basin is ``too healthy'', local stakeholders cannot
obtain sufficient funding to even conduct baseline escapement
monitoring, which is vital to determining the amount of salmon
returning from the ocean to the river to spawn. This lack of funding
impedes fish managers' ability to set conservation-minded harvest
levels and establish science-based escapement targets. These conditions
prohibit the State from ensuring that appropriate management strategies
are in place to conserve strong populations.
The extraordinary coastal rivers of Washington's Olympic Peninsula
provide another example of this gap in Federal salmon policy. Home to
five species of Pacific salmon, which inhabit some of the healthiest
watersheds in the lower 48 states, no comprehensive watershed plan
exists to conserve the Peninsula's salmon populations. Localized plans,
such as those formulated by the Quileute and Quinault Tribes and local
Lead Entities, are severely underfunded because partners cannot
leverage the crisis conditions necessary to prompt Federal investment.
Only through monitoring and careful planning can partners in
strongholds identify the preventative measures necessary to safeguard
the health of functioning watersheds. This Act will enable partners to
garner sufficient funding to identify conservation needs in stronghold
basins and ensure that the management strategies are in place to
maintain currently strong salmon populations into the future. If
prevention is not supported now, emerging threats like development and
climate change will surely require that we pay more in the future to
restore what has been lost.
Programmatic Initiatives to Address Challenges across Multiple Basins
While watershed level conservation strategies are critical, many
challenges faced by salmon managers are more effectively addressed
through policies which accelerate the development and implementation of
conservation strategies across a much larger range. This approach is
sorely lacking within the current portfolio of Federal salmon
conservation grant programs, which focus heavily on implementing
strategies at the watershed scale (for example, PCSRF funds are
allocated on a state by state basis, each state allocates funds to
recovery basins for habitat protection and restoration actions, and
priorities are determined by each recovery basin, e.g., Lead Entities
in WA.) The Salmon Stronghold Act advances a broader range-wide
approach through its support for programmatic initiatives. Programmatic
initiatives catalyze innovative approaches to proactively respond to
emerging threats, reform inefficient policies, and integrate management
strategies. Three examples of these are described below. Note the broad
range of challenges presented in these examples, which indicate the
potential of programmatic initiatives to address both the root causes
of conditions that limit populations today as well as threats to
populations in the future.
Climate Change. Perhaps no greater threat challenges the health of
Pacific Salmon across their range than climate change. The
establishment of a network of salmon strongholds supported under the
Salmon Stronghold Act will ensure that strongholds are maintained as
core centers of abundance and genetic diversity. Maintaining diversity,
scientists tell us, may be the key to ensuring species' resilience over
the long-term in the face of changing watershed conditions. Although
the Federal Government currently supports climate change research, no
forum and few resources exist to translate ongoing climate change
research into policies that are targeted to wild salmon conservation.
For example, current research into ``downscaling'' regional climate
change impacts will be vital to helping researchers evaluate impacts
across strongholds. Because of its focus on inter-agency coordination,
the Stronghold Partnership provides an extraordinary forum to apply
this emerging research to develop and recommend the policies necessary
to safeguard strongholds and promote resilience among strong wild
salmon populations.
Innovative Demonstration Projects. Cross-cutting initiatives funded
under the Act may include pilot projects that, if replicated
successfully, would address challenges faced by multiple strongholds.
On the north coast of Oregon, for example, strong salmon populations
are threatened by unsustainable harvest levels in the Tillamook-Clatsop
State Forest, an area encompassing over one half million acres of
extraordinary salmon habitat. The high harvest is driven by the
reliance of local county budgets on revenues derived from logging. A
broad consortium of stakeholders convened by Wild Salmon Center is
working with local and state leaders, industry, and NGO partners to
identify revenue that could be generated from non-extractive uses of
the forest. By recognizing the value of--and generating revenues from--
watershed services like clean water and carbon sequestration, local
counties could offset decreases in timber receipts resulting from
reductions in harvest to sustainable levels.
This promising idea has been applied to other resource management
challenges that have not involved salmon conservation. Unfortunately,
funding to further develop the concept in Oregon and elsewhere is
limited because few, if any, Federal or state grant programs can
provide the funds necessary to demonstrate the concept. Because of the
Stronghold Partnership's commitment to support policy innovations that
address the root causes of watershed degradation, this approach could
be demonstrated in Tillamook and have widespread applications across
other strongholds.
Policy Reform to Accelerate Conservation. Countless local, state,
and Federal resource management policies have unintended adverse
impacts on the stewardship of salmon strongholds. One example is the
permitting process which seeks to protect aquatic and wetland resources
from development but often impedes locally-led habitat protection and
restoration efforts. Under provisions of Section 7 of the Endangered
Species Act, a Federal agency that funds or authorizes activities that
may affect a listed anadromous fish species must consult with the
National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure that proposed actions are
not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the species. While
this regulation is necessary, its one-size-fits-all approach makes no
accommodation for thoroughly reviewed activities proposed to enhance
ecosystem function. Consequently, the permitting process often
obstructs restoration project implementation due to the added expense
and/or unmanageable duration of the application and review processes.
Likewise, sections 401 and 404 of the Clean Water Act, which govern
projects impacting wetlands and water quality respectfully, similarly
do little to distinguish between permitting for potentially harmful
development activities and habitat enhancement projects. These
permitting processes often lead to significant delays, cost over-runs,
and sometimes cancellation of valuable ecosystem enhancement projects.
In recent years, conservation organizations, Federal agency
personnel, and even Members of Congress have proposed streamlining the
permitting processes to support conservation projects. Similar to the
challenge of funding the activities described above, however, these
efforts have been difficult to sustain among local watershed groups who
are critical to the success of the process. If deemed a priority by the
Board, funds provided under the Stronghold Act could support
cooperative efforts underway in the states to streamline permitting,
thereby accelerating the rate of conservation in strongholds.
Enhanced Coordination
Since the life cycle of salmonids crosses public and private
ownerships, political jurisdictions, and diverse ecosystems, a
coordinated approach among Federal, state, and tribal governments,
landowners, and non-governmental organizations is critical to
successfully conserving and managing strong salmon populations.
Unfortunately, Federal partners in stronghold basins currently have
little guidance or ability to lead strategies like those described
above, focusing instead on the reactive approaches to salmon
conservation due to current mandates. With congressional direction
under this Act, Federal partners who are now participating
enthusiastically in the Stronghold Partnership will not be forced to
leave the table to address recovery priorities, as proactive
conservation and management of healthy wild salmon populations will
become a complementary mandate to recovery for the agencies.
This Act, therefore, will make existing efforts to protect healthy
salmon ecosystems more effective by coordinating the entire family of
Federal agencies and departments to take actions compatible with
maintaining core areas of wild salmon abundance and diversity. For
example, in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. Forest Service is
implementing an innovative policy to identify and manage ``key
watersheds'' to maximize and protect valued ecological and economic
resources produced from these areas. Several key watershed designations
include salmon strongholds, yet many of these watersheds encompass
other Federal and state landowners which do not adopt such preventative
and far sighted strategies. Coordinated Federal leadership in these
basins would amplify the benefits of the Forest Service's policy over a
broader scale, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of basin-
wide conservation planning.
In addition, many landowners in stronghold basins are faced with a
complex and overlapping array of existing incentive-based programs
administered by multiple Federal and state agencies. This legislation
will provide a forum, the Stronghold Partnership Board, for partners to
coordinate these programs to bundle and deliver incentives in a more
efficient and results-oriented manner.
International Cooperation
This legislation will also help the U.S. promote the stronghold
approach across the Pacific Rim. This is extremely important since
salmon are highly migratory, with some species spending portions of
their life history in the waters of other Pacific Rim nations. Because
environmental conditions or human actions across the Pacific can have
an impact on Chinook returns in Alaska, for example, salmon represent a
global ``canary in the coal mine,'' integrating freshwater, estuarine
and marine habitats into one enormous ecosystem. These
interdependencies are recognized by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish
Commission and the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty.
The Salmon Stronghold Act will complement these official government
bodies by establishing a civil society-led initiative to coordinate the
creation of a Pan-Pacific network of salmon strongholds, stretching
from Japan through the Russian Far East across British Columbia to
California. This network will ensure the long term viability of wild
salmon over a much larger spatial scale and will serve as a forum to
share lessons learned and leading edge conservation science tools and
methodologies with other nations. With strong Federal, state, tribal
and non-governmental participation, this network will share experiences
directly with local citizens in stronghold basins throughout the North
Pacific.
Other Pacific salmon countries are beginning to recognize the need
to protect salmon strongholds and engage in the Partnership's efforts
to conserve them. For example, Canada's Pacific Fisheries Resource
Conservation Council adopted the stronghold approach and officially
joined the Stronghold Partnership Board. Voluntary, incentive-based
protection efforts are now underway in British Columbia's Harrison
River, which was recognized as a salmon stronghold pilot site in
February 2010.
U.S. leadership in establishing a stronghold policy and program
will help recruit supporters from other salmon-bearing nations,
including promising initiatives underway in the Russian Far East and
northern Japan. At the triennial ``State of the Salmon'' international
congress, several leading voices for salmon conservation and
sustainable management from other nations showed great interest in
pursuing similar policies based on the proposed Salmon Stronghold Act
legislation, so its enactment would further those efforts.
Conclusion
Salmon strongholds offer our greatest hope of preserving the long
term viability of wild salmon populations and the economic, ecological,
and cultural values they sustain. In the face of climate change,
development, and countless other threats on the horizon, Federal
leadership through the Salmon Stronghold Act presents a long overdue
approach to stem the tide of species extinction and loss. If we
succeed, we will be leaving our children some of the most beautiful
rivers and the miracle of healthy wild salmon runs, returning to the
clear waters of home as they have for millions of years.
I would like to express my support and appreciation for the
leadership of Senator Cantwell in sponsoring this important
legislation. The Salmon Stronghold Act has broad support throughout the
western United States and we stand ready to do anything we can to help
pass this Act into law. Thank you very much.
References Cited
Augerot, X. 2005. Atlas of Pacific Salmon: the first map-base
status assessment of salmon in the north Pacific. University of
California Press, Berkley, California.
Cederholm, C.J., et. al. 2000. Pacific Salmon and Wildlife-
Ecological Contexts, Relationships, and Implications for Management.
Special Edition Technical Report, Prepared for D.H. Johnson and T.A.
O'Neil (Managing Directors) Wildlife-Habitat Relationships in Oregon
and Washington. Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA.
Pinsky, M.L., D.B. Springmeyer, M.N. Goslin, and X. Augerot. 2009.
Range-Wide Selection of Catchments for Pacific Salmon Conservation.
Conservation Biology. 23: 680-691.
Rahr, G. and X. Augerot. 2006. A Proactive Sanctuary to Anchor and
Restore High-Priority Wild Salmon Ecosystems. Pages 465-489 in R.T.
Lackey, D.H. Lach, and S.L. Duncan, editors. Salmon 2100: the future of
wild Pacific salmon. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, Maryland.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Rahr, and thank you for
your testimony.
Ms. LaBorde, thank you for being here, and we look forward
to your comments.
STATEMENT OF SARA LaBORDE,
SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR,
WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE;
AND CHAIR, SALMON STRONGHOLD PARTNERSHIP
Ms. LaBorde. Madam Chair and members of the Committee, I
appreciate the opportunity to appear. My name is Sara LaBorde,
and I serve as Special Assistant to the Director of Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I chair the North American
Salmon Stronghold Partnership.
My primary responsibilities at the department include
statewide salmon recovery and implementation of hatchery and
harvest reform.
Today, I would like to share with you my perspective as a
state fish and wildlife manager and someone who is engaged in
trying to ensure that we have healthy salmon populations into
the future.
Ten years ago, as you know, the State of Washington faced
the listing of salmon and steelhead populations throughout both
Puget Sound and the Columbia Basin. The listing set in motion
the most comprehensive and challenging recovery planning effort
every accomplished in the United States.
And since then, much has been accomplished that we can be
proud of and hopeful for. There are six NOAA-approved salmon
recovery plans built from the ground up involving literally
thousands of citizens, local governments, State agencies,
Federal agencies, citizens, and tribes. There are local systems
in place developing, prioritizing salmon recovery projects to
improve their watersheds. And throughout the Northwest,
communities have developed a hands-on understanding that it
takes working landscapes of farms and forests, protected
critical areas, smart growth to deliver economic ecological
benefits to their citizens.
But with all of that, these communities have shown that
they remain determined to demonstrate that they can live side
by side with wild salmon. And while Federal policy and
implementation of recovery plans keeps the focus on rebuilding
the weakest links, it assumes that our most productive and
healthy rivers are in no need to help to continue their role of
sustaining our greatest salmon populations.
Now, the Stronghold Act calls us to move in front of the
listing curve, to protect and ensure that our most productive
and healthy rivers stay that way. It calls us to complement
recovery with effective preventive measures to ensure current
economic benefits continue and to avoid the additional costly
restoration in the future.
As Chair of the North American Salmon Stronghold
Partnership, I would like to tell you firsthand how encouraged
and optimistic I am after seeing the enthusiasm, the
commitment, the broad-based support of uniting public and
private efforts to keep strongholds productive and healthy. We
have met with tribal leaders, farmers, ranchers, local
government officials, commercial recreational fishermen,
hunters, conservationists. We hear one constant theme, that
these places are healthy because the vast majority of people
who live, work, and recreate there value them.
The Stronghold Act includes these important stronghold
watersheds and communities in our salmon recovery picture. It
builds the tools and support they need to be successful.
We support the Act for a number of reasons.
One, it is not duplicative. It builds on our history and
capitalizes on the decade's work and the current delivery and
accountability system.
It works at the watershed level and requires local buy-in,
using strong science and having local stakeholders opt in to
participate.
It establishes a multi-State organization to address issues
that cannot be dealt with watershed by watershed, and it gets
at larger more pervasive issues like climate changes, as well
as what does it really take to keep landscapes working.
It accelerates an integrated approach that we have learned
is the only way to deal with salmon recovery, which is to
involve habitat hatcheries, harvest, and hydro managers to
develop solutions.
It furthers the voluntary incentive-based approach that we
know works and it leverages private dollars toward highest
priority conservation actions.
And last, it enacts Federal policy to identify and protect
salmon strongholds. It completes the picture of salmon
conservation and management.
So I urge you to join every West Coast State and the
diverse and growing number of local, regional, and national
organizations in supporting the Pacific Salmon Stronghold
Conservation Act of 2009 by passing this bipartisan bill out of
subcommittee.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I would be glad
to answer any questions later.
[The prepared statement of Ms. LaBorde follows:]
Prepared Statement of Sara LaBorde, Special Assistant to the Director,
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife; and Chair, Salmon
Stronghold Partnership
Madam Chairman, members of the Committee, I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before you today to provide my views on the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act (S. 817).
My name is Sara LaBorde and I serve as Special Assistant to the
Director of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (``WDFW'') and
Chair of the Salmon Stronghold Partnership. My primary responsibilities
at the Department of Fish and Wildlife concern statewide salmon
recovery and hatchery and harvest reform implementation. Prior to this,
I served as Regional Director for WDFW's Coastal and Hood Canal region,
Special Assistant to the WDFW Commission, as well as the Public
Involvement Coordinator. I have worked for WDFW for over twenty years.
However, I began my career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources restoring trout streams and improving state forestlands.
Before moving to Washington, I spent 3 years with the Oklahoma
Department of Wildlife Conservation starting their wildlife education
program and Project WILD.
Today, I would like to share with you the perspective from a state
fish and wildlife manager and someone who has been engaged with the
Salmon Stronghold Partnership from the outset. Principally, I hope to
address:
1. The need and opportunity to ``complete the picture'' in
salmon management and conservation by explicitly supporting
voluntary, incentive-based protection and restoration of our
healthiest remaining wild salmon populations; and
2. How the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009
(``Salmon Stronghold Act'') will assist Washington State and
others' efforts to integrate fish management and conservation
into a comprehensive and holistic ``All H'' framework.
Federal Policy to Identify and Protect Salmon Strongholds Will
``Complete the Picture'' of Salmon Conservation and Management
Current Federal salmon policy recognizes the need for international
cooperation on this highly transboundary species through the U.S.-
Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty (creating the Pacific Salmon Commission to
implement the treaty and advise on harvest allocation and related
management issues) and the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission
(ban on North Pacific high seas salmon fishing). Federal policy also
shapes salmon conservation and management through the Endangered
Species Act, funded in large part through the Pacific Coastal Salmon
Recovery Fund.
While each of these Federal mandates and authorities fulfills an
important piece of national salmon policy, there is a compelling need
to also enact a Federal policy to support the identification,
protection and restoration of our healthiest remaining wild salmon
ecosystems--``salmon strongholds.'' As I will explain, protecting our
strong populations and the functioning watersheds they support restores
to prominence a fundamental tenet of conservation biology--to conserve
core centers of species abundance, productivity, and genetic diversity.
A Sharp Focus on Wild Salmon Strongholds
The purpose of the Salmon Stronghold Partnership is to identify and
protect a network of the healthiest remaining wild Pacific salmon
ecosystems in North America to ensure the long-term survival of salmon
and the many species that depend on them. The Stronghold Partnership is
a voluntary, incentive-based initiative intended to complement ongoing
ecosystem protection and restoration efforts by providing leadership,
enhanced coordination, and public and private resources to support
strategies that prevent declines in the health of salmon strongholds.
The Partnership includes Federal, tribal, state, and local governments
and nonprofit organizations who are working collaboratively on salmon
conservation activities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California,
and Alaska.
The Salmon Stronghold Act will provide a high-level forum to
improve coordination among key public and private actors, address
cross-cutting issues affecting multiple strongholds, and leverage
private funds to implement high value conservation actions within
strongholds. Our goal is to improve policies affecting strong salmon
populations and deliver public and private resources as efficiently as
possible directly to local entities implementing protection and
restoration actions.
The Salmon Stronghold Act will assist state governments like
Washington State to accelerate implementation of a holistic,
comprehensive salmon conservation and management approach that
integrates all the ``H's'' (habitat, harvest, hatchery and
hydro).
State and tribal salmon management has been focusing on developing
ways to protect wild populations while harvesting hatchery fish. This
focus on meeting conservation needs and harvest goals for a variety of
stakeholders has led us to understand the importance of all the H's:
habitat, hatcheries, harvest and hydropower--working together to
implement ecosystem-based wild salmon goals. Washington's experience
and experimentation in this area is instructive, with its tribal and
state co-managed salmon fisheries and presence of both ESA-listed and
non-listed wild salmon stocks.
Recently, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife adopted an
integrated ``All-H'' management framework to overcome the historic
``silo'' approach to determining harvest, hatchery and habitat
strategies and approaches. Identifying strongholds and coordinating
Federal efforts with state, tribal and private ones will fill a hole in
salmon protection and restoration for populations critical to
maintaining the long term abundance and diversity of wild stocks.
Stronghold sites, and the organizational capacity provided by the make-
up of public and private actors engaged in the Salmon Stronghold
Partnership, provide an ideal venue to pilot salmon policy integration
strategies, in addition to accelerating ongoing protection and
restoration actions in these systems.
In its recent review of all of Washington's hatchery programs, the
Congressionally-sponsored Hatchery Scientific Review Group (HSRG)
concluded that:
(a) Hatchery and harvest reforms alone will not achieve
recovery of listed populations (habitat improvements are also
necessary), and
(b) The effectiveness of habitat actions will be greatly
increased if they are combined with hatchery and harvest
reforms.
Under the HSRG assumptions, analysis of the ``Primary'' populations
in the Lower Columbia Chinook Evolutionary Significant Unit suggests
that the benefits of habitat quality improvements would more than
double if combined with hatchery reforms. The Salmon Stronghold Act
will provide the focus and forum to bring these elements together for
strong populations (see www.hatcheryreform.us; Columbia River Hatchery
Reform Project; Final Systemwide Report, p. 12).
Salmon Conservation and Management requires system-wide, cross-
cutting policy coordination and harmonization. The Salmon
Stronghold Partnership provides a unique cooperative forum for
public and private stakeholders to improve our salmon
management and conservation policies.
The salmon lifecycle crosses freshwater and marine domains,
political boundaries, and land ownerships. Salmon challenge our
commitment to ``eco-system based management'' in practical ways, not
the least of which is to align the policies and approaches of our
Federal land managers and regulatory bodies to ensure compatibility
with state and local salmon conservation and management objectives.
Existing Federal salmon policies and the important role that Federal
land managers and regulators play in salmon strongholds makes the
Federal Government a critical partner in this arena.
State managers consider better Federal, state and local policy
coordination and implementation at a broad, regional scale a major need
and opportunity addressed by the Salmon Stronghold Act. Many challenges
and threats exist that transcend watershed boundaries and exacerbate
existing problems that limit populations within a particular basin.
Unlike basin-specific limiting factors, however, which often require
``on-the-ground'' solutions implemented at the watershed or reach
scale, challenges like climate change can be more effectively addressed
through ``programmatic remedies'' that can reach across multiple
strongholds. In many cases, programmatic remedies can be tested and
demonstrated in strongholds and then replicated in others.
Because most Federal and state salmon conservation programs focus
financial and technical support on specific watershed level restoration
strategies, programmatic solutions are often difficult to design and
finance under existing programs. This is especially true for new and
innovative approaches or policies that are untested, but may be
applicable and effective across multiple basins. This Act will enable
the Salmon Stronghold Partnership to support programmatic remedies that
reach across multiple strongholds by integrating government policies
and programs while recommending specific reforms where appropriate. By
facilitating improved policy integration, innovation, and targeted
reforms, the Stronghold Partnership can remove obstacles to and
increase the effectiveness of existing salmon conservation and recovery
efforts. The ``All-H'' integration strategy described above is an
excellent example of a broadly supported programmatic remedy that can
be championed by the Stronghold Partnership. A few additional examples
of necessary programmatic initiatives that have been raised by our
partners include:
1. Promote climate change mitigation strategies in salmon
strongholds
Leading scientists tell us that intact, functioning ecosystems are
critical to mitigating the impacts of climate change on wild salmon
populations. Because salmon are an inherently resilient and adaptive
species, strong populations provide the diverse genetic reservoirs
necessary for the species to adapt to changing watershed conditions
across their large region. However, in order to adapt, these
populations require complex, intact habitats that maintain their
diversity. The Salmon Stronghold Partnership provides an ideal
voluntary, incentive-based vehicle to develop and pilot climate change
mitigation strategies at a meaningful, multi-state regional scale. As
climate change science continues to improve, mitigation strategies are
being developed, but few if any of these focus directly on promoting
salmon resilience. Because the Stronghold Partnership has explicitly
recognized the role of strongholds in buffering the impacts of climate
change on salmon, it is uniquely positioned to translate emergent
climate change science into management and policy.
2. Integrating working landscapes and salmon conservation
In Washington and elsewhere in the West, public-private
partnerships are emerging to devise new approaches to sustaining
working landscapes while promoting watershed conservation. The
Stronghold Partnership will support a variety of innovative approaches
that advance this objective, ranging from those that leverage market
forces to incentivize salmon conservation to those that reduce the
adverse impacts of historic settlement and development patterns. In
Washington's Wenatchee Basin, for example, land use is driven by a
patchwork of local, state, Federal, and private land ownership. This
ownership pattern and the inefficiencies it promotes present challenges
for both private landowners--who struggle with inefficient fire
management, invasive species control, and trespass--and the
conservation community, which must contend with spatially inconsistent
implementation of conservation plans. Because salmon use of a wide
variety of aquatic habitats throughout a watershed, landscape
fragmentation undermine both the watershed's restoration potential and
the health of its wild salmon populations.
Neither the agricultural community nor conservation interests in
the Wenatchee basin have been able to address fragmentation. Under this
Act, the Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board could both elevate this
issue as a priority amongst Federal agencies and provide funding to
local partners to initiate a project to work with local landowners,
local, state and tribal governments to address this important issue.
The Board could replicate this approach throughout strongholds. In
doing so, the Board would not only address a key limitation to long
term stronghold health, but also promote efficiencies across many of
the west's working landscapes.
A Winning Strategy for Wild Salmon
The Board and many partners of the Salmon Stronghold Partnership
are enthusiastic about increasing our attention on the Nation's
healthiest wild salmon populations. We all know that prevention will
save money, avoiding costly restoration. We also know that success will
require the sustained commitment and leadership from a diverse group of
public and private interests, whose equal roles must be acknowledged
and empowered by our Federal Government.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership program relies on science and
conservation biology principles to identify healthy stronghold
populations and high value conservation needs for these populations.
While we use science to identify the stronghold populations, the
allocation of project funding requires local buy-in and support. This
is designed to ensure a true partnership among local, state, Federal
and tribal governments, private landowners, and non-governmental
organizations working together to successfully conserve healthy wild
Pacific salmon populations.
The Salmon Stronghold Act will demonstrate the Federal Government's
recognition of this shared undertaking and the solid scientific
foundation upon which it rests.
I urge you to join me, every Pacific salmon state and a diverse and
growing number of local, regional and national organizations in
supporting the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act of 2009 by
passing this bipartisan bill. On behalf of the Washington Department of
Fish and Wildlife and the Salmon Stronghold Partnership, I would like
to thank you for the invitation to submit testimony and participate in
today's hearing, and for your time in consideration of these issues.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you very much.
Mr. Childers, thank you for being here. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF JOE CHILDERS, PRESIDENT,
UNITED FISHERMEN OF ALASKA
Mr. Childers. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the
Committee. I am Joe Childers, President of United Fishermen of
Alaska. UFA is an umbrella association representing 37 member
fishing associations that collectively represent every gear
group and every species commercially fished in every region of
Alaska.
Commercial salmon fisheries employ approximately 20,000
fishermen and crew who actively harvest five species of salmon.
These salmon fisheries produce over $3 billion in first
wholesale value and are the major employer in the broader
Alaska seafood industry that all together provides 78,000 jobs
and 60 percent of U.S. wild seafood production. There are
salmon permit holders from 48 different States and over 2,300
permitted salmon skippers from the States of Washington,
Oregon, and California. Thousands more crew and processing
workers from throughout the United States depend on the
sustainability of Alaska's salmon fisheries. The summer salmon
season provides the only opportunity in many communities of
coastal Alaska for any sort of cash income. In addition, the
shear volume of activity creates an economy of scale that
provides for freight rates that allow for much-needed supplies
and fuel to be brought into many of the remote places in
Alaska. Indeed, salmon and other large fisheries in Alaska are
largely responsible for keeping the cost of foodstuffs,
consumer goods, and energy affordable throughout Alaska.
Alaska produces over 44 percent of the total world
production of wild salmon. There are thousands of pristine
watersheds in Alaska that together produce this incredible
volume of salmon with such tremendous biodiversity. Salmon
returns support most of Alaska's wildlife. When bears, otters,
wolves, and other animals bring fish ashore, the parts they
leave behind are a primary source of nutrients for Alaska's
forests. Without salmon, a major part of Alaska would have
little value to Alaskans or to the rest of the Nation.
Our pristine watersheds are the key to our long history of
sustainability in our fisheries, but things may be on the brink
of changing quickly. Right now, we are seeing a rapid expansion
in our population in Alaska, coupled with a greatly expanded
demand on resources. Alaska's river systems are used
increasingly by personal use, subsistence, guided and unguided
recreational fishermen.
Requests for expanded fishing access in riparian and upland
areas along previously remote watersheds is very worrisome to
members of UFA. We hold that the long-term ability for our
river systems and watersheds to sustain healthy returns of
salmon relies in part on their ability to be protected from
people's insatiable desire to access waterfront areas and
harvest fish and use the waters for recreational, industrial,
and municipal purposes.
Climate change may have significant and potentially
irreversible negative impacts. These impacts are not caused by
fishermen or by the fishing industry and no amount of
mitigation by the Alaska fishing industry can reverse the
potential impacts of climate change.
We are experiencing an increase in mining interest in
Alaska. Mines are commonly located in salmon stronghold
watersheds. The impact of developing mining infrastructure
causes great concern by itself, but potentially more worrisome
is the likelihood that mine development will provide expanded
opportunity for our growing population to access more of the
currently pristine waterways in Alaska. One such project is
located at the very top of the watershed for one of the largest
salmon watersheds in the world. Mine development may proceed
because of the lure of hundreds and thousands of construction
jobs and the associated increase in taxes, but the risk of
expanding access for many thousands of people to the headwaters
of Bristol Bay forever is truly frightening. The Bristol Bay
watershed has sustained an active commercial fishery for over
100 years, and in 2009 it was at all-time high levels of
abundance.
We must learn from other areas. It will be far more
economical to protect salmon strongholds before we wreck them
than it will be to try to fix and recover them.
We support the concept of Senate Bill 817 of identifying
salmon strongholds and the threats to them. We support creating
a structure with funding to ensure that we are doing everything
we can to sustain and restore salmon where necessary.
UFA maintains firmly that the makeup of the Salmon
Stronghold Partnership Board must include not less than four
representatives of commercial fishing organizations, at least
one from each of the Pacific states.
UFA recommends that funding for potential future programs
be appropriated in addition to and not at the expense of other
ongoing management efforts.
We applaud you, Madam Chair, for uniting the eight West
Coast Senators in co-sponsorship of Senate Bill 817.
We regret that only Alaska can be recognized as a regional
stronghold in this legislation. We hope this bill will ensure
that the regional stronghold status will not change in Alaska,
and we also hope that remaining strongholds in Washington,
Oregon, California, and Idaho can be conserved. We hope that
this bill will help ensure that we learn from the past, and
together we share in the bounty of Pacific salmon.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Childers follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joe Childers, President, United Fishermen of
Alaska
Good morning Madam Chair and members of the Committee.
I am Joe Childers, President of the United Fishermen of Alaska
(UFA). UFA is an umbrella association representing 37 member fishing
organizations that collectively represent every gear group and every
species commercially fished in every region of Alaska.
Commercial salmon fisheries employ approximately 20,000 fishermen
and crew who actively harvest five species of salmon, Chinook, Sockeye,
Coho, Chum, and Pink. These salmon fisheries produce over $3 billion in
first wholesale value and are the major employer in the broader Alaska
seafood industry that altogether provides 78,000 jobs and 60 percent of
U.S. wild seafood production. There are salmon permit holders from 48
different states, and over 2300 permitted salmon skippers from the
states of Washington, Oregon, and California. Thousands more crew and
processor workers from throughout the U.S. states depend on the
sustainability of Alaska's salmon fisheries. And the summer salmon
season provides the only opportunity in many communities of coastal
Alaska for any sort of cash income. In addition the shear volume of
activity creates an economy of scale that provides for freight rates
that allow for much needed supplies and fuel to be brought into many of
the remote places in Alaska. Indeed salmon and the other large
fisheries in Alaska are largely responsible for keeping the cost of
foodstuffs, consumer goods, and energy, affordable throughout Alaska.
Alaska produces over 44 percent of the total world production of
wild salmon. There are thousands of pristine watersheds in Alaska that
together produce this incredible volume of salmon with such tremendous
biodiversity. Salmon returns support most of Alaska's wildlife. When
bears, otters, wolves, and other animals bring fish ashore, the parts
they leave behind are a primary source of nutrients for Alaska's
forests. Without salmon, a major part of Alaska would have little value
to Alaskan's or to the rest of the Nation.
Our pristine watersheds are the key to our long history of
sustainability in our fisheries, but things may be on the brink of
changing quickly. Right now we are seeing a rapid expansion in our
population in Alaska coupled with a greatly expanded demand on
resources. Alaska's river systems are used increasing by personal use,
subsistence, and guided and unguided recreational fishermen.
Requests for expanded fishing access in riparian and upland areas
along previously remote watersheds is very worrisome to members of UFA.
We hold that the long term ability for our river systems and watersheds
to sustain healthy returns of salmon relies in part on their ability to
be protected from peoples' insatiable desire to access waterfront areas
and harvest fish and use the waters for recreational, industrial, and
municipal purposes.
Climate change may have significant and potentially irreversible
negative impacts. These impacts are not caused by fishermen or by the
fishing industry and, no amount of mitigation by the Alaska fishing
industry can reverse the potential impacts of climate change on salmon.
We are experiencing an increase in mining interest in Alaska. Mines
are commonly located in salmon stronghold watersheds. The impact of
developing mining infrastructure causes great concern for us by itself,
but potentially more worrisome is the likelihood that mine development
will provide expanded opportunity for our growing population to access
more of the currently pristine waterways in Alaska. One such project is
located at the very headwaters of the single largest sustainable salmon
watershed in the world. Mine development may proceed because of the
lure of hundreds or thousands of mostly short term construction jobs,
and the associated increase in taxes to local governments, but the risk
of expanding access for many thousands of people to the headwaters of
Bristol Bay forever, is truly frightening to many. The Bristol Bay
watershed for example, has sustained an active commercial salmon
fishery economy for over 100 years. The salmon returns there in 2009
were at all-time high levels of abundance.
We must learn from other areas--it will be far more economical to
protect salmon strongholds before we wreck them, than it will be to try
to fix and recover them.
We support the concept within S. 817 of identifying salmon
strongholds and the threats to them, and we support creating a
structure with funding to ensure that we are doing everything we can to
sustain or restore salmon where necessary, for the benefit of future
generations.
UFA maintains firmly, that the makeup of the Salmon Stronghold
Partnership Board must include not less than four representatives of
commercial fishing organizations--at least one from each of the Pacific
states.
UFA also recommends that funding for potential future programs be
appropriated in addition to, and, not at the expense of, other ongoing
management efforts for sustainable fisheries.
We applaud you madam Chairman for uniting the eight west coast
senators in co-sponsorship of S. 817.
We regret that only Alaska can be recognized as a regional salmon
stronghold in this legislation. We hope this bill will help to ensure
that the regional stronghold status will not change in Alaska, and we
also hope that remaining salmon strongholds in Washington, Oregon,
California, and Idaho, can be conserved. We hope that this bill will
help ensure that we learn from the past, and that together we share in
the bounty of Pacific salmon.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify, and I am available to
answer any questions.
______
Attachment
United Fishermen of Alaska Member Organizations
Alaska Crab Coalition
Alaska Independent Fishermen's Marketing Association
Alaska Independent Tendermen's Association
Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association
Alaska Scallop Association
Alaska Trollers Association
Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association
Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development Association
Armstrong Keta
At-sea Processors Association
Bristol Bay Reserve
Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association
Cape Barnabas Inc.
Concerned Area ``M'' Fishermen
Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association
Cordova District Fishermen United
Crab Group of Independent Harvesters
Douglas Island Pink and Chum
Fishing Vessel Owners Association
Groundfish Forum
Kenai Peninsula Fishermen's Association
Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association
North Pacific Fisheries Association
Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association
Petersburg Vessel Owners Association
Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation
Purse Seine Vessel Owner Association
Seafood Producers Cooperative
Sitka Herring Association
Southeast Alaska Fisherman's Alliance
Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association
Southeast Alaska Seiners
Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association
United Catcher Boats
United Cook Inlet Drift Association
United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters
Valdez Fisheries Development Association
Senator Cantwell. Well, thank you all for your testimony
and again for being here today and for your work in a
comprehensive way to try to help tackle this important issue
for us.
I am going to start with you, Mr. Rahr, about this issue
that you all kind of touched on about the endangered population
and then the healthy population. Do you think that it is a
fundamental flaw in our efforts to protect and restore wild
salmon if we only focus on the endangered side of the equation?
Mr. Rahr. I do not think that the Endangered Species Act
alone is going to succeed in giving our kids the chance to have
healthy wild salmon runs. I mean, it kicks in when the
populations have already reached such low levels that many of
the factors causing their decline are entrenched. So in
addition to the ESA, we have to have a proactive strategy.
History has shown--I mean, it is clear now that the cost of
recovery is high. And so the cost of preventing those things
that are driving the salmon down would be lower than the cost
of having to recover them later.
So, the ESA is important and necessary, but this is an
important addition to that. It is almost like a stock portfolio
where most of our stocks now are the high-risk and rather
expensive and we need to balance that with a more strategic
allocation of our resources. So an additional investment in
protecting strongholds makes economic sense, and as Gordy
mentioned, it is also a foundation of--it is supported firmly
in science that you protect the best while you still can.
I think that also it is worth adding that no matter what
else we do, if we get this piece wrong, if we do not protect
the strongholds, we will not succeed in having healthy wild
salmon runs in 30 or 40 years. We have to get it right, and it
is our best chance. So I think it is an important addition.
Senator Cantwell. How is the stronghold addressing some of
the specific root causes of the decline, as opposed to treating
the symptoms?
Mr. Rahr. Well, what it does is it basically protects--
gives you a chance to work with communities to protect forests
and in-stream flow and wild populations. It enables you to
identify and it gives us the chance to create those kind of
partnerships to look into the future and see what is coming
around the corner next and anticipate that, and, as Sara
mentioned, while there still are people in the watershed that
care a lot about it.
So, for example, instead of having to replace the fish with
a fish hatchery, if we succeed with the Stronghold Act, we will
have free wild salmon coming back with a healthy wild salmon
run. So it enables you to get ahead of the extinction curve.
I am not sure if I am answering your question.
Senator Cantwell. Well, Ms. LaBorde talked about not being
able to address this watershed by watershed, that you needed a
more comprehensive approach. Maybe she could elaborate on that.
Ms. LaBorde. There are a number of issues that are bigger
than watersheds like patchwork landscapes. You work with
energy. You know how complex the county taxing systems and
rural economies are in terms of what they depend on. So imagine
these watersheds that have patchwork ownerships, large Federal
owners, large state owners, large private owners, all with
different mandates, all with different missions, with small,
little local communities that depend on them and having those
landscapes work. They are not always put together right for
fire, for invasive species, for protecting critical natural
resource areas. And the John Day, Wenatchee are all trying to
grapple with this, but there is no elegant system that lets us
look at that landscape and say how do we protect these areas,
how do we deal with this ownership and still have a strong
local economy, a tax base, a development piece, have critical
areas protected.
One of the priorities of the Stronghold Partnership is to
look at that and come up with solutions that can elegantly work
on all of those landscape properties and kind of rematch them
in the right place. The State of Washington just did this with
Washington DNR and Washington Fish and Wildlife, a 3-year
process just to lay out what is forest lands, what is fish and
wildlife lands, and how to work them correctly so that the
landscape works better for both missions. That is one of the
pieces that can go on here.
Another big programmatic is climate change. How do we step
back, bring the best science to the ground level? One little
watershed cannot do that, and frankly, one state cannot.
But this organization, when you put it together, has the
right people at the table, every state agency, the Governors'
offices, every state fish and wildlife agency, all the big
Federal agencies, Forest Service, NOAA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, USGS. They are all at the same table working on
solutions to focus all of their priorities, and that is what we
need to do if we are going to really tackle this idea of
getting stronghold populations protected.
Senator Cantwell. So you are saying coordination by
interested parties on prevention.
Ms. LaBorde. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. Senator Begich?
STATEMENT OF HON. MARK BEGICH,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
Senator Begich. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Joe, if I can ask you a couple questions. Thank you very
much for being here. Let me ask some Alaska-specific ones
first.
As we focus on preserving and prevention--actually I was
very intrigued by the conversation that was just going on here.
So I appreciated the idea of how we have responded to mostly a
crisis moment rather than thinking long-term.
But in Alaska, it is kind of an interesting situation. As
we work to conserve our key production areas, what is the
impact, do you think, to non-areas or areas we are not going to
be highly focused on with this Act? Give me a feel. Will we
create an imbalance or will we kind of be focused on one area
and then forget about what is going on over here, Joe?
Mr. Childers. Thank you, Madam Chair and Senator Begich.
I am not certain I follow the question exactly, Senator,
but I believe the question is since Alaska is all--basically
all of our systems are salmon strongholds today--there are a
few that we should probably be concerned about.
Senator Begich. That is where I am trying to get to.
Mr. Childers. I think that this legislation will provide
the framework and the process for doing just that, I mean, to
look at systems that are potentially at risk. I think that is
what the value is.
Senator Begich. I think you have answered it. Even though
they are considered a stronghold, it is not necessarily that
all are equal. Is that a fair statement?
Mr. Childers. Madam Chair, Senator Begich, yes, that is
exactly what it is. Not all systems are the same. Not all
systems have the same degree of access or request for access.
Senator Begich. In understanding that we have, again, a lot
of strongholds and that our fishery is fairly strong in the
sense of the quality and in the sense of the long-term ability
for it to continue to move forward, how will this Act in your
mind for Alaska's fisheries that I like to brag about--you had
some good points in your commentary about the sustainability of
it, as today, even though it is not salmon, we have read some
more stuff about what is happening in Maine in some of their
fisheries or their capacity. But in ours, which are very
sustainable, how will this Act actually help us in the sense of
moving forward? I think I know the answer to this, but I want
to hear it from you. I mean, prevention is really the long term
here.
Mr. Childers. Well, Madam Chair, Senator Begich, Alaska
depends to a great extent on its commercial fisheries. They
have been ongoing for over 100 years, and they permeate the
economy at levels that most people do not even recognize.
The sustainability of the fisheries is what provides the
predictability of the future for industry and for communities
to build infrastructure and to make investments. And the
predictability with the sustainability is what has allowed
fishermen to buy into the very conservative management programs
that we have in place and have had in place for Alaska for over
50 years.
Senator Begich. If I can, Madam Chair, just ask a couple
more quick ones. Do you think as this Act moves forward, from
Alaska's perspective and then in conjunction with the Northwest
region, as you focus on the strongholds--and I actually like to
use the word ``prevention'' because this is really what we are
trying to do, is not get in the situation--you know, I turned
on NPR today and I listened about the sardine industry, or no-
longer sardine industry in Maine closed its last plant today as
an example--is the idea that as we work on kind of the crisis
management, which will always be there in certain elements and
certain species, that the long-term investment that we are
going to make here and the cooperation, which I appreciated
that conversation about all the different agencies and state
layers and so forth working together, that the real goal here
is to make sure that we have a balanced approach in our whole
management of fisheries from a Federal level and not just on
the ``wait until it turns into a crisis.'' Then throw tons of
money at it and hope and pray it all works out. I am trying to
summarize it in my own simplistic way to look at this.
Mr. Childers. Madam Chair, Senator Begich, exactly. That is
what it is. We have a great thing, and it is easy to overlook
it sometimes I believe. The costs of letting it go away are
incredible to Alaska.
Senator Begich. And the last question and I will just leave
it at this. Anyone who wants to comment on this, how you see
this Act helping from an international perspective? As we
develop and work on our strongholds here, how do we see the
connection to the international fisheries? Because it is not
just--I mean, obviously, we will be parochial for a moment
here. Our fisheries are the most important. Of course, I would
say Alaska's fisheries are the most important. But American
fisheries are the most important. But how does it work from an
international perspective? Whoever wants to respond to it.
Mr. Rahr. I think I can speak to that. I think it is in our
interest that the other nations of the north Pacific do not
make some of the same mistakes we have made, not so much in
Alaska, but other areas. I think we have an opportunity to help
them learn from our successes and failures. We do not want
history to keep repeating itself like it has along the Atlantic
and much of the Pacific, especially in the Russian far east,
for example, and even in Hokkaido and British Columbia to an
extent also.
So we have been engaging our partners in those nations to
help them to create a kind of community of exchanging
information, lessons learned. There are things we can learn
from them. And it is in our interests, if not just for a food
security issue, that they get it right. 40 percent or so of the
salmon production comes from the Russian far east. You have got
growing economies in Asia that are dependent on that protein
and possibly us too. So I think we need to work with our
neighbors and foster a sense of community. We share this great
kind of arc, and I think they are exploring related strategies
like the one we are talking about today.
Senator Cantwell. Just to follow up on that question, Mr.
Rahr, how in fact are at the center coordinating those efforts
on an international basis, and what do you think their monetary
contributions to this will be in the future?
Mr. Rahr. Well, it is really early to be able to say. But
we have been working with Russian scientists on helping them
prioritize watersheds and set conservation goals and also
learning some things from our Russian colleagues too. It has
been a very fruitful exchange. One thing we have done--the
concept of watershed councils that we developed in Oregon to
help aid recovery, which could be an important part of the
stronghold work--they are now exploring that on Sacland Island
where they have a tremendous problem with poaching in the
Russian far east. And so the communities are coming together to
chase away the poachers.
Now British Columbia is looking at adopting something
similar to the Stronghold Act, recognizing that some systems
are so important that they need to be elevated.
Does that get to your question, Senator Cantwell? Were you
looking from a strategic standpoint or more of a monetary
standpoint?
Senator Cantwell. A leveraged standpoint.
Mr. Rahr. Yes, how we can leverage the conservation efforts
in those nations.
Senator Cantwell. Yes.
Mr. Rahr. It has been very fruitful. By us doing this, it
sends a clear example to those other nations that it is an
opportunity for them too. I mean, they are watching us, and
they see that some of the issues we have had to face over the
last 50 years may be next for them. And so it is important that
they can learn from that. This provides a useful model for
them.
Senator Cantwell. Do you have a question?
Senator Begich. Just a quick thing on that just to follow
up. Do you see them waiting for us to take an aggressive role
before they--I think both getting at this is such a good method
of thinking about the future rather than the crisis. Are they
waiting for us to make the move to see how it works or does not
before they make an aggressive move? I think that is where you
were getting.
Mr. Rahr. I cannot say that it is that explicit, but they
are very interested in the approach and they are becoming
increasingly aware of the danger of relying only on the
endangered species approach. This is really relevant to Canada
and the Russian far east. I have not heard any statements that
they are waiting for us to move and then they will move. It is
more, I would say--I mean, it is really a partnership.
Senator Cantwell. Well, part of this is about leverage, and
one of the things that the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund
has done is leveraged additional state dollars and local
dollars. So do you think that this is the same way the
stronghold would work in leveraging community and state support
as far as dollars?
Mr. Rahr. Oh, in the international context?
Senator Cantwell. Well, now just talking locally for a
second within the region.
Ms. LaBorde. Actually I think it will even be more
successful than PCSRF in leveraging dollars. What we have heard
of--and Guido, you are probably a better expert on this--is the
larger private funding sources are very interested in a
stronghold approach. Bringing back listed species that are
already down to 50, 75, 100 fish, a long-term investment. Will
it ever happen? A huge lift. And ESA is working on that. They
are much more interested in looking at how do you move forward
on the stronghold piece and have really been supportive of
being able to match public funds that come in inside watersheds
to help them move forward with very concrete, specific goals
and objectives that are very measurable. I think it is going to
really leverage those funds.
Senator Cantwell. How would we measure that? I mean, if you
are saying there is a multiplier effect that is better than
what they got, in these tough economic times, how would you
show that support in advance? A demonstration of the interest
in that level of support, I should say.
Ms. LaBorde. The Moore Foundation is probably the premier
private funder just on the issue of moving salmon and climate
forward, right now, working with the Salmon Stronghold
Partnership and the Wild Salmon Center to say, OK, can you get
some Federal funds to help us now take this science to the
managers and help apply it. We know enough that we can bring it
into the decision process in some arenas. To me, that is the
most exciting piece of a huge private funder stepping out in
front of the issue, getting the best scientists in the
Northwest together to look at this issue. Their findings will
come out in April-May. Trout Unlimited is going to have some of
their presentations at their May meeting. Just exciting work
that will move all of us forward in how do we deal with salmon
with climate change moving on. But it was that private money
that leveraged all of that research forward.
Mr. Rahr. Madam Chair, if I could add to that. The
potential to lever private support, as Sara mentioned, is huge.
This can create the framework that we can unlock that. What
salmon systems have is people that really care about them, but
it is important to create the conditions that we can use to
unlock that.
But one great example is on the Olympic Peninsula with the
Ho River. It was in the Seattle Times day before yesterday that
the Wild Salmon Center, other conservation groups worked with
the Federal Government, state government, and timber companies
to create a conservation corridor along the Ho River, which is
one of the most important strongholds south of Canada. It is a
relatively modest investment. The Ho, the habitat, is
protected. The Ho Tribe has a source of wild salmon. The sport
fishing community is vibrant. I mean, it really did work there.
So there is an opportunity, a big opportunity, for leveraging.
Senator Cantwell. But they, obviously, are seeking
coordination for their interests. I mean, they want their
dollars to be spent wisely, and that is why we are here with
this legislation. Is that correct?
Mr. Rahr. Well, yes.
Senator Cantwell. Without a coordinated effort--which I
wanted to go back to Dr. Reeves. You made this comment about
intact networks, that you have to have these networks to have
scale, that we have to be proactive about that because in
response to change, we are losing some of that. Could you
elaborate on that?
Dr. Reeves. Yes. One of the things we need to recognize is
that a salmon from one place is not the same salmon as from
another place. These populations are really uniquely adapted to
local conditions. Sometimes they can be large areas. Sometimes
they can be small areas.
And what allows them to be so well adapted to the local
environment is their genetic and phenotypic diversity. What
they need to be able to do is express that, have an environment
in which those traits can be expressed. So what we need are
these complex environmental places where you have a range of
potential life history types or phenotypic types of fish to
allow them to persist on the landscape because that is going to
be the key response to change. Do we have that diversity out
there? Do we have that potential for that to be expressed? And
these intact networks--the more intact a watershed is, the
ecosystem is, the more likely you are going to have that basis
for these populations to respond to challenges in the future.
Senator Cantwell. What are some of those things? I feel
like I am going back to Ms. LaBorde when she talks about
watersheds. But are some examples of those intact networks or--
sorry--conditions that would create an intact network?
Dr. Reeves. Well, one would be just a variety of habitat.
You have got flood plain habitats. You have got off-channel
habitats. You have got diversity of habitats where different
types of fish can persist. One would be that you have got a
range of environmental gradients, say, from areas that are
dominated by snow to areas that are dominated by rain. Within
each of those, you are going to have really unique adaptation
of these populations or within populations, and having that
diversity of conditions on the ground--one of the things we
tend to do is see systems become much more homogeneous rather
than heterogeneous through activities. We tend to simplify
them, and that simplification process then constricts or
restricts the ability of these fish to express the different
life history variation. And that inherent variation and the
capability to express it is what is absolutely key to getting
these fish through the challenges that they face in the future.
Senator Cantwell. So what would be the example of
difference in those networks, just for interest of the
Committee between, say, Senator Begich's State and the State of
Washington in some of those issues?
Dr. Reeves. OK. Let me think about it.
One is simply like with sockeye salmon, for example. You
are going to see sockeye salmon in Alaska that may require the
use of lakes to complete their freshwater life history cycle.
At the same time, within that population, you may have sockeye
salmon that are not requiring a lake and they can simply move
straight--you know, what are called ``zero check fish.'' They
can almost be moved down to the marine environment immediately
or they can use river systems. So, you have that type of
variation within the population.
In the Northwest, a great example would be--the best
example I can cite is on the Sixes River on the central coast
of Oregon. And in that, what we have seen is there are five or
six different life history types, everywhere from fish that
leave immediately--these are fall Chinook and they can emerge
from the gravel and they move immediately to the marine
environment to fish that spend a whole year in fresh water and
all within one population.
And depending on the ocean conditions, one particular type,
one of those sub-life history types, will be more successful
than the other. So that variability allows the persistence of
these populations. Again, that variability is premised upon the
environment allowing those expressions to happen. And these
intact watersheds are really key to maintaining that ability to
express that variability.
Senator Cantwell. And carrying that down the coast, what
would California's issues be?
Dr. Reeves. Oh, you know, some of the steelhead, for
example. In steelhead, you have a range of life history
expression, and you could have a resident rainbow trout giving
rise to steelhead, and steelhead are the seagoing anadromous
version of rainbow trout. But you can have resident
populations. So by protecting that whole network, for example,
and protecting the resident populations, you may actually have
a source to jump-start the recovery of listed fish. Oftentimes
what we are doing is we are just looking at the steelhead and
we are saying, well, the other parts of the watershed may not
be important, but the key to recovery of those steelhead may be
those resident fish that we are not looking at. So, if you look
at the whole watershed and the variability within it, that
could be absolutely key and paramount to these recovery
processes.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
Senator Begich, did you have further questions?
Senator Begich. Maybe one or two, just very general for all
four of you, if I could. Let us assume the perfect world, which
the Chairwoman and I would love to live in, and that is, this
bill passes right now. That would be the perfect world, that we
can control that outcome and it happens. What would be the
challenges that you would see based on this legislation for
implementation on the ground? Because one thing we are very
good at here, we try to work through all those elements, but it
is hard once something hits the ground to understand what might
happen from the people who practically have to deal with it.
So maybe I will start with you, Dr. Reeves, and move down
to Mr. Childers, if that is OK. Based on what we have here,
what are going to be the challenges that we might have some
impact on or we may not, but it is something we have got to
think about as we move this forward?
Dr. Reeves. Well, I think from a science perspective, the
main challenges would be getting people to understand what new
science needs to be brought to bear. Having people consider
entire watersheds and the ecological processes within them is
potentially a major hurdle. Right now----
Senator Begich. If I could interrupt. The discussion we
just had here, for example, of the different watersheds and the
impacts on them.
Dr. Reeves. Yes. So we are going to have to have a major
shift. In much of the conservation community right now, our
restoration efforts are focused on relatively small segments of
stream, and they are dealing with basically improving that
small segment. I think what this legislation and the ideas
behind it point to is you need to think about the ecosystem and
the ecological processes in maintaining and restoring those
because that is going to be the key, I would argue, to the
protection and recovery of these fish.
Senator Begich. Thank you.
We will kind of move down the line here. And if you do not
have a comment, that is OK too.
Mr. Rahr. Well, I will add one. I think it is important
that we are able to develop and implement efforts that we can
measure impact of over long periods of time that are really
going to stick and not allocate our resources to things that
are ephemeral and really get at some of the things that are
necessary that we have to do to protect these systems. So that
is going to be a challenge and it is going to take the
cooperation of our partners at the local level to think big and
think long-term and think of stuff that is really going to
stick, not stuff that we would like to do, but stuff that we
have got to do. That is more of a conceptual response.
Senator Begich. If I can just ask a question before I move
down the line here. Do you think the partners have the capacity
to do that? Let me put it another way. Could they have capacity
to do it?
Mr. Rahr. Yes. The beauty of the stronghold strategy is
these places are still functioning and so it has not really
happened yet, otherwise they would not qualify. So you have a
chance to get the community to say what do you want this place
to look like in 40 years, which is a completely different way
of thinking about what you want it to look like tomorrow. Once
it drifts down the road toward decline, then you kind of get a
shifting baseline thing and people have a different reality. So
I mean, that is both a challenge and an opportunity to think
long-term.
Senator Begich. Very good. Thank you.
Ms. LaBorde. I think the biggest challenge would be you
holding us back because we are ready to go. With 11-12 years of
salmon recovery, we know how to make things work at the
watersheds. We know what it means to have a locally-based
decision and process, and they are cranked up and ready to
focus.
Environmental capacity they have. Funding capacity--the
State agencies, every one of them--you know their economic
situation. So there will be a staff capacity. It will be hard
to have staff to engage to be able to push the process and
provide the technical assistance at the local level. But we
have priorities identified. We have worked with local groups.
We are excited to move this forward.
Senator Begich. Very good.
Mr. Childers?
Mr. Childers. Thank you. In Alaska, it is quite a bit
different. Basically in Alaska, we have inholdings of society
surrounded by salmon strongholds. So it is quite a bit
different. The issue that we are faced with really is the fact
that since Alaska became a state and--well, since statehood,
for certain, the fish have always come first, and now we are at
a point where we may be looking at allocation issues for just
allocation. Without being well enough educated--and I think
that the population of Alaska needs to have this kind of an
approach to be brought forward so that people begin to
recognize just what sort of beauty there is in these salmon
strongholds and what we would lose if we do not have them and
also recognize that by not doing this, it is very clear what
will happen ultimately. We will look just like everywhere else
in the world. And we can do it probably faster now than we have
ever been able to do it before. That is really frightening.
Senator Begich. Very good.
Senator Cantwell. Go ahead.
Ms. LaBorde. Well, Senator, I think it comes down to the
fact that this Act is founded on a couple key principles. One,
salmon is a great critter. It adapts and it comes back. And if
we can work in healthy systems that have the functioning pieces
that salmon need and we also then--so we believe in the fish.
We believe in the people, and we believe in the fishermen to
make this all work. And that is what we believe that will make
this successful.
Senator Begich. Very good. Thank you very much.
Senator Cantwell. That is almost a great ending note, but I
have a few more questions.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cantwell. This is so important because we are going
to get into this discussion about the Recovery Fund from our
colleagues and the amount of money and all of this. And I want
to make sure that we are well prepared to answer this.
So, Mr. Childers, if we do not give more attention to the
salmon--with Alaska being one-third of the population, if we do
not give more attention to strongholds, will that not be a
threat then to the Alaska population? I mean, will we not
really be--I mean, is it not almost just too important to be
taken for granted?
Mr. Childers. Madam Chair, in my opinion it is. It is way
too important to be taken for granted. I think that if there is
not a very concerted effort to educate the residents of Alaska
certainly and really the rest of the Nation to what will happen
if we do not do this, if we do not identify these strongholds
and identify the long-term needs for sustainability and the
economic value that they actually bring forever--I mean, the
net present value of a billion dollar salmon industry--it
dwarfs short-term investments into things--I mean, these fish
could be here forever and have been. The education needs to
begin or we are going to begin rapidly repeating all of the
problems that have led to the problems on the West Coast and
the East Coast and in Europe.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you.
Then, Dr. Reeves, how will the strongholds be identified?
How would you from a scientific perspective and definition and
prioritization?
Dr. Reeves. There are a number of tools that are available
right now. One is called Marxan which has been used worldwide
for the identification of areas for conservation, and it is
basically an optimization program that looks at all the
possible combinations that you can have to achieve your goal
and it tries to do it in the most efficient way. And that is
what we have been using in the initial identification process
of strongholds. And it has to meet the criteria I listed in my
testimony of irreplaceability and so on. What you can actually
do is go through and you set your goals and objectives and come
up with a prioritized list of these strongholds. You know, that
is the scientific basis, and then there are the social-
political issues about how do we mix and match those to meet
the objectives. There is a really strong foundation for doing
this that we can use right now and are using right now in this
process.
Senator Cantwell. Is that not almost even a better leverage
of science than is already used with the endangered stock?
Because we are using that science in advance. You actually can
leverage it for protection purposes.
Dr. Reeves. Yes, that is absolutely right. Right now
everything is being considered without looking at--not that
they are not all important, but some places are going to be
absolutely crucial, particularly in the short term. And this
tool is one way of helping identify that.
Senator Cantwell. So leveraging that science, Ms. LaBorde,
do you think that we will actually see a decrease in funding
costs in the future on recovery if we do stronghold right? I do
not mean immediately because I know that there is an issue here
of people being anxious about the short term, but in the long
run.
Ms. LaBorde. There is study after study that shows it costs
more to restore a habitat or a function than it does to protect
it and keep it intact. And then include all of the unbelievable
economic benefits that clean water, water recharge areas, all
of those other pieces you need for local communities that
benefit from a healthy system.
Senator Cantwell. So I guess I do not want to draw
conclusions, but I would say from what Mr. Childers just said,
that if you do not address this, then you could see the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund being greatly increased in the
future, people asking for additional funds to, again, deal with
the problem behind the curve as opposed to in advance.
Ms. LaBorde. That is right. If you want to meet the goal of
recovering Pacific Northwest salmon, yes.
Senator Cantwell. So this definitely meets the definition
of an ounce of a prevention.
Ms. LaBorde. Thank you, yes.
Senator Cantwell. All right. Well, unless my colleague has
any more questions, thank you all very much for being here.
Thank you for your dedication to this important issue, and I
look forward to working with my colleagues all up and down the
coast on this important legislation and moving it as quickly as
possible.
The hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:04 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to
Dr. Gordon H. Reeves
Question 1. Why is this sort of stronghold management so important
to ``complete'' the picture of Pacific salmon conservation?
Answer. The foundation of the salmon network approach is well
embedded in principles of conservation biology and has the potential to
help prevent further declines of native salmon and trout and the
ecosystems in which they reside. Protecting populations and their
ecosystems is a primary principle of conservation biology. Conservation
is most successful when actions are directed at protecting populations
before they decline, and protecting ecosystems before they are degraded
(McGurrin and Forsgren 1997), which is the foundation of a stronghold
strategy. Populations that are in decline are much more difficult to
conserve and to recover than are productive, intact ones. Focusing
efforts on intact populations where they exist is a prudent component
for the long-term conservation of native salmon and trout (Gustafson et
al. 2007).
Current species recovery efforts emphasize recovering weaker, and
often declining, populations. However, recovery of declining
populations and degraded or compromised ecosystems is difficult and
costly, and results are generally limited. Increasing the focus on and
recognizing the importance of intact habitats and associated
populations helps to make recovery efforts more robust and increases
the likelihood that listed organisms could recover.
There are many benefits to including a stronghold network as one
tool of a recovery effort. Strongholds have the potential to increase
the overall effectiveness of a network system. Pinsky et al. (2009)
found that less than one percent of the watersheds with a high
diversity of Pacific salmon around the Pacific Rim were within any
protected area. In the longer term, such a network would have a greater
potential to: (1) contribute to the persistence of strong populations;
(2) contribute to the recovery of depressed populations by providing an
infusion of numbers and genetic and phenotypic diversity; and (3)
provide a suite of ecological services to local communities.
Literature Cited
Gustafson, R.G., R.S. Waples, J.M. Myers, L.A. Weitkamp, G.J.
Bryant, O.W. Johnson, and J.J. Hard. 2007. Pacific salmon extinctions:
Quantifying lost and remaining diversity. Conservation Biology 21:
1009-1020.
McGurrin, J. and H. Forsgren. 1997. What works, what doesn't, and
why? Pp. 459-471. In: J.E. Williams, C.A. Wood, and M. P. Dombeck,
editors. Watershed Restoration: Principles and Practices. American
Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD.
Pinsky, M.L., D.B. Springmeyer, M.N. Goslin, and X. Augerot. 2009.
Range-wide selection of catchments for Pacific salmon conservation.
Conservation Biology: 680-691.
Question 2. What benefit will the salmon stronghold approach have
for salmon populations with regard to climate change?
Answer. Pacific salmon in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska are
especially vulnerable to potential impacts of climate change because of
their dependence on both freshwater and marine ecosystems. Potential
impacts in the marine environment include: (1) changes in the thermal
regime (Mantua and Francis 2004) and timing and intensity of upwelling
(Hsieh and Boer 2007); and (2) increased acidification (Orr et al.
2005). Predicted impacts on freshwater ecosystems include: (1)
alteration of flow and temperature patterns; and (2) increased
frequency of disturbances such as wildfire and drought (Hamlet and
Lettenmaier 2007). The primary cause of decreasing summer flow is
increasing air temperatures, which are reducing snowpacks and melting
existing snow accumulations earlier in the spring (Regonda et al. 2005;
Stewart et al. 2005). As a result, stream runoff may shift 2 to 4 weeks
earlier in the season (Regonda et al. 2005; Stewart et al. 2005) and
subsurface aquifers may provide less groundwater for stream flow in the
late summer and early fall (Hamlet et al. 2005). There will likely be
wide variation in the expression of potential impacts of climate change
within and among watersheds in any given area. The potential effects of
climate change are relatively minor compared to the environmental
variation faced by native fish over time (Waples et al. 2009). However,
change is now occurring more rapidly than many of the past changes that
these fish have experienced (IPCC 2007) and is following a period of
extensive and fairly rapid ecosystem alteration.
The potential impacts of climate change pose a major threat to
native salmon and trout, particularly weak populations, in the Pacific
Northwest and Alaska. Likely consequences include changes in the: (1)
behavior and growth of individuals (Neuheimer and Taggart 2007); (2)
phenology (i.e., timing of life-history events), growth, dynamics, and
distribution of populations (Hari et al. 2006; Rieman et al. 2007); (3)
persistence of species and fish communities (Hilborn et al. 2003); and
(4) functioning of whole ecosystems (Moore et al. 2009).
The vulnerability of salmon and trout species and population units
to climate change will depend on the characteristics of the species or
population, and local environmental conditions, as well as past habitat
alteration, fragmentation, and loss. Larger, more productive
populations have a better likelihood of adapting to climate change, in
part, because of the inherent genetic and phenotypic diversity within
them (Waples et al. 2009). However, Pacific salmon, particularly in the
Pacific Northwest, no longer have the historical intact networks and
diversity of habitats and have reduced genetic, life-history, and
evolutionary potential that may reduce their ability to respond to the
impacts of climate change. Conserving and creating networks of
watersheds across large spatial scales is a key component of providing
opportunities for native salmon and trout to adapt to climate change.
Large networks, like that would be created from the proposed
legislation, are more likely to provide: (1) diverse habitat required
over the life span of these fish; (2) the complexity and area to absorb
catastrophic disturbances without loss of entire populations; and (3)
greater species, genetic and phenotypic diversity (Mantua and Francis
2004, Fausch et al. 2009, Greene et al. 2009).
Literature Cited
Fausch, K.D., B.E. Rieman, J.B. Dunham, M.K. Young, and D.P.
Peterson. 2009. Invasion versus isolation: Trade-offs in managing
native salmonids with barriers to upstream movement. Conservation
Biology 23: 859-870.
Greene, C.M., J.E. Hall, K.R. Guilbault, and T.P. Quinn. 2009.
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Bryant, O.W. Johnson, and J.J. Hard. 2007. Pacific salmon extinctions:
Quantifying lost and remaining diversity. Conservation Biology 21:
1009-1020.
Hamlet, A.F. and D.P. Lettenmaier. 2007. Effects of climate change
on hydrology and water resources in the Columbia River basin. Journal
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Hamlet, A., P.W. Mote, M.P. Clark, and D.P. Lettenmaier. 2005.
Effects of temperature and precipitation variability on snowpack trends
in the western United States. Journal of climate 18: 4545-4561.
Hari, R.E., D.M. Livingstone, Siber, R. Burkhardt-Holm, P., and H.
Guttinger. 2006. Consequences of climate change for water temperature
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Hilborn, R., T.P. Quinn, D.E. Schindler, and D.E. Rogers. 2003.
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Hsieh, W.W. and G.J. Boer 2007. Global climate change and ocean
upwelling. Fisheries Oceanography 1: 333-338.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2007. Climate
change 2007: The physical science basis. (http://www.ipcc.ch)
Mantua, N.J. and R.C. Francis. 2004. Natural climate change
insurance for Pacific Northwest salmon and salmon fisheries: finding
our way through the entangled bank. in: E.E. Knudsen and D. McDonald,
editors. Fish in our future? Perspectives on fisheries sustainability.
American Fisheries Society. Bethesda, MD. pages 127-140.
Moore, M.V., S.E. Hampton, L.R. Izmest'eva, E.A. Silow, E.V.
Peshkova, and B.K. Pavlov. 2009. Climate change and the world's sacred
sea-Lake Baikal, Siberia. BioScience 59: 405-417.
Neuheimer, A.B. and C.T. Taggart. 2007. The growing degree-day and
fish size-at-age: the overlooked metric. Canadian Journal of Fisheries
and Aquatic Sciences 64: 375-385.
Orr, J.C., V.J. Fabry, O. Aumont, and 24 co-authors.
2005.Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century
and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437/29 September 2005.
Doi :10:1038/nature04095.
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Seasonal cycle shifts in hydroclimatology over the western United
States. Journal of Climate 18: 372-384.
Rieman, B.E., D. lsaak, S. Adams, D. Horan, D. Nage, and C. Luce.
2007. Anticipated climate warming effects on bull trout habitats and
populations across the interior Columbia River basin. Transactions of
the American Fisheries Society 136: 1552-1565.
Stewart, I.T., D.R. Cayan, and M.D.Dettinger. 2005. Changes toward
earlier streamflow timing across western North America. Journal of
Climate 18: 1136-1155.
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habitat disturbance regimes, and anthropogenic changes: What do these
mean for resilience of Pacific Salmon Populations? Ecology and Society
14(1): 3. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/voll4/iss11/
art13/.
Question 3. How will strongholds be identified?
Answer. The identification and selection of a stronghold network is
premised on principles of systematic conservation design, which are
well established in the scientific literature (see Soule and Terborgh
1999). These include: (1) comprehensiveness--the extent to which the
network protects the desired level of biodiversity and abundance; (2)
irreplaceability--the inclusion of areas or populations that are
necessary to achieve the conservation goals; and (3) efficiency--the
network is designed to achieve the conservation goals while minimizing
the area involved.
Advances in Systematic Conservation Planning (Margules and Pressey,
2000) provide a structured, efficient, and scientifically defensible
conservation framework for locating priority geographic areas and
conservation networks. The primary planning process involves finding
the most cost-effective and optimal set of areas to meet the desired
conservation goals (Watts et al. 2009). Key components within this
framework include: (1) compiling data on the biodiversity of the
planning region; (2) identifying conservation targets and goals; (3)
reviewing existing conservation areas; and (4) selecting additional
conservation areas.
Marxan is the most widely used Systematic Conservation Planning
tool in the world (Ball and Possingham 2000), and has been applied
primarily for the identification of marine and terrestrial reserve
networks. Marxan provides optimal solutions to creating conservation
area networks based upon explicit conservation targets, goals, and
suitability costs. Scientists from the Wild Salmon Center, other NGO's,
the Forest Service, and universities have adapted Marxan to aid in the
identification of a network of salmon networks in the Pacific Northwest
and Alaska. Marxan identifies sets of watersheds that meet the
objective of the stronghold network in the most efficient manner and at
the least cost. Some particularly high quality watersheds occur in
many, if not all, of the potential sets and make the greatest
contribution to meeting the established goals for the network. We have
designated these as ``core'' watersheds. Core watersheds may not by
themselves be sufficient to meet the desired goals and so often, some
combination of additional watersheds is required. We have designated
these as ``contributing'' watersheds. The final configuration of the
network will be determined by the Steering Committee. This process will
provide stakeholders and other interested parties the ability to
establish desired goals for the network (for example, amount of species
and life-history diversity to conserve), and then identify and develop
a scientifically sound stronghold network that meets the goal at the
least cost in terms of area involved and potential economic
constraints.
Literature Cited
Ball, I.R. and H.P. Possingham. 2000. Maxan (v.1.8.6): Marine
reserve design using spatially explicit annealing. User Manual: http://
www.uq.edu.au/marine.
Margules, C.R. and R.L. Pressey. 2000. Systematic conservation
planning. Nature 405: 243-253.
Soule, M.E. and J. Terborgh. 1999. Continental conservation:
Scientific foundations of regional reserve networks. Island Press,
Washington, D.C.
Watts, M.E., I.R. Bull, and eight co-authors. 2009. Marxan and
zones: software for optimal conservation based land- and sea-use
zoning. Environmental Modelling and Software 24: 1513-1521.
Question 4. What components will be part of the stronghold
definitions so that funds can be prioritized?
Answer. The output from Marxan can provide an avenue for
prioritizing the allocation of funds for a salmon stronghold network.
One possibility is to prioritize the core watersheds, which make the
greatest contribution to the network. Marxan can also be altered to
take into account factors which cannot be easily quantified in
identifying a network (Ball and Possingham 2000). Such factors could
include social and political concerns like unemployment, focus on
Federal lands and other factors. These factors could be particularly
important if a goal in the establishment of a network also includes the
creation of jobs.
Literature Cited
Ball, I.R. and H.P. Possingham. 2000. Maxan (v.1.8.6): Marine
reserve design using spatially explicit annealing. User Manual: http://
www.uq.edu.au/marine.
______
Response to Written Question Submitted by Hon. Olympia J. Snowe to
Dr. Gordon H. Reeves
Question. What precedents exist for this type of management, and
have stronghold management approaches resulted in measurable
conservation gains for target species?
Answer. A key purpose of conservation biology is ``To retain the
actors in the evolutionary play and the ecological stage on which it is
performed'' (quote of G.E. Hutchinson in Meffe and Carroll 1999). The
establishment of strongholds, also known as reserves, is a primary tool
for meeting this goal and has been employed around the world to help
protect a vast number of organisms and resources (Margules and Pressey
2000). Generally, reserves/strongholds are established in areas that
have strong populations and intact, functioning ecosystems, because
conservation actions are most successful before populations or
ecosystems begin to decline. Strongholds have been established
primarily to protect habitat and populations of marine and terrestrial
species. The stronghold network proposed by the current legislation
would be one of the first for freshwater fish.
While many strongholds and stronghold networks have been
established, it is difficult to fully assess their success (Gaston et
al. 2006). The reasons for this include the: (1) paucity of systematic
data; and (2) incompatibility of data that has been collected to
measure the performance of the individual efforts. However, studies
that have evaluated strongholds and strongholds networks found them to
be generally successful in meeting their conservation objectives. The
North American Flyway, which is a series of reserves on public and
private lands along the migratory corridors of waterfowl that were
established by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, has helped to maintain
healthy waterfowl populations (Nichols et al. 1995). Halpern (2003)
reviewed the biological response to the establishment of 89 marine
reserves worldwide. The density of fish was 2 times greater, biomass
was 3 times greater, and size and diversity were 20-30 percent higher
in reserves than in adjacent areas. Rates of declines of biodiversity
in English reserves were generally lower than or similar to declines to
outside areas (Gaston et al. 2006). Several studies have found that the
positive effects of reserves increase with the size of the protected
area.
Scientists have suggested for several years that stronghold or a
similar approach should be part of the conservation strategy for native
freshwater fish. Williams et al. (1989) and Moyle and Yoshiyama (1994)
were among the earliest to argue for this approach. The former noted
that no ESA listed freshwater fish had recovered sufficiently to be
delisted.
Since that publication, the number of freshwater fish listed under
the ESA continues to increase, while few have been delisted (Williams
and Miller 2006). As Pacific salmon, and other native fish, in the
western United States continue to decline, scientists are finding that
protection of areas with the strongest and most diverse populations and
most intact ecosystems may be most promising for recovery (Williams and
Miller 2006, Williams et al. 2006, Gustafson et al. 2007). There is not
an existing application of stronghold management for salmon or any
other freshwater fish, particularly on a large spatial scale. Perhaps
the best examples of stronghold management are the key watersheds,
which are part of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy of the Northwest
Forest Plan (NWFP) that guides management on Federal lands in western
Oregon and Washington and northern California, within the range of the
northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). Key watersheds had
currently good habitat, the best potential to respond to restoration,
or were municipal water supplies, and were distributed across the area
of the Northwest Forest Plan (Reeves et al. 2006). The purpose of the
former two watershed types was to aid in the recovery of habitat of
listed Pacific salmon and other fish. Ten years after the
implementation of the NWFP, the proportion of key watersheds (70
percent) whose condition improved was greater than that of non-key
watersheds (50 percent). This condition improvement was achieved while
allowing timber production and other activities to occur.
Literature Cited
Andam, K.S., P.J. Ferraro, A. Pfaff, G. A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, and
J.A. Robalino. 2008. Measuring the effectiveness of protected areas
networks in reducing deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Science 105(42): 16089-16094.
Gaston, K.J., S.F. Jackson, L. Cantu-Salazar, and G. Cruz-Pinon.
2008. The ecological performance of protected areas. Annual Review of
Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 39: 93-113.
Gaston, K.J., K. Charman, S.F. Jackson and 12 co-authors. 2006. The
ecological effectiveness of protected areas: The United Kingdom.
Ecological Conservation 132: 76-87.
Gustafson, R.G., R.S. Waples, J.M. Myers, L.A. Weitkamp, G.J.
Bryant, O.W. Johnson, and J.J. Hard. 2007. Pacific salmon extinctions:
Quantifying lost and remaining diversity. Conservation Biology 21:
1009-1020.
Halpern, B.S. 2003. The impact of marine reserves: Do reserves work
and does reserve size matter? Ecological Applications 13: S117-S137.
Margules, C.R. and R.L. Pressey. 2000. Systematic conservation
planning. Nature 405: 243-253.
Meffe, G.K, C.R. Carroll, and contributors. 1999. Principles of
conservation biology. Second edition. Sinaeuer Associates, Sunderland,
MA.
Moyle, P.B. and R.M. Yoshiyama. 1994. Protection of aquatic
biodiversity in California: five-tiered approach. Fisheries 19920; 6-
19.
Nichols, J.D., F.A. Johnson, and B.K. Williams. 1995. Managing
North American waterfowl: The face of uncertainty. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 26: 177-199.
Reeves, G.H., J.E. Williams, K.M. Burnett, and K. Gallo. 2006. The
aquatic conservation strategy of the Northwest Forest Plan.
Conservation Biology 20: 319-329.
Williams, J.E. and R.R. Miller 2006. Conservation status of the
North American fish fauna in fresh water. Journal of Fish Biology
37(sA): 79-85.
Williams, R.N, J.A. Stanford, J.A. Lichatowich, and 7 co-authors.
2006. Return to the river: Strategies for salmon restoration in the
Columbia River basin. In R.N. Williams, editor. Return to the River:
Restoring salmon to the Columbia River. Pages 629-666.
Williams, J.E., J.E. Johnson, D.A. Hendrickson and 5 co-authors.
1989. Fishes of North America: endangered, threatened, and of special
concern. Fisheries 14(6): 2-21.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to
Guido Rahr
Question 1. While each year we spend hundreds of millions of
dollars on Pacific salmon recovery, the vast majority of our efforts
are going toward salmon stocks that have severely declined and are in
very poor shape. While focusing on depleted populations is essential,
do you believe this sometimes occurs at the expense of protection for
healthy ``stronghold'' salmon populations?
Answer. Yes. Current Federal salmon funding is primarily directed
toward recovery of populations listed as threatened and endangered and
restoration of degraded watersheds. This is largely due to Endangered
Species Act mandates and a lack of statutory direction to Federal
agencies to focus resources on the conservation of healthy wild salmon
populations and functioning watersheds.
For example, while NOAA receives significant congressional
direction in its appropriations bills, including specifics on how to
spend grant funds, the agency has acknowledged that, in part because
there is no organic act establishing the agency, it has no statutory
funding direction. Accordingly, NOAA decides for itself all the details
of most salmon grants (i.e., what purpose, how much, who gets it,
matching funds, who partners). Though NOAA can currently undertake
projects to conserve healthy wild salmon populations, the agency has
not made this a priority because it has no such mandate.
As a result, local stakeholders in salmon stronghold basins often
have difficulty garnering sufficient resources to implement prevention-
based conservation measures to ensure that healthy wild salmon
ecosystems remain healthy. Please see pages 5-6 of my written testimony
for specific examples.
Question 2. Do you think the neglect of healthy salmon populations
is a fundamental flaw in our Nation's efforts to protect and restore
wild Pacific salmon?
Answer. Yes. Scientists have long endorsed the fundamental
principle of conserving functioning ecosystems before investing in the
restoration of those that are degraded. However, most U.S. laws and
regulations that impact watershed health direct public resources toward
restoration of basins that are highly degraded and recovery of
populations that are in sharp decline. Restoration of impaired systems
can be extremely expensive and benefits are often realized long after
implementation. Salmon recovery is vital, but will take time. As this
process advances, in the absence of a stronghold strategy, the
potential opportunity costs of our recovery focus--the degradation of
currently healthy ecosystems and reduced viability of strong wild
populations--represent a fundamental flaw in Federal salmon
conservation policy.
To conserve wild salmon populations into the future, we must
implement new management approaches that complement existing recovery
efforts by focusing and leveraging investments within salmon
strongholds. This stronghold approach must not only support on-the-
ground protection, restoration, and monitoring, but also provide
opportunities to pilot innovative research and planning activities that
address challenges common across multiple strongholds.
While Federal agencies can currently undertake projects to conserve
healthy wild salmon populations and their habitat, they rarely do so
because they have no such mandate. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold
Conservation Act provides the necessary congressional direction to
focus Federal resources on conservation of healthy wild salmon
ecosystems. This Act will bring together decision-makers representing
resource management agencies, tribes, and conservation interests to
provide the leadership and coordination necessary to achieve landscape-
scale conservation of the watersheds that have the greatest chance of
supporting viable salmon populations into the next century. As such,
this Act remedies a major flaw in our Nation's efforts to protect and
restore wild Pacific salmon.
Question 3. Do you believe the Pacific Salmon Stronghold
Conservation Act will succeed in addressing some of the root causes of
salmon decline, rather than just superficially treating the symptoms?
If so, how?
Answer. The ongoing and widespread declines in wild salmon
populations can be traced to many root causes, such as demands for
economic growth, inadequate science, cultural norms, and so on.
Together these conditions have dominated well over a century of
resource management decision-making impacting salmon, and while most,
if not all, of these decisions appeared rational when considered in
isolation, together they have conspired to bring about the cumulative
effects seen today: 28 wild salmon and steelhead populations listed
under the Endangered Species Act in the lower 48, thousands of river
miles included on the 303(d) list (of impaired water bodies), and
billions of dollars spent per year on the restoration of degraded
habitats and recovery of listed populations. The common denominator
among the forces that brought about these conditions and the Federal
policy responses to them has been a consistent lack of investment in
prevention.
The Stronghold Act recognizes that the only way to maintain our
remaining strong populations is to promote and invest in new management
approaches rooted in preventing recurrence of the mistakes of the past
while recognizing threats on the horizon. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold
Conservation Act will succeed in addressing some of the root causes of
salmon decline by focusing resources on activities that promote the
development and implementation of prevention-based strategies in salmon
strongholds, and conservation policies and management strategies that
address threats and reduce limiting factors across multiple
strongholds.
This legislation aims to get ahead of the curve by supporting the
protection and, if necessary, the restoration of ecosystem processes
within healthy salmon-bearing watersheds before they decline. Funds
provided under the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act will
finance locally-supported, prevention-based alternatives to habitat
alteration, which promote the health of both stronghold watersheds and
the local communities that rely on them. Examples of such prevention-
based strategies include wetland and riparian conservation easements,
forest preservation for carbon sequestration, promotion of irrigation
efficiencies on agricultural land, and improvements in planning for
urban and rural development.
In addition to supporting the development and implementation of
high value conservation strategies at the watershed level, this Act
will support innovative strategies that promote conservation across
multiple strongholds. Many threats exist that transcend watershed
boundaries, exacerbating the impacts of existing limiting factors and/
or creating new ones across multiple basins. Examples of such threats
may include: climate change; land use policies, practices, or ownership
patterns; non-native species proliferation; government subsidies and
antiquated laws; and hatchery and harvest practices. Unlike basin-
specific limiting factors, which often require ``on-the-ground''
solutions implemented at the watershed or reach scale, these threats
can be more effectively addressed through ``programmatic'' remedies
that can reach across multiple strongholds.
Because most Federal and state salmon conservation programs focus
financial and technical support on specific watershed level restoration
strategies, programmatic solutions are often difficult to design and
finance. This is especially true for new and innovative approaches or
policies that are untested, but may be applicable and effective across
multiple basins. This Act will enable the Salmon Stronghold Partnership
Board to develop and support innovative approaches that proactively
respond to emerging threats across multiple stronghold basins and
address inefficient policies that impede conservation of salmon
strongholds. Please see pages 67 of my written testimony for examples
of programmatic initiatives.
Question 4. The Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund has a strong
track record of leveraging additional State and local dollars for
salmon recovery for every Federal dollar spent. Do you foresee the
Salmon Stronghold bill having a similar -multiplier effect,'' promoting
investment of additional non-Federal funds to support salmon stronghold
protection and restoration activities?
Answer. Along with local, state, NGO, and tribal interests, the
Stronghold Partnership Board convenes six Federal agencies, each of
which oversees programs that are evaluated through the Government
Performance Results Act, Performance Assessment Rating Tool, and other
performance evaluation approaches employed by the Federal Government.
Accordingly, the Board recognizes and places a premium on the role that
the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act funds must play in
leveraging non-Federal investment.
Stronghold grants funds will support two types of projects: (1)
``watershed level activities'' that implement high value conservation
actions to address threats and limiting factors within strongholds; and
(2) ``programmatic initiatives'' that seek to reduce threats or
limiting factors occurring across multiple strongholds and in more than
one state.
The types of `watershed level' activities that are funded in
strongholds will require a 1:1 ratio of Federal:non-Federal
match (unless the project is implemented entirely on Federal
lands). The non-Federal match required is greater than that
required under PCSRF, which is currently 33 percent (2:1). In
addition because of the collaborative nature of the projects
that will be supported, we have every confidence, that funds
provided under Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act will
have a multiplier effect, much like that of PCSRF. In fact,
because PCSRF funds have been spent at a proportionally lower
rate in strongholds than in recovery basins (hence the need for
the Stronghold Act), we believe that pent up demand for Federal
investment in strongholds may stimulate even greater support
from non-Federal partners than currently seen in recovery
basins. This is particularly true of large foundations, which
typically place greater priority on preventative and
protection-oriented strategies than those simply focused on
restoration.
Programmatic initiatives represent conservation strategies
that are carried out across more than one stronghold in more
than state. Because these initiatives will bring together more
than one state (and likely multiple NGO's), funds provided
through this Act are anticipated to leverage significantly more
state investment than the minimum 33 percent match required by
PCSRF. This ``primary leverage'' derived from considerable
state match will drive a multiplier effect similar to or
possibly greater than that of PCSRF.
In summary, we are extremely confident in the breadth and depth of
non-Federal support available for salmon stronghold conservation and
envision a similar, if not greater, multiplier effect to that of PCSRF.
Question 4a. Is this a good deal for Federal taxpayers?
Answer. Conservation of healthy wild salmon populations and intact
salmon habitat is much less expensive than recovery and restoration.
For example, over the last two decades, the Federal Government has
spent more than $8 billion to recover salmon and steelhead populations
in the Columbia River basin alone. In its Draft Recovery Plan (March
2010), the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board estimates that habitat
restoration projects will cost approximately $1 million per mile for
the larger river systems in the Lower Columbia River basin (page 10-7).
Contrast this with the costs of proactively conserving a healthy
wild salmon ecosystem--for example, the Hoh River on Washington's
Olympic Peninsula. The Wild Salmon Center and our partners acquired
4,500 acres of forest land along the Hoh River for roughly $9 million.
These acquisitions provided long term protection for half of the
private land along the Hoh River corridor and ensured that 80 percent
of the floodplain and riparian lands are in conservation status. The
Hoh River Trust recently purchased an additional 2,000 acres for $2
million. In total, 7,000 acres and 29 river miles along the Hoh River
were protected for $11 million--significantly less than it would have
cost to restore the ecosystem. It is also important to note that some
of this land will remain in timber and/or agricultural production
(using sustainable and certified ``salmon friendly'' practices), so
while harm to wild populations has been prevented, the potential for
economic returns from the land has not been significantly diminished.
By making strategic investments in proactive conservation of salmon
strongholds now, we will save billions of dollars in future
restoration, stock rebuilding, and emergency funding over the long run.
Question 5. Some may have a concern that once this hill is enacted
and implemented, the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Partnership will become
just another layer in an already vast bureaucracy of salmon management?
Are there steps for implementing this bill that you view as essential
to make sure that we truly realize the added value we're trying to
achieve by creating the Partnership?
Answer. The governance structure that oversees the management of
salmon resources is indeed broad and complex, and concerns about adding
yet another layer are well founded. Fortunately, sponsors of the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act took deliberate steps to
avoid adding yet another layer of bureaucracy in its administration.
First and foremost, the sponsors were careful to craft a bill that had
no regulatory or enforcement authority. The vast majority of criticism
leveled at the current governance structure stems from overlapping
authorities and jurisdictions concerning harvest management, hatchery
production, consultations required under the Endangered Species Act,
and planning required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Nothing within this Act adds to or amends these requirements.
Second, the centerpiece of this legislation is the establishment of
a grant program to advance the Act's fundamental purpose of expanding
Federal support for and attention to the conservation of wild salmon
strongholds. In establishing this grant program, sponsors were careful
to rely on existing grant mechanisms to avoid creating new processes.
The well established and highly respected National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation (NFWF) will act as the fiscal administrator of the grant
program. NFWF will work with an existing partnership (the Salmon
Stronghold Partnership Board) to establish priorities, and rely on
existing state grant programs to select and administer projects
specific to each state. Multi-state projects will be selected and
administered by NFWF in collaboration with the Salmon Stronghold
Partnership Board. No new entities will be created to manage the grants
program.
Finally, participation in the program is entirely voluntary, so any
management and administration burdens assumed by grant recipients are
done so willingly. Furthermore, this Act limits state and NFWF grant
administration costs to just 5 percent, so these entities will not be
able to significantly expand their management and administrative staff
capacities through the stronghold effort.
Question 6. Salmon are a treaty species whose range includes
Pacific Rim countries. Won't a network of salmon strongholds require
international cooperation?
Answer. The North Pacific's marine and freshwater ecosystems and
food webs are interdependent, linked by salmon as a keystone species.
Pacific salmon populations spend a considerable part of their life-
cycle migrating across the North Pacific before returning to their
natal rivers. As such, the management actions of one North Pacific
nation affect the wild salmon populations of another. It is essential,
therefore, that North Pacific nations work together to share best
management practices, innovative conservation strategies, status and
trends data, and lessons learned to conserve wild salmon populations
into the future. Scientific, management, and conservation cooperation
among the salmon-bearing countries of the Pacific Rim will be critical
to maintaining a network of the most abundant and diverse wild salmon
ecosystems across the species' range.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership and the introduction of the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act are already fostering
international cooperation with Canada. Referencing the Act, the Pacific
Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, an independent advisory body
to the Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the British
Columbia Minister of Fisheries, stated that ``[t]he establishment of
coordinated coast-wide Salmon Strongholds programs by both countries
could provide a highly effective demonstration of environmental
cooperation.'' See Applying the Salmon Stronghold Concept in Canada at
20 (2009). The Council also recommended that ``[f]unding for a Salmon
Stronghold initiative by the Government of Canada should be considered
in light of the impending national funding in the United States.'' Id.
Question 7. What are other Pacific Rim countries doing to conserve
salmon strongholds?
Answer. Efforts to conserve salmon strongholds are underway in both
Canada and Russia. In Canada, the salmon stronghold concept was first
discussed by fisheries managers and scientists in the 1990s due to
increased deterioration of salmon habitat and the ineffectiveness of
reactive salmon conservation policies. In 1999, the Pacific Salmon
Foundation published a report entitled Living Blueprint for B.C. Salmon
Habitat that identified the need for a policy shift in Canada toward
proactive conservation of healthy wild salmon ecosystems. While the
premise was accepted, a salmon stronghold policy was not immediately
implemented due to salmon stock collapses and immediate threats that
took precedent at the time.
In 2005, Canada adopted a Wild Salmon Policy with a primary goal of
restoring and maintaining healthy and diverse salmon populations and
their habitats. The policy identifies conservation of wild salmon
populations and their habitat as ``the highest priority for resource
management decision-making.'' See Canada's Policy for Conservation of
Wild Salmon at 8. The policy also recognizes the importance of
conserving healthy wild salmon populations, stating ``[t]o safeguard
the long-term viability of wild Pacific salmon in natural surroundings,
the Department will strive to maintain healthy populations in diverse
habitats.'' Id. However, it was not until 2009 that this recognition
gained traction.
The Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council (PFRCC)
published a report in June 2009 entitled Applying the Salmon Stronghold
Concept in Canada. The report recommended that Canada: (1) adopt a
salmon stronghold approach, (2) participate in the North American
Salmon Stronghold Partnership, and (3) test the Salmon Strongholds
approach in Canada, in conjunction with the Wild Salmon Center, through
a six-month pilot project to determine the most practical and effective
forms for Canadian involvement. See Applying the Salmon Stronghold
Concept in Canada at 22-23.
After publication of this report, PFRCC became an ex officio member
of the North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board. They
implemented a salmon stronghold pilot project on the Harrison River in
June 2009, and the Harrison River basin was officially designated as
Canada's first salmon stronghold in February 2010. Passage of the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act will likely accelerate
Canada's efforts to conserve salmon strongholds (see response to
question #2 herein).
Russia is also undertaking significant salmon stronghold
conservation efforts. In 2006, Russia established the world's first
salmon refuge on the Kamchatka Peninsula--a 544,000 acre headwaters to
ocean salmon sanctuary aimed explicitly at protecting some of the most
abundant runs of salmon and rich species diversity on the pristine Kol
River. A globally-significant salmon stronghold, the Kol River contains
one of the richest known assemblages of wild salmonids, including all
six Pacific salmon species, as well as steelhead, rainbow trout, Dolly
Varden char, and white-spotted char. The Wild Salmon Center has
constructed a permanent biostation and laboratory facilities on the
Kol, providing an unparalleled opportunity for scientists to study
salmon in a pristine habitat. We are working collaboratively with the
Kamchatka Administration, the Kol Protected Area Administration, and
other national and international partners to support the management of
the Kol River Salmon Protected Area and to develop new opportunities to
protect priority watersheds throughout the peninsula.
In addition, as a result of fifteen years of efforts by the Wild
Salmon Center and our partners, the government of the Sakhalin Region
in the Russian Far East granted permanent protected status to the
67,305 hectare Vostochnii Nature Reserve, a salmon/marine nature
preserve encompassing two entire ocean-draining basins, in 2007. The
Vostochnii protects some of Sakhalin's last remaining old-growth
conifer forests, providing ideal conditions for supporting robust runs
of all five salmon species found on Sakhalin. Logging and unsustainable
commercial fishing in the Pursh-Pursh, Vengeri and neighboring Langeri
basins have been stopped, and poaching for salmon roe (caviar), which
is epidemic in the Russian Far East, has been practically eliminated.
In 2009, the Russian Federal Fishery Agency passed a decree on
creating Federal Fishery Protected Zones (FFPZ) and held a
prioritization workshop for high priority rivers that established three
categories of FFPZ's--the first being the protection of the wild salmon
gene pool (salmon strongholds). Using criteria that were informally
agreed upon for the three types of reserve zones, a list of rivers for
the six regions was developed with the participation of the Federal
Fishery Agency, Regional Administration authorities, and other
government bodies. Once implemented, the reserve zones for healthy wild
salmon populations will provide critical Federal protection for some of
the best wild salmon ecosystems in the Russian Far East.
Question 8. What lessons has the Wild Salmon Center learned from
its overseas experiences working to conserve salmon strongholds in
other countries?
Answer. Wild Salmon Center has learned a great deal from our work
to conserve salmon strongholds in other countries. The biggest lesson
we have learned is that if we do not heed the mistakes that we've made
in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the East Coast of the U.S., we will fail
to conserve wild salmon populations for future generations. The
Achilles heel for salmon is that history keeps repeating itself--we
need to break the cycle. Some of the key mistakes we've made are: (1)
taking action to recover wild salmon stocks only after they have
reached low levels of abundance, (2) replacing native, locally-adapted
genetic stocks with hatchery-bred salmon, and (3) focusing on
restoration once a healthy watershed has been damaged instead of
protecting it at the forefront.
Once lost, habitat is politically and economically expensive to
reclaim. It is much cheaper and easier to protect habitat than to
restore it after it has been damaged. This lesson can be illustrated in
Japan. More than 98 percent of Japan's salmon rivers have been dammed
and artificially modified, so that commercial fisheries now rely
heavily on hatcheries in order to maintain their productivity.
Hatcheries will never be able to replace highly productive wild salmon
ecosystems. While there are still a few free-flowing rivers left in
Japan, the extensive loss of wild salmon ecosystems cannot be remedied.
However, we can learn from this mistake by conserving our remaining
healthy wild salmon ecosystems in Japan and elsewhere.
We have also learned that it takes local leadership and
collaborative multi-stakeholder cooperation to achieve lasting wild
salmon conservation. For example, on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far
East, a long-term, public-private partnership between international,
regional and local organizations has achieved lasting and substantial
gains in protecting and restoring the ecological health of the eastern
(Okhotsk Sea) coast of Smirnykh District, and in particular three
highly productive river basins that form an ecological anchor for the
region: the Pursh-Pursh, Vengeri and Langeri rivers. This integrated
landscape-scale conservation project combines significant habitat
protections and innovative strategies to ensure the sustainability of
wild salmon fisheries, and comprehensive stakeholder engagement.
Innovative elements include establishing one of the first, government-
endorsed public-private watershed councils in Russia, raising
environmental and social standards for resource extraction companies,
and leading the demonstration of the local economic benefits that can
be gained from adopting sustainable commercial fishing practices.
Project partners are also combating poaching directly through
organizing community anti-poaching brigades and patrolled checkpoints
on access roads in collaboration with local enforcement agencies. As a
result, poaching and illegal access to the most pristine areas of the
rivers has been brought under control for the first time, and can be
viewed as a model for addressing poaching elsewhere in the Russian Far
East. The creation of a partnership across local, regional, and
international jurisdictions, uniting business, communities, and
government to achieve a common goal, has been central to success in the
Sakhalin region and is a sound replicable model.
Another lesson learned is that Pacific salmon are a global
resource, so we cannot merely consider our own nation when developing
strategies to conserve and manage wild salmon populations. Since wild
Pacific salmon spend a portion of their life-cycle migrating across the
North Pacific Ocean, management practices in one country affect the
salmon populations of another. It is critical that we work with
neighboring countries to ensure sustainable harvest practices, limit
the impacts of hatcheries, and conserve a network of the healthiest
wild salmon ecosystems across the North Pacific.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Olympia J. Snowe to
Guido Rahr
Question 1. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has
dedicated significant resources to Pacific salmon conservation and
management--upwards of $117 million in 2010 alone for the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and other ``salmon management
activities.'' NMFS also receives funding from two international funds
with an endowment of approximately $135 million through the U.S./
Canadian Pacific Salmon Commission. S. 817 would authorize an
additional $30 million annually to establish a grant program that would
focus on maintaining currently healthy habitat for Pacific salmon. What
authorities does the legislation bring to fisheries habitat
conservation that does not already exist?
Answer. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act provides
congressional direction to focus Federal resources on preventative,
proactive efforts to conserve healthy wild Pacific salmon ecosystems
through the establishment of a Salmon Stronghold Partnership program
and the Salmon Stronghold Partnership. By directing the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish a salmon
stronghold watershed grants and technical assistance program, this Act
provides clear statutory funding direction to focus resources on the
conservation of healthy wild salmon populations and their habitat as a
complement to ongoing salmon recovery efforts. This legislation also
authorizes Federal participation in the Salmon Stronghold Partnership
and requires Federal agencies responsible for acquiring, managing, or
disposing of Federal lands within salmon strongholds to cooperate with
NOAA to conserve salmon strongholds. None of these authorities
currently exists.
Though NOAA uses an assortment of authorities when it administers
grants today--from the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal
Protection Act to the Pacific Salmon Treaty--these authorities provide
almost no specific congressional direction to the agency, and are
primarily focused on the recovery of threatened and endangered salmon
stocks. Further, while NOAA receives significant congressional
direction in its appropriations bills, including specifics on how to
spend grant funds, the agency has acknowledged that, in part because
there is no organic act establishing the agency, it has no statutory
funding direction. As a result, NOAA determines the guidelines and
details of most salmon grants (i.e., what purpose, how much, who gets
it, matching funds, who partners) on its own, and allocates the
majority of its salmon funding toward recovery and restoration efforts.
This is illustrated through the existing funding sources mentioned
above. NOAA dedicates significant funding to support Pacific salmon
conservation and management activities, primarily through the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF), Salmon Management Activities
related to the implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and Pacific
Salmon Commission Restoration and Enhancement funds. Unfortunately,
none of these funding sources supports prevention-based strategies to
conserve strong wild salmon populations before they decline or healthy
salmon-bearing watersheds before they are degraded. Further, they fail
to support innovative strategies to address threats to healthy wild
salmon populations that transcend watershed and state boundaries.
For example, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund supports
projects necessary for the conservation of salmon and steelhead
populations that are listed as threatened or endangered under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA), or identified by a state as at-risk or to
be so-listed; for maintaining populations necessary for exercise of
tribal treaty fishing rights or native subsistence fishing; or for
conservation of Pacific coastal salmon and steelhead habitat. In
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California, PCSRF funding is largely
directed toward the Federal mandate to recover ESA-listed salmon and
steelhead populations, and allocated based on priorities identified in
salmon and steel head recovery plans. In Alaska, which currently has no
ESA-listed salmon populations, PCSRF funding is limited to habitat
conservation efforts. As such, it cannot be used to proactively tackle
other factors that may pose serious threats to salmon populations like
climate change, development, and non-native species proliferation, all
of which the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act seeks to
address through innovative, prevention-based strategies.
Similarly, Pacific Salmon Commission Restoration and Enhancement
funds (``Northern and Southern funds'') are primarily directed toward
the enhancement of wild stock production and the development of
improved information for resource management, rather than proactive
strategies to conserve healthy wild salmon populations. The Pacific
Salmon Commission has identified three primary goals for the Northern
and Southern Boundary funds: (1) development of improved information
for resource management, including better stock assessment, data
acquisition and improved scientific understanding of limiting factors
affecting salmon production in the freshwater and marine environments;
(2) rehabilitation and restoration of marine and freshwater fish
habitat, and improvement of habitat to enhance productivity and
protection of Pacific salmon; and (3) enhancement of wild stock
production through low technology techniques rather than through large
facilities with high operating costs. Over the last few years, the
majority of the Northern and Southern funds have been spent on Goals 1
and 3, with only a small percentage allocated toward habitat
restoration and rehabilitation. In addition, according to the Northern
Fund Committee's 2009 Call for Proposals, ``[T]he Committee believes
that large-scale habitat rehabilitation, habitat monitoring, habitat
protection, and land acquisition are more appropriately addressed by
other agencies and organizations.''
By establishing a Salmon Stronghold Partnership program, this
legislation will complement existing salmon funding sources and enable
resource managers to get ahead of the curve in conserving wild salmon
over the long term. In addition, this Act will enhance cooperation and
coordination among Federal resource agencies and other stakeholders in
implementing prevention-based strategies to conserve salmon strongholds
across diverse land ownerships and jurisdictional boundaries.
Question 1a. Could resource managers not already use their existing
funds for this purpose?
Answer. Though NOAA can currently undertake projects to conserve
healthy wild salmon populations and their habitat, the agency rarely
does so because it has no such mandate (see answer to question (1)
above). That is why the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act is
so vital it requires NOAA to undertake a complementary approach to its
current recovery focus by protecting and restoring healthy wild Pacific
salmon ecosystems.
In addition, current salmon funding programs are not built to
address Pacific salmon conservation goals on a regional scale. For
example, PCSRF funds are allocated on a state by state basis. Each
state allocates funds to recovery basins for habitat protection and
restoration actions, and priorities are determined by each recovery
basin (e.g., Lead Entities in WA). While these efforts are critical,
resource managers must also assess emerging threats that transcend
watershed and state boundaries. These cross-cutting threats--like
invasive species proliferation and climate change--have great potential
to exacerbate the impacts of existing limiting factors, while creating
new ones. Unlike basin-specific limiting factors, however, which often
require ``on-the-ground'' solutions implemented at the watershed scale,
these threats can be more effectively addressed through
``programmatic'' remedies that operate across multiple strongholds.
This Act will enable the Salmon Stronghold Partnership to develop and
support these crosscutting, programmatic remedies.
Question 1b. If the potential economic payback of stronghold
activities is so great, why have they not focused more resources on
such projects?
Answer. This is partially due to the dire state of many Pacific
salmon populations across the West Coast. As I mentioned in my
testimony, salmon are now extinct over 40 percent of their native
range, and many other salmon populations have declined to the point
that they are protected under the Endangered Species Act. As a result,
Federal agencies are spending the majority of their resources
responding to the crisis of the day (like the Sacramento Chinook
collapse) and restoring highly impacted systems.
In addition, the failure to allocate resources to proactive
conservation efforts is likely because the payback from those efforts
is harder to account for. It is much easier to track the return of an
investment in restoration, where miles restored or fish passage
barriers removed are easily quantified, than it is to evaluate
preventative measures that are targeted to maintaining healthy
ecosystem functions. This is a paradox for two important reasons: (1)
it is less expensive to conserve healthy wild salmon populations and
intact watersheds than it is to rebuild imperiled stocks or restore
degraded habitat; and (2) the desired outcome--a functioning ecosystem
supporting healthy wild salmon populations--is far more likely to be
secured through prevention-based strategies than through restoration
approaches.
If we do not implement a new policy to focus Federal resources on
the conservation of healthy wild salmon ecosystems in the near term, we
will continue to see the health of our wild salmon populations decline
and may lose our opportunity to stem the tide of wild salmon population
loss and extinction.
Question 2. In 2006, the Departments of Commerce and Interior
joined forces with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to
publish the National Fish Habitat Action Plan, a document that
developed a strategy to protect, restore, and enhance the Nation's
fisheries ecosystems. This Action Plan established a Governing Board of
up to 20 members from state and Federal agencies, the conservation and
science communities, and industry representatives tasked with
coordinating involvement and raising awareness of and funding for fish
habitat considerations. How would the Stronghold Partnership differ
from and coordinate with this Governing Board?
Answer. The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board differs from the
National Fish Habitat Board in a number of ways, most notably in its
membership, purpose, and scale of focus.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership is a public-private partnership
among Federal, state, tribal, and local governments, private
landowners, and nongovernmental organizations working across political
boundaries, government jurisdictions, and land ownerships to identify
and conserve the healthiest wild Pacific salmon ecosystems in Alaska,
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board is the executive body of
the Salmon Stronghold Partnership. The Board will consist of 19 to 21
representatives with strong scientific or technical credentials and
expertise, as follows: one representative from each of the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NM FS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(FWS), the Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Bonneville Power Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, and the
Northwest Power and Conservation Council; one representative from each
of the States of Alaska, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington; not
less than three and not more than five representatives from Indian
tribes or tribal commissions located within the range of Pacific
salmon; one representative from each of three non-governmental
organizations with salmon conservation and management expertise; one
national or regional representative from an association of counties;
and representatives of any other entities with significant resources
regionally dedicated to the protection of salmon ecosystems that the
Board determines are appropriate. The Pacific Fisheries Resource
Conservation Council, an independent advisory body to the Canadian
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the British Columbia Minister of
Fisheries, is also participating on the Board as an Ex Officio member.
The primary purposes of the Board will be to: (1) develop and
support strategies focusing on the conservation actions projected to
have the greatest positive impacts on wild salmon abundance,
productivity and/or diversity in and across salmon strongholds, and (2)
provide criteria for the prioritization of projects funded under the
Salmon Stronghold Partnership program. In developing proactive
strategies to prevent the decline of healthy wild salmon ecosystems and
criteria for the prioritization of projects, the Board will not limit
its scope to habitat conservation. Instead, it will consider all of the
factors affecting the health of salmon strongholds (e.g., harvest,
hatchery influence, and habitat alteration) at both watershed and
region-wide scales.
In contrast, the National Fish Habitat Board focuses on fish
habitat conservation--both healthy habitats and those that are
degraded--at a nationwide scale in an effort to establish national
goals and priorities, designate Partnerships, and review and make
recommendations regarding fish habitat conservation projects. The Board
will be composed of 27 members, including: the Director of the FWS; the
Assistant Administrator of the NMFS; the Chief of the Natural Resources
Conservation Service; the Chief of the Forest Service; the Assistant
Administrator for Water of the Environmental Protection Agency; the
President of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies; the
Secretary of the Board of Directors of the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation; four representatives of State agencies, one of whom shall
be nominated by a regional association of fish and wildlife agencies
from each of the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and Western regions of
the United States; one representative of the American Fisheries
Society; two representatives of Indian tribes, of whom one shall
represent Indian tribes from the State of Alaska, and one shall
represent Indian tribes from the other States; one representative of
the Regional Fishery Management Councils; one representative of the
Marine Fisheries Commissions; one representative of the Sportfishing
and Boating Partnership Council; and ten representatives selected from
each of the following groups: the recreational sportfishing industry,
the commercial fishing industry, marine recreational anglers,
freshwater recreational anglers, terrestrial resource conservation
organizations, aquatic resource conservation organizations, the
livestock and poultry production industry, the land development
industry, the row crop industry, and natural resource commodity
interests, such as petroleum or mineral extraction.
The National Fish Habitat Board and Salmon Stronghold Partnership
Board have three representatives from the same Federal agencies--NMFS,
FWS, and the Forest Service--and two representatives from the same non-
governmental organizations (NGO's)--Trout Unlimited and The Nature
Conservancy. Aside from these five members, and potentially one state
representative (depending on the Western State appointment to the
National Fish Habitat Board), membership is quite different among these
two bodies. Both the Federal agencies and the NGO's participating on
the Boards recognize the differences between these two efforts and the
value of supporting both.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will coordinate with Fish
Habitat Partnerships (FHPs) that overlap with its focal area (i.e.,
salmon strongholds across Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and
California) to avoid duplication of efforts and potentially fill the
gaps that Fish Habitat Partnerships do not address, either
geographically or through programmatic initiatives that address
challenges across multiple basins. This cooperation and coordination
will be necessary in Alaska, since the state has been identified as a
regional salmon stronghold and contains three recognized FHPs. Members
of the Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will initiate discussions
with the Alaska FHPs at a National Fish Habitat meeting in Anchorage
this summer to determine how the partnerships can work together in the
State.
Question 3. Some principles of conservation biology would support
the stronghold concept. However, finding examples of existing
``stronghold'' programs is difficult. How would you describe the
defining characteristics of a species ``stronghold''?
Answer. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act defines a
``salmon stronghold'' as ``all or part of a watershed that meets
biological criteria for abundance, productivity, diversity (life
history and run timing), habitat quality, or other biological
attributes important to sustaining viable populations of salmon
throughout their range.'' S. 817, 111th Cong. 3(8) (2009). Because
the stronghold approach seeks to sustain viable populations ``across
their range,'' and abundance and diversity decrease dramatically from
strongholds in the north to those in the south, the term ``stronghold''
is relative. Each stronghold is identified and can only be described
within the context of the distinct geographic areas that conservation
planners use to organize the enormous landscape that supports wild
salmon. These areas are known as ecological regions, or ``eco-
regions.'' Within the eco-regions of CA, OR, WA, and ID (and southern
British Columbia), partners are convening to evaluate wild populations
and identify ``core strongholds.'' Because of the extraordinary
abundance and diversity of wild salmon populations throughout Alaska,
the Act recognizes the entire state as a salmon stronghold. Despite the
variations across eco-regions in the lower 48 states, some common
characteristics exist, which may be summarized as follows:
1. Strongholds meet the highest values for wild salmon
abundance and diversity. Salmon strongholds support the
greatest assemblage of wild salmon species with high abundance
and productivity and minimal influence of hatchery-reared
populations within an eco-region. Wild populations demonstrate
a high diversity of life history strategies, providing a
significant buffer against population extirpation in the event
of a short or long term disturbance to the system. The first
step in identifying salmon strongholds is for experts within
each eco-region to score populations according to three
criteria: abundance and productivity, percent natural origin
spawners, and life history diversity.
2. Strongholds make the highest proportional contributions
toward meeting conservation goals within an eco-region. In his
testimony on the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act,
Dr. Gordon Reeves with the U.S. Forest Service stated, ``[T]he
identification and selection of a stronghold is premised on
principles of systematic conservation design, which are well
established in the scientific literature (see Soule and
Terborgh 1999). These include: (1) comprehensiveness--the
extent to which the network protects the desired level of
biodiversity and abundance; (2) irreplaceability--the inclusion
of areas or populations that are necessary to achieve the
conservation goals; and (3) efficiency--the network is designed
[in] the most efficient manner that achieves the conservation
goals while minimizing the area involved.'' By entering
stronghold data collected through ``expert scoring'' (#1 above)
into network design software, conservation planners can
identify those locations that support the highest proportions
of an eco-region's overall wild salmon production within a
small area (relative to the entire eco-region). Investment in
those locations--salmon strongholds--will yield the biggest
bang for our buck in conservation returns.
3. Strongholds contain relatively unfragmented and ecologically
intact habitats. Scientists have conducted extensive research
that clearly demonstrates the adverse impacts of aquatic and
terrestrial habitat fragmentation and degradation on the
abundance and diversity of wild salmon populations. Salmon
strongholds contain high value and intact riparian, instream,
wetland, and (sometimes) estuarine habitats that are well
connected across the watershed. Trophic systems (the foodweb)
are intact, invasive species infiltration minimal, and key
areas of refugia are relatively unaltered. In short, the salmon
stronghold system is functioning with minimal human disturbance
relative to the other parts of the eco-region.
Question 3a. What precedents exist for this type of management, and
have stronghold management approaches resulted in measurable
conservation gains for the target species?
Answer. A key purpose of conservation biology is ``to retain the
actors in the evolutionary play and the ecological stage on which it is
performed'' (quote of G.E. Hutchinson in Meffe and Carroll 1999). The
establishment of strongholds, also known as reserves, is a primary tool
for meeting this goal and has been employed around the world to help
protect a vast number of organisms and resources (Margules and Pressey
2000). Generally, these are areas that currently have strong
populations and intact, functioning ecosystems because conservation
actions are most successful before populations or ecosystems begin to
decline. Strongholds have been established primarily for marine and
terrestrial systems. The stronghold network proposed by the current
legislation would be one of the first for freshwater fish.
While many strongholds and stronghold networks have been
established, it is difficult to fully assess their success (Gaston et
al., 2006). The reasons for this include the: (1) paucity of systematic
data; and (2) incompatibility of data that has been collected to
measure the performance of the individual efforts. However, studies
that have evaluated strongholds and strongholds networks found that
them to be generally successful in meeting their conservation
objectives.
For example, the North American Flyway, which is a series of
reserves on public and private lands along the migratory corridors of
waterfowl that were established by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, has
helped to maintain healthy waterfowl populations (Nichols et al.,
1995). Similarly, Halpern (2003) reviewed the biological response to
the establishment of 89 marine reserves worldwide and found that the
density of fish was 2 times greater, biomass was 3 times greater, and
size and diversity were 20-30 percent higher in reserves than in
adjacent areas. The effects of the reserves increased with the size.
Rates of declines of biodiversity in English reserves were generally
lower than or similar to compared to declines to outside areas (Gaston
et al., 2006). In addition, trends were most positive in larger
protected areas. For example, Andam et al., (2008) estimated that
forest reserves in Costa Rica reduced deforestation by 10 percent.
Scientists have suggested the stronghold (or similar) approach for
several years. Williams et al., (1989) and Moyle and Yoshiyama (1994)
were among the earliest to argue for this approach. Williams et al.,
noted that no freshwater fish that was listed under the Endangered
Species Act (ESA) up to that time had been removed because it recovered
sufficiently. The number of freshwater fish listed under the ESA
continues to increase, while few have been delisted to date (Williams
and Miller 2006).
As Pacific salmon, and other native fish, in the western United
States continue to decline, scientists are renewing the call for the
protection of areas with the strongest and most diverse populations and
most intact ecosystems (Williams and Miller 2006, Williams et al.,
2006, Gustafson et al., 2007). Unfortunately, I am not aware of any
example of where the stronghold approach has actually been applied for
salmon or any other freshwater fish, particularly on a large spatial
scale. Perhaps the best examples are the key watersheds, which are part
of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy of the Northwest Forest Plan
(NWFP) that guides management on Federal lands in western Oregon and
Washington and northern California, within the range of the northern
spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). Key watersheds had currently
good habitat, the best potential to respond to restoration, or were
municipal water supplies, and were distributed across the area of the
Northwest Forest Plan (Reeves et al., 2006). The purpose of the former
two types was to aid in the recovery of habitat of listed Pacific
salmon and other fish. Ten years after the implementation of the NWFP,
the proportion of key watersheds (70 percent) whose condition improved
was greater than that of non-key watersheds (50 percent). This was
achieved while allowing timber production and other activities to
occur.
Literature Cited
Andam, K.S., P.J. Ferraro, A. Pfaff, G. A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, and
J.A. Robalino. 2008. Measuring the effectiveness of protected areas
networks in reducing deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Science 105(42) : 16089-16094.
Gaston, K.J., S.F. Jackson, L. Cantu-Salazar, and G. Cruz-Pinon.
2008. The ecological performance of protected areas. Annual Review of
Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 39: 93-113.
Gaston, K.J., K. Charman, S.F. Jackson and 12 co-authors. 2006. The
ecological effectiveness of protected areas: The United Kingdom.
Ecological Conservation 132: 76-87.
Gustafson, R.G., R.S. Waples, J.M. Myers, L.A. Weitkamp, G.J.
Bryant, O.W. Johnson, and J.J. Hard. 2007. Pacific salmon extinctions:
Quantifying lost and remaining diversity. Conservation Biology 21:
1009-1020.
Halpern, B.S. 2003. The impact of marine reserves: Do reserves work
and does reserve size matter? Ecological Applications 13: S117-S137.
Margules, C. R. and R. L. Pressey. 2000. Systematic conservation
planning. Nature 405: 243-253.
Meffe, G. K, C. R. Carroll, and contributors. 1999. Principles of
conservation biology. Second edition. Sinaeuer Associates, Sunderland,
MA.
Moyle, P.B. and R.M. Yoshiyama. 1994. Protection of aquatic
biodiversity in California: five-tiered approach. Fisheries 19920; 6-
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Nichols, J.D., F.A. Johnson, and B.K. Williams. 1995. Managing
North American waterfowl: The face of uncertainty. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 26: 177-199.
Reeves, G.H., J.E. Williams, K.M. Burnett, and K. Gallo. 2006. The
aquatic conservation strategy of the Northwest Forest Plan.
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Williams, J.E. and R.R. Miller 2006. Conservation status of the
North American fish fauna in fresh water. Journal of Fish Biology
37(sA) : 79-85.
Williams, R.N., J.A. Stanford, J.A. Lichatowich, and 7 co-authors.
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concern. Fisheries 14(6): 2-21.
Question 3b. If the concept of a ``stronghold'' is based largely on
where the species has a relatively large population and intact habitat
(i.e., mostly based on ecological criteria), how are human economic and
social needs taken into account when selecting ``stronghold'' sites?
Answer. The identification of salmon stronghold sites is based
entirely on biological criteria, which includes abundance and
productivity, ``wildness'' (influence of hatchery-born fish), and
diversity of wild Pacific salmon and steelhead populations. Reliance on
biological criteria in the determination of stronghold boundaries
ensures that the effort to conserve strong populations is built on a
foundation of solid science that accurately reflects population health
and viability. This science-driven approach is essential if we are to
accurately identify strongholds and carry out the intent of the Pacific
Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act.
While a portfolio of watersheds is conferred stronghold status
based on science, economic and social needs will be taken into account
when decisions are made concerning where funds provided under this Act
are invested. The Stronghold Partnership's Charter states that the
Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will consider the extent to which a
project will ``protect, improve, or promote local economic
opportunities associated with healthy salmon stronghold habitats and/or
populations, including responsible and sustainable resource use related
to fishing and recreation'' when the Board determines annual priorities
for funding. NASSP Charter, Section 5.2.5. By evaluating the potential
of a project to deliver economic benefits to stronghold communities,
the Board will consider not only the health of wild salmon populations,
but also the communities and economies that they help sustain.
The Board's intent to consider economic and social needs in its
determination of funding priorities can also be illustrated through the
``Rudio Creek'' project, which the Partnership helped fund in 2008.
Undertaken through a broad partnership, the Rudio Creek project
supported a rancher's efforts in the John Day basin to increase the
efficiency of his irrigation practices while promoting the health of
strong salmon and steelhead populations. The major objectives of the
project were to keep water in a critical spawning and rearing
tributary, Rudio Creek, while supporting the rancher's needs for
improved and more dependable irrigation infrastructure. Recently
completed, the project was hailed as a great success by the landowner
and the range of state, Federal, and private partners involved. All of
these parties applauded the project as a win-win in its capacity to
conserve local natural resources, while promoting the economic health
of a vital local ranching industry. Integrating all three components--
environmental, economic, and social needs of the communities that lie
within strongholds--into the development of a project supports what is
known as ``the triple bottom line,'' which is widely recognized as
critical to building lasting partnerships and implementing broadly
supported projects in rural regions.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to
Joe Childers
Question 1. The salmon fisheries in Alaska are in a much healthier
state than most salmon fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. Yet the
vitality of these fishing communities depends upon the health of
Alaska's salmon populations. What is the value of salmon fisheries to
coastal communities who depend upon them?
Answer. Alaska's salmon fisheries generated $370 million in ex-
vessel value in 2009, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and
Game. This equates to roughly $1.1 billion in first wholesale value,
according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. It is difficult to
quantify how much of the fishing income is retained within fishing
communities but Alaska residents comprise approximately 75 percent of
salmon permit holders and roughly half of crew jobs, so it is expected
that salmon income to harvester and processor sectors is likely to
exceed $500 million in Alaska communities. In many of these communities
there is very little other opportunity for employment. Many coastal
communities depend on the local community's share of the 3 percent fish
tax to support schools, police, public docks, and other services.
Enhancement taxes from salmon fisheries are used within the region
collected for enhancement projects that in return benefit all users,
commercial, sport, and personal use.
Question 2. How would Alaska and its communities change if your
salmon populations experienced severe declines similar to those
experienced by other regions?
Answer. If Alaska suffered salmon declines as have been seen
elsewhere, some Alaska coastal communities would cease to exist. With
no option for other employment, residents would be forced to move away.
For many families, commercial salmon fishing provides for the income to
support a subsistence lifestyle. Without income from salmon harvest and
processing, only a handful of major ports that have diversified
groundfish, finfish, and shellfish fishing fleets or other job
opportunities would survive. Loss of the salmon sector would likely
also cripple many of these diversified ports with increased
unemployment from the loss of processing, hatcheries, and management
funding.
Question 3. How would such declines impact fishermen from other
states like Washington who also depend on Alaskan's salmon runs?
Answer. 1,856 Washington State residents, 330 Oregon residents, and
281 California residents held Alaska salmon fishing permits in 2009, as
well as residents of 43 other states. These independent mostly small
family business owners would likely be displaced and unemployed. Crew
counts are not so closely counted, but in 2007 there were crew licenses
issued to 8,400 non-Alaska residents, with the majority of these
working on salmon vessels. These individuals would also likely be
displaced. In addition value added processing and cold storage
facilities with extensive historic ties to the Alaska salmon industry
are located in many West coast communities, and many of these
businesses would fail or face cutbacks in employees without Alaska
salmon to process. If a major reduction in salmon production were to
occur, the cost of almost all consumer goods in the state would rise
due to the loss of the backhaul container capacity.
Question 4. With so much money and attention going toward depleted
salmon populations, do you feel like Alaska's largely healthy salmon
populations get the `short end of the stick'?
Answer. In some ways, yes. The kinds of projects, studies, and
funding needed to maintain healthy salmon stocks are different than
those intended to restore threatened salmon. We are not confident that
the message sent regarding the demise of the West coast salmon habitat
and subsequently the salmon, is well understood by the public in
Alaska. It would be beneficial to describe for the Alaska public, the
various policies adopted elsewhere that have proven to be so
detrimental to salmon and salmon habitat, so that they can potentially
be avoided in the future, everywhere.
Question 5. If more attention isn't given to salmon strongholds in
the future, would you consider that to be a threat to Alaska's salmon
populations?
Answer. Yes. Without this attention to salmon everywhere they
exist, there will be little awareness of the wide range of threats to
salmon everywhere. The same attention applied elsewhere to preserve
salmon needs to be translated into public policy and applied on a
project by project basis to prevent harm in Alaska.
Question 6. Since Alaskan salmon stocks benefit not only fishermen
from Alaska, but also fishermen from Washington State and Oregon, don't
we all be have an interest in maintaining the healthy status of
Alaska's salmon populations?
Answer. Yes, there are financial benefits not only to Washington,
Oregon, and California and to 43 other states that derive direct income
from salmon fishing. The economic engine derived from salmon fishing
employs many thousands of people on the West coast certainly, but also
throughout the U.S. No less important, of course, is the fact that
millions of Americans enjoy a sustainable and extremely healthful
protein source.
Question 7. Aren't Alaska's salmon populations simply too important
to be taken for granted?
Answer. Yes, we agree. Alaska is a salmon stronghold today. Not
very long ago, so was the entire west coast, and before that so was the
east coast. Alaska's salmon populations and watershed strongholds are
nothing less than national treasures.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Olympia J. Snowe to
Joe Childers
Question 1. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has
dedicated significant resources to Pacific salmon conservation and
management--upwards of $117 million in 2010 alone for the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and other ``salmon management
activities.'' NMFS also receives funding from two international funds
with an endowment of approximately $135 million through the U.S./
Canadian Pacific Salmon Commission. S. 817 would authorize an
additional $30 million annually to establish a grant program that would
focus on maintaining currently healthy habitat for Pacific salmon. What
authorities does the legislation bring to fisheries habitat
conservation that does not already exist?
Answer. Existing Federal authorities such as the Endangered Species
Act and Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund primarily target fish
populations and habitats that are already suffering decline or imminent
threats in a reactive manner. Yet it is very expensive and difficult to
restore populations, undo environmental harm after it is done, or
redirect harmful activities once established. The resulting history of
salmon populations worldwide is a sad story of serial depletion.
The Act would proactively provide the opportunity to identify
salmon strongholds and then support cooperative projects to ensure the
sustainability of the health of these systems.
Question 1a. Could resource managers not already use their existing
funds for this purpose?
Answer. Perhaps, but the attention and funding is primarily
directed at solving problems, not preventing problems with salmon
populations. Existing problems always seem to take a funding priority,
and direction from Congress that prevention of a problem is also a
priority when Federal dollars are to be allocated is needed to assure
existing habitat and populations are being protected.
Question 1b. If the potential economic payback of stronghold
activities is so great, why have they not focused more resources on
such projects?
Answer. We believe that outside Alaska, the damage to salmon
populations was already set in place well before the initiation of the
public consciousness of the value that salmon provide, and agency
efforts to address situations of depletion. Harmful practices proceeded
in many salmon bearing systems before the scientific knowledge existed
to protect salmon while promoting resource and agricultural development
and population expansion. We do not feel that the value of protecting
salmon has truly been ``a part of the equation'' for most of the
continuing history of the development of the United States. It is only
recently that the term sustainability has been so prevalent in resource
and development conversations and regulatory agency actions. The Salmon
Stronghold Conservation Act would indeed have been more timely a few
decades ago for most of the historical range of salmon in the U.S.
Question 2. New England also has its share of healthy stocks, such
as Maine lobster and sea scallops, that each bring over $300 million
annually in landings value. The Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank could be
considered strongholds for these critical species. Might this kind of
stronghold partnership structure benefit marine species like lobster
and scallops, as well as anadromous species like Pacific salmon?
Answer. Yes. Viable healthy populations of many varieties of
seafood could benefit from proactive attention to ensure the economic
viability of communities that depend on them--and most importantly, to
ensure continued public benefit through sustainable seafood supply.
Question 3. In 2006, the Departments of Commerce and Interior
joined forces with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to
publish the National Fish Habitat Action Plan, a document that
developed a strategy to protect, restore, and enhance the Nation's
fisheries ecosystems. This Action Plan established a Governing Board of
up to 20 members from state and Federal agencies, the conservation and
science communities, and industry representatives tasked with
coordinating involvement and raising awareness of and funding for fish
habitat considerations. How would the Stronghold Partnership differ
from and coordinate with this Governing Board?
Answer. There are differences in the makeup of the governing bodies
of the National Fish Habitat Action Plan Board from the Salmon
Stronghold Partnership Board, though both share in common the
representation of NMFS, USFWS, USFS, and the EPA. We reiterate our
written comment that we would support increased representation of
commercial fishing in the Strongholds Partnership Board.
The Fish Habitat Action Plan is nationwide in scope and its efforts
are spread among a wide array of species, including many that do not
include the public benefit of food production through sustainable
commercial fisheries. It focuses on fish habitat conservation and
restoration efforts specific to a particular watershed.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership would narrow its focus to salmon
only, while broadening its range to consider impacts and projects
beyond habitat including water quality and quantity, climate change
effects, hatchery opportunities and effects, and other potential
opportunities to benefit salmon populations.
Question 4. Some principles of conservation biology would support
the stronghold concept. However, finding examples of existing
``stronghold'' programs is difficult. How would you describe the
defining characteristics of a species ``stronghold''?
Answer. A stronghold is a watershed, area, region, or in the case
of Alaska, a state that still retains healthy populations of salmon.
These are places where the habitat and food webs of the freshwater
streams and lakes are intact to provide the opportunity for salmon to
return to suitable spawning habitat, water quality and quantity to
provide for the incubation of eggs and the survival of juvenile salmon
in their freshwater rearing habitats, passage to marine environment,
marine food webs, and regulatory regimes that have enabled sustained
populations to this time. Considering the original range of virtually
every coastal watershed from Central California to Northern Alaska,
these remaining places that support salmon populations are very special
and deserving of the attention that will be provided by the Act.
Question 4a. What precedents exist for this type of management, and
have stronghold management approaches resulted in measurable
conservation gains for the target species?
Answer. We are not aware of direct comparison already in place. We
see the strongholds concept as a practical application of ecosystem
based management, which has become a very common slogan but is still in
its infancy in actual application in resource management. The concept
of the Salmon Strongholds Partnership Act is novel, and timely.
Question 4b. If the concept of a ``stronghold'' is based largely on
where the species has a relatively large population and intact habitat
(i.e., mostly based on ecological criteria), how are human economic and
social needs taken into account when selecting ``stronghold'' sites?
Answer. In Alaska, salmon represent the largest employment
component of the multi-billion dollar seafood industry with the
majority of harvester, crew, and processor opportunities. While the
seafood industry is diversified among coastal and offshore fisheries
for a rich variety of species, salmon is still the lifeblood of
Alaska's coastal economies while also providing economic benefits to
all Alaskans through revenues and reduced cost of transportation for
virtually all goods consumed in the State, by the filling of containers
that otherwise would return to U.S. ports empty. Salmon is also the
majority of subsistence harvest for many Alaskans that live in areas
that do not support a cash economy or traditional employment
opportunities. Salmon are integral to our tourism economy not only
through sport fishing but in wildlife viewing activities such as bear
viewing which is focused at places where for centuries bears have
congregated to feed on returning salmon. In addition, Alaska's forests
are dependent on nutrients that are moved onto land as bears feed. The
loss of salmon in areas of Alaska would be a huge detriment in human
economic and social terms.
In summary, in Alaska salmon and human economic and social needs
are inseparable.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Maria Cantwell to
Ms. Sara LaBorde
Question 1. In these hard economic times, there have been questions
about allocating additional funds to protect healthy salmon populations
when funds are already provided for recovering struggling ones. Don't
these stronghold efforts need to be in addition to current efforts to
recover salmon stocks?
Answer. Yes, additional funds are needed to support efforts to
protect healthy populations and reduce the likelihood of additional
populations being listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Funds (PCSRF) are vital to
meeting the recovery efforts called for in salmon recovery plans
developed for ESA-listed salmon populations.
The PCSRF program is a very deliberate program with high standards
and accountability. It is directed toward the Federal mandate to
recover salmon and steelhead populations listed as threatened or
endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The allocation of
funds is driven by priorities developed by local watersheds to address
actions outlined in NOAA-adopted salmon and steelhead recovery plans.
For example, Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Funding (PCSRF) in WA, OR,
ID, and CA is primarily allocated to projects that further protection
and restoration of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead populations.
As a consequence, basins with healthy wild salmon populations do
not receive adequate funding for protection and restoration actions
needed to ensure the populations remain in good shape (e.g., Smith
River in CA; Olympic Peninsula rivers along WA's Pacific coast).
It should be noted, that there is great economic benefit derived
from the healthy salmon stronghold populations that are at risk when
population crashes occur such as recent crashes in the Frazier and
Sacramento salmon populations.
Recovery efforts are vital, but are extremely costly and will take
time. The Stronghold Act calls for recovery efforts to be complemented
by strategic investments in salmon strongholds to secure genetically
diverse source populations. This will be critical to ensure healthy
wild salmon populations continue to thrive in light of climate change
and other threats.
It will also protect the valuable ecological services these
watersheds provide (e.g., drinking water, irrigation, flood control,
nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, and pollutant filtering).
Question 2. Can you explain how preserving the stronghold
populations will assist in decreasing recovery costs in the future?
Answer. Investing in salmon strongholds will save billions of
dollars in the long run by preventing future ESA listings and related
restoration costs. It is much more cost effective to work with local
and regional communities and partners to protect functioning systems
now--than to pay the high costs we have found it takes to repair and
restore systems after they have been significantly impacted.
Correcting historic actions, after the fact, is proving to be
expensive: reforming economically important hatcheries, setting back
protection levies, improving water withdrawal systems, providing
passage to quality habitats upstream of barriers to migration are just
a few examples.
If the objective is to have sustainable salmon and steelhead
populations--that are able to respond to changes in their watersheds--
it is vital to support and protect healthy ecosystem functions and the
local communities that depend on them.
By creating a partnership with local communities, Federal and state
managers, tribes and private organizations, we can provide the support
needed to ensure a watershed continues to provide the important
functions needed for salmon to survive--clean water, spawning and
rearing habitat, and reduced competition with hatchery fish on the
spawning grounds.
Question 3. As a state wildlife manager, what tools would the
Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act give you that you currently
don't have?
Answer. Washington's Fish and Wildlife Commission recently adopted
a fishery and hatchery reform policy that addresses needed hatchery and
harvest reform issues for both listed and non-listed salmon and
steelhead populations.
As a state manager we are currently addressing harvest issues both
locally with tribal co-managers and regionally through the Pacific
Salmon Commission and Pacific Salmon Treaty. We are addressing hatchery
reform issues, watershed by watershed, using the thoughtful
recommendations and guidelines of the Congressionally-created Hatchery
Scientific Review Group. Hatchery reform strategies are looked at from
a watershed and a larger regional context.
While there are vehicles to address harvest and hatchery issues at
a broader scale, the Stronghold Act provides the framework to address
other important factors affecting salmon at a broader regional scale as
well.
The Salmon Stronghold Act provides the following important tools:
Provides policy leadership to consider ways to ensure
healthy systems remain healthy and functioning.
Enables local communities, organizations, and state, Federal
and tribal managers to work at a regional level: from
California to Alaska to address large programmatic issues that
can benefit all salmon populations.
It creates a policy table that can address issues at local,
state and Federal levels. The Stronghold Steering Committee
includes every state fish and wildlife agency, Governor's
office and Federal natural resource agency. This is extremely
valuable to local governments or state managers frustrated when
bureaucratic processes or various agency silos impede
development or implementation of effective local solutions.
It builds on local and state funding and accountability
systems keeping the system efficient, effective and
accountable.
Question 4. Do you believe the structure and makeup of the Salmon
Stronghold Partnership will be valuable for Washington State in
providing a forum to discuss salmon conservation across political
boundaries?
Answer. Yes.
First, the Salmon Stronghold Partnership builds on local and state
funding and accountability systems that reinforce program efficiency,
effectiveness and accountability.
In Washington State, we have worked hard at the watershed level
through salmon recovery regions to develop a coordinated and integrated
approach to salmon recovery and have attempted to use this framework in
areas with healthy un-listed populations of salmon and steelhead.
The State of Washington created and continues to support a locally-
driven approach to salmon restoration and protection. The annual
habitat project lists developed in every watershed are based on a
locally-driven approach. Salmon habitat restoration projects are
developed and prioritized through the local ``Lead Entity'' groups.
These groups, when initiated, could only be constituted if local
governments were official members. This approach has provided a local
ownership of habitat restoration actions and priorities. The state
believes in and supports this process and continually looks for ways to
strengthen it. This is a ``bottoms-up'' program directed by local
governments and their local tribal, state and Federal partners with
technical, policy, and fiscal oversight by the state (i.e., the Salmon
Recovery Funding Board and Recreation and Conservation Office).
The Stronghold Partnership will assist the development of these
systems in areas with still healthy populations. It will help create a
steering committee at the local level as well as connect to a much
broader regional system that can address issues in a watershed as well
as issues much larger in scale.
Question 5. How do you think this bill would help achieve effective
salmon management in watersheds with fragmented land ownership like the
Wenatchee Basin?
Answer. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act would help
achieve effective salmon management in basins with fragmented
ownership--like the Wenatchee Basin--by providing the funds necessary
to initiate and complete land consolidation through voluntary land
exchanges and acquisitions. Land consolidation across key salmon
habitats will increase both the effectiveness and efficiency of the
implementation of watershed conservation plans.
Because salmon utilize most of the aquatic habitats in a watershed
ranging from the high gradient tributaries in the upper watershed
through the wetland habitats in the lower gradient portions, holistic
watershed level planning is essential for effective lands management.
Consequently, numerous partnerships have emerged over the last couple
of decades that focus on developing watershed plans to coordinate and
leverage the conservation strategies of multiple landowners across a
variety of land uses.
While these plans are effective in developing scientifically-driven
strategies to conserve salmonid resources, their implementation is
often compromised by the divergent land use goals of private, local,
state, and Federal land owners. Where ownership is fragmented within a
watershed, the conservation challenges created by conflicting landowner
goals are greatly amplified. Conflicting goals can lead to inconsistent
management of contiguous habitats, which eliminates conservation
opportunities or diminishes the effectiveness of ongoing conservation
investments. For example, the protection and restoration of upper
watershed tributary habitats will be ineffective if they are, or later
become, inaccessible due to fish passage barriers downstream.
Similarly, the eradication of invasive species by one landowner will
not work if the species are not eradicated, or are reintroduced, by
neighboring landowners.
In the Wenatchee Basin, the patchwork ownership pattern and the
inefficiencies it promotes present challenges for both private
landowners--who struggle with invasive species control, inefficient
fire management, and trespass--and the conservation community, which
must contend with spatially inconsistent implementation of conservation
plans. Despite broad recognition of the inefficiencies created by
fragmented land use, no state or Federal agency has made land
consolidation a priority in the basin due in large part to the
technical complexity of the task, the level of coordination needed, and
a lack of funds available to support management of the process. Other
salmon stronghold basins, like the John Day Basin in Oregon, have also
identified fragmented land ownership as a limiting factor to their
capacity to conserve wild salmon.
Because it supports cross-cutting, programmatic initiatives that
affect multiple strongholds, the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation
Act has the unique capacity to jumpstart locally-led efforts to
implement land consolidation, which have been difficult to finance
through existing programs. This Act would help eliminate significant
inefficiencies resulting from fragmented ownership by providing
opportunities to protect and restore key habitats that are now
inaccessible, elevating this issue as a priority amongst Federal
agencies, and providing funding and technical assistance to local
partners to work with Federal, state and tribal governments and local
landowners to facilitate consolidation. In doing so, this Act would not
only address a key limitation to the long term health of salmon
strongholds, but also promote efficiencies in many of the West's
working landscapes.
Question 6. Some may have a concern that once this bill is enacted
and implemented, the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Partnership will become
just another layer in an already vast bureaucracy of salmon management?
Are there steps for implementing this bill that you view as essential
to make sure that we truly realize the added value we're trying to
achieve by creating the Partnership?
Answer. It is important that the Stronghold Partnership continue to
be a voluntary, incentive-based effort that will leverage resources to
accomplish locally-supported goals shared by public and private sectors
in salmon strongholds.
It is also critical that the Stronghold partners provide a science-
based list of high conservation value actions within strongholds--that
are supported by local communities, who themselves have ``opted in'' to
the Stronghold Partnership. This will ensure that the actions provide
good investment opportunities for interested donors/partners.
A third component of the Stronghold Partnership is the call for
utilizing a broad suite of voluntary, market-based approaches, such as
conservation easements, resource banking, and third-party certification
that is already being utilized by public and private entities
throughout the country.
It is also important that the Stronghold Partnership continue to
utilize current state systems for prioritizing and funding watershed
projects.
Lastly, a key is the required participation from applicable
Federal, state and local agencies and organizations to assist in
development of locally based strategies to ensure healthy salmon
populations.
Question 7. Jurisdiction over salmon habitat crosses many Federal,
tribal, state, and local boundaries. We need to avoid adding levels of
bureaucracy and focus on making sure that goals and efforts among these
institutions are well aligned. Having been part of these efforts in the
past, do you believe that this Act promotes efficiency among these
different entities?
Answer. Yes.
The Stronghold Act reinforces the use of locally and state
developed prioritization, funding and accountability processes. We are
also aided by the lessons learned through developing and implementing
the salmon recovery plans. The Stronghold Partnership builds upon these
lessons, processes and partnerships and provides the support for local
communities to protect their stronghold populations.
There are numerous important Federal and state agency programs that
can benefit salmon and watersheds in agencies like U.S. Forest Service,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife and Washington Department of Ecology.
One of the objectives of the Stronghold Partnership is to work with
the state and Federal partners in identifying and aligning these
valuable programs to better meet local priorities for keeping the local
watershed healthy for salmon and healthy for local communities. This is
applicable to different aspects of state and Federal programs--even
those not focused specifically on providing funds to watersheds--that
still play an important role in ensuring stronghold watersheds continue
to be significant contributors of salmon. U.S. Forest Service Roads
maintenance program is one example.
The Stronghold Partnership will utilize the current funding
distribution structure in the State of Washington that coordinates the
identification, review and selection of projects to make the most
effective use of both the PCSRF funds and Salmon Stronghold funds. In
that PCSRF funds are focused on ESA populations as a priority,
Partnership activities will focus on meeting stronghold watershed needs
through partnerships with private funders as well as more effective
coordination of state and Federal activities in the watershed.
Question 8. This bill affords opportunities for communities to
become even more of a part of conservation of salmon populations. One
of these opportunities is conserving habitat by providing ecosystem
services. How do you see this opportunity expanding stewardship in
communities that have healthy salmon populations?
Answer. Voluntary payment for ecosystem services is one potential
tool in addressing salmon conservation that enables local communities
to work together to identify and provide effective stewardship of their
watersheds and salmon populations.
If in looking at the priority actions identified for the stronghold
watershed, payment for ecosystems services is identified as a potential
strategy, the local partner would look at the ecological goals
determined by scientific analysis in the watershed (i.e.--ecosystem
services per acre of land) and would inventory all existing incentive-
based programs available to landowners and land managers in key areas.
If gaps exist, the Stronghold Partnership would seek to fill this
gap by leveraging private funds through species banks or other
mechanisms.
For example, if ensuring functioning riparian corridors was a key
local priority, riparian farmers might already be currently benefiting
from a program to maintain stream vegetation buffers but private forest
landowners might not be. The partnership might assess opportunities to
recruit private capital to offer the same opportunity to private forest
owners adjacent to rivers. Many private firms will consider voluntary
contributions of this nature if the environmental and social benefits
are clearly identified and are measurable.
Question 9. What other opportunities for community involvement are
provided for or emphasized that you see as beneficial for the success
of the salmon stronghold strategy?
Answer. The Salmon Stronghold Act will provide a high-level forum
to provide this unifying framework where key public and private
agencies and organizations can coordinate to improve ecosystem function
through implementation of high value conservation actions within
strongholds.
Our goal is to improve policies affecting strong salmon
populations, improving ecosystem functions. It will further our
ability, at the state level, to transition to ecosystem management, as
public and private resources are delivered as efficiently as possible
directly to local entities implementing protection and restoration
actions that are ecosystem based.
Question 10. The stronghold approach focuses efforts and funding on
healthy populations, rather than focusing, as has been done in the
past, on recovering struggling populations. You mentioned the
importance of focusing our conservation efforts on the healthiest wild
salmon ecosystems. Is it accurate to state that a stronghold approach
is, ultimately, a piece of the larger conservation puzzle?
The stronghold approach is the critical--missing--piece of the
larger conservation puzzle. As climate change occurs, ecosystems will
adjust to these changes. Systems that are healthy and resilient will be
best able to adapt to these changes. The most effective strategy for
preparing for the future is to protect our healthy, functioning
systems.
Whether these changes can be absolutely predicted or not, we know
that ecosystems and populations with an innate ability to adapt have a
better chance of dealing with changes that might occur.
By implementing a stronghold approach--we are strategically
ensuring that the listed pieces of the puzzle don't continue to just
get larger.
Question 11. Why is this strategy an effective approach for
rehabilitating the integrity of evolutionarily significant units?
Answer. In the briefest terms, it will be impossible to
rehabilitate listed ESUs if: (a) the strongest populations within the
ESU deteriorate before restoration actions elsewhere in the ESU take
effect or (b) if wild salmon near the listed ESU decline to the point
where they can no longer provide seed stock to repopulate the listed
populations, either via natural migration or hatchery intervention.
At present, roughly one half of the Evolutionarily Significant
Units (ESUS) of Pacific salmon--distributed across Washington, Oregon,
California, and Idaho--are listed as threatened or endangered under the
Federal Endangered Species Act.
These ESUs are quite literally adrift on a sea of peril, threats to
population viability that reflect the trajectories of human population
growth, society's relentless need to utilize resources of land and
water that the salmon depend on, the risks associated with fish
hatcheries and harvest, and now, global climate change.
Current efforts to rehabilitate these ESA listed ESUs will require
time to bear fruit. Among current and future threats the salmon face,
alteration of historical habitat conditions, coupled with local
expressions of global climate change, are the most serious, and the
most difficult to remediate. Restoring watersheds to salmon-suitable
conditions will require decades. Aside from removing passage barriers
like culverts, there are no quick fixes to restoring watershed
functions required to sustain viable salmon ESUs.
Salmon stronghold populations provide an anchor, metaphorically, to
secure the ESU from further deterioration; strongholds also offer the
core of adaptive genetic diversity essential to restoring the viability
of populations across the listed ESU.
What strength remains within listed ESUs is the strength in what we
refer to as ``strong populations'' or `'salmon strongholds'' within or
near the listed ESUs. These remaining centers of abundance,
productivity, and diversity are the heart of our current ability to
fish and to our hopes for recovering the listed ESUs to viability.
In short, if one is aboard a ship at sea (an ESU), with fire (weak
populations) distributed from stem to stern, it is crucial to secure
strategically dispersed bases of operation (strongholds) from which one
may send fire-crews forth to secure the ship. A single-minded focus to
extinguish the flames (rehabilitate the weakest populations), without
securing strategic operation bases (strongholds) is likely to result in
failure.
Question 12. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act would
utilize payments for ecosystem services as part of its comprehensive
approach to Pacific salmon conservation. What are the benefits of
payments for ecosystem services, and can you provide some examples of
how they work?
Answer. Payments for ecosystem services expand the tools available
to local communities in keeping their ecosystems functioning AND their
working lands working.
Voluntary payment for ecosystem services is one potential tool in
addressing salmon conservation. If in looking at the priority actions
identified for the stronghold watershed, payment for ecosystems
services is identified as a potential strategy, the local partner would
look at the ecological goals determined by scientific analysis in the
watershed (i.e.--ecosystem services per acre of land) and would
inventory all existing incentive-based programs available to landowners
and land managers in key areas.
If gaps exist, the Stronghold Partnership would seek to fill this
gap by leveraging private funds through species banks or other
mechanisms. For example, if ensuring functioning riparian corridors was
a key local priority, riparian farmers might already be currently
benefiting from a program to maintain stream vegetation buffers but
private forest landowners might not be.
The partnership might assess opportunities to recruit private
capital to offer the same opportunity to private forest owners adjacent
to rivers. Many private firms will consider voluntary contributions of
this nature if the environmental and social benefits are clearly
identified and are measurable.
For example, Oregon recently enacted an Ecosystems Services Act
(state statute), creating a state framework for accounting and
coordination of ecosystem service markets in the state. The Oregon
Department of Transportation operates a ``species bank,'' allowing for
mitigation actions that produce the highest benefit for species or
habitats.
Existing ecosystem service initiatives enjoy the full support and
participation of state authorities. The EPA-supported Willamette
Partnership in Oregon has robust participation from state agencies and
departments. Ecosystem service pilots in King County Washington are
supported by the state, and California officially supports several
ecosystem service pilots, including a voluntary ``species banking''
registry. This approach enjoys broad support from a wide range of
stakeholders, including farmers, ranchers, regulated entities,
conservation organizations, EPA, USDA and others.
______
Response to Written Questions Submitted by Hon. Olympia J. Snowe to
Ms. Sara LaBorde
Question 1. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has
dedicated significant resources to Pacific salmon conservation and
management--upwards of $117 million in 2010 alone for the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) and other ``salmon management
activities.'' NMFS also receives funding from two international funds
with an endowment of approximately $135 million through the U.S./
Canadian Pacific Salmon Commission. S. 817 would authorize an
additional $30 million annually to establish a grant program that would
focus on maintaining currently healthy habitat for Pacific salmon. What
authorities does the legislation bring to fisheries habitat
conservation that does not already exist?
Answer. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act provides
congressional direction to focus Federal resources on preventative,
proactive efforts to conserve healthy wild Pacific salmon ecosystems
through the establishment of a Salmon Stronghold Partnership program
and the Salmon Stronghold Partnership. By directing the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to establish a salmon
stronghold watershed grants and technical assistance program, this Act
provides clear statutory funding direction to focus resources on the
conservation of healthy wild salmon populations and their habitat as a
complement to ongoing salmon recovery efforts. This legislation also
authorizes Federal participation in the Salmon Stronghold Partnership
and requires Federal agencies responsible for acquiring, managing, or
disposing of Federal lands within salmon strongholds to cooperate with
NOAA to conserve salmon strongholds. None of these authorities
currently exists.
Though NOAA uses an assortment of authorities when it administers
grants today--from the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal
Protection Act to the Pacific Salmon Treaty--these authorities provide
almost no specific congressional direction to the agency, and are
primarily focused on the recovery of threatened and endangered salmon
stocks. Further, while NOAA receives significant congressional
direction in its appropriations bills, including specifics on how to
spend grant funds, the agency has acknowledged that, in part because
there is no organic act establishing the agency, it has no statutory
funding direction. As a result, NOAA determines the guidelines and
details of most salmon grants (i.e., what purpose, how much, who gets
it, matching funds, who partners) on its own, and allocates the
majority of its salmon funding toward recovery and restoration efforts.
This is illustrated through the existing funding sources mentioned
above. NOAA dedicates significant funding to support Pacific salmon
conservation and management activities, primarily through the Pacific
Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF), Salmon Management Activities
related to the implementation of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and Pacific
Salmon Commission Restoration and Enhancement funds. Unfortunately,
none of these funding sources supports prevention-based strategies to
conserve strong wild salmon populations before they decline or healthy
salmon-bearing watersheds before they are degraded. Further, they fail
to support innovative strategies to address threats to healthy wild
salmon populations that transcend watershed and state boundaries.
For example, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund supports
projects necessary for the conservation of salmon and steelhead
populations that are listed as threatened or endangered under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA), or identified by a state as at-risk or to
be so-listed; for maintaining populations necessary for exercise of
tribal treaty fishing rights or native subsistence fishing; or for
conservation of Pacific coastal salmon and steelhead habitat. In
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California, PCSRF funding is largely
directed toward the Federal mandate to recover ESA-listed salmon and
steelhead populations, and allocated based on priorities identified in
salmon and steelhead recovery plans. In Alaska, which currently has no
ESA-listed salmon populations, PCSRF funding is limited to habitat
conservation efforts. As such, it cannot be used to proactively tackle
other factors that may pose serious threats to salmon populations like
climate change, development, and non-native species proliferation, all
of which the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act seeks to
address through innovative, prevention-based strategies.
Similarly, Pacific Salmon Commission Restoration and Enhancement
funds (``Northern and Southern funds'') are primarily directed toward
the enhancement of wild stock production and the development of
improved information for resource management, rather than proactive
strategies to conserve healthy wild salmon populations. The Pacific
Salmon Commission has identified three primary goals for the Northern
and Southern Boundary funds: (1) development of improved information
for resource management, including better stock assessment, data
acquisition and improved scientific understanding of limiting factors
affecting salmon production in the freshwater and marine environments;
(2) rehabilitation and restoration of marine and freshwater fish
habitat, and improvement of habitat to enhance productivity and
protection of Pacific salmon; and (3) enhancement of wild stock
production through low technology techniques rather than through large
facilities with high operating costs. Over the last few years, the
majority of the Northern and Southern funds have been spent on Goals 1
and 3, with only a small percentage allocated toward habitat
restoration and rehabilitation. In addition, according to the Northern
Fund Committee's 2009 Call for Proposals, ``[T]he Committee believes
that large-scale habitat rehabilitation, habitat monitoring, habitat
protection, and land acquisition are more appropriately addressed by
other agencies and organizations.''
By establishing a Salmon Stronghold Partnership program, this
legislation will complement existing salmon funding sources and enable
resource managers to get ahead of the curve in conserving wild salmon
over the long term. In addition, this Act will enhance cooperation and
coordination among Federal resource agencies and other stakeholders in
implementing prevention-based strategies to conserve salmon strongholds
across diverse land ownerships and jurisdictional boundaries.
Question 1a. Could resource managers not already use their existing
funds for this purpose?
Answer. Though NOAA can currently undertake projects to conserve
healthy wild salmon populations and their habitat, the agency rarely
does so because it has no such mandate (see answer to question (1)
above). That is why the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act is
so vital--it requires NOAA to undertake a complementary approach to its
current recovery focus by protecting and restoring healthy wild Pacific
salmon ecosystems.
In addition, current salmon funding programs are not built to
address Pacific salmon conservation goals on a regional scale. For
example, PCSRF funds are allocated on a state by state basis. Each
state allocates funds to recovery basins for habitat protection and
restoration actions, and priorities are determined by each recovery
basin (e.g., Lead Entities in WA). While these efforts are critical,
resource managers must also assess emerging threats that transcend
watershed and state boundaries. These cross-cutting threats--like
invasive species proliferation and climate change--have great potential
to exacerbate the impacts of existing limiting factors, while creating
new ones. Unlike basin-specific limiting factors, however, which often
require ``on-the-ground'' solutions implemented at the watershed scale,
these threats can be more effectively addressed through
``programmatic'' remedies that operate across multiple strongholds.
This Act will enable the Salmon Stronghold Partnership to develop and
support these cross-cutting, programmatic remedies.
Question 1b. If the potential economic payback of stronghold
activities is so great, why have they not focused more resources on
such projects?
Answer. This is partially due to the dire state of many Pacific
salmon populations across the West Coast. As I mentioned in my
testimony, salmon are now extinct over 40 percent of their native
range, and many other salmon populations have declined to the point
that they are protected under the Endangered Species Act. As a result,
Federal agencies are spending the majority of their resources
responding to the crisis of the day (like the Sacramento Chinook
collapse) and restoring highly impacted systems.
In addition, the failure to allocate resources to proactive
conservation efforts is likely because the payback from those efforts
is harder to account for. It is much easier to track the return of an
investment in restoration, where miles restored or fish passage
barriers removed are easily quantified, than it is to evaluate
preventative measures that are targeted to maintaining healthy
ecosystem functions. This is a paradox for two important reasons: (1)
it is less expensive to conserve healthy wild salmon populations and
intact watersheds than it is to rebuild imperiled stocks or restore
degraded habitat; and (2) the desired outcome--a functioning ecosystem
supporting healthy wild salmon populations--is far more likely to be
secured through prevention-based strategies than through restoration
approaches.
If we do not implement a new policy to focus Federal resources on
the conservation of healthy wild salmon ecosystems in the near term, we
will continue to see the health of our wild salmon populations decline
and may lose our opportunity to stem the tide of wild salmon population
loss and extinction.
Question 2. In 2006, the Departments of Commerce and Interior
joined forces with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to
publish the National Fish Habitat Action Plan, a document that
developed a strategy to protect, restore, and enhance the Nation's
fisheries ecosystems. This Action Plan established a Governing Board of
up to 20 members from state and Federal agencies, the conservation and
science communities, and industry representatives tasked with
coordinating involvement and raising awareness of and funding for fish
habitat considerations. How would the Stronghold Partnership differ
from and coordinate with this Governing Board?
Answer. The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board differs from the
National Fish Habitat Board in a number of ways, most notably in its
membership, purpose, and scale of focus.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership is a public-private partnership
among Federal, state, tribal, and local governments, private
landowners, and nongovernmental organizations working across political
boundaries, government jurisdictions, and land ownerships to identify
and conserve the healthiest wild Pacific salmon ecosystems in Alaska,
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board is the executive body of
the Salmon Stronghold Partnership. The Board will consist of 19 to 21
representatives with strong scientific or technical credentials and
expertise, as follows: one representative from each of the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(FWS), the Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the
Bonneville Power Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, and the
Northwest Power and Conservation Council; one representative from each
of the States of Alaska, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington; not
less than three and not more than five representatives from Indian
tribes or tribal commissions located within the range of Pacific
salmon; one representative from each of three non-governmental
organizations with salmon conservation and management expertise; one
national or regional representative from an association of counties;
and representatives of any other entities with significant resources
regionally dedicated to the protection of salmon ecosystems that the
Board determines are appropriate. The Pacific Fisheries Resource
Conservation Council, an independent advisory body to the Canadian
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the British Columbia Minister of
Fisheries, is also participating on the Board as an Ex Officio member.
The primary purposes of the Board will be to: (1) develop and
support strategies focusing on the conservation actions projected to
have the greatest positive impacts on wild salmon abundance,
productivity and/or diversity in and across salmon strongholds, and (2)
provide criteria for the prioritization of projects funded under the
Salmon Stronghold Partnership program. In developing proactive
strategies to prevent the decline of healthy wild salmon ecosystems and
criteria for the prioritization of projects, the Board will not limit
its scope to habitat conservation. Instead, it will consider all of the
factors affecting the health of salmon strongholds (e.g., harvest,
hatchery influence, and habitat alteration) at both watershed and
region-wide scales.
In contrast, the National Fish Habitat Board focuses on fish
habitat conservation--both healthy habitats and those that are
degraded--at a nationwide scale in an effort to establish national
goals and priorities, designate Partnerships, and review and make
recommendations regarding fish habitat conservation projects. The Board
will be composed of 27 members, including: the Director of the FWS; the
Assistant Administrator of the NMFS; the Chief of the Natural Resources
Conservation Service; the Chief of the Forest Service; the Assistant
Administrator for Water of the Environmental Protection Agency; the
President of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies; the
Secretary of the Board of Directors of the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation; four representatives of State agencies, one of whom shall
be nominated by a regional association of fish and wildlife agencies
from each of the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and Western regions of
the United States; one representative of the American Fisheries
Society; two representatives of Indian tribes, of whom one shall
represent Indian tribes from the State of Alaska, and one shall
represent Indian tribes from the other states; one representative of
the Regional Fishery Management Councils; one representative of the
Marine Fisheries Commissions; one representative of the Sportfishing
and Boating Partnership Council; and ten representatives selected from
each of the following groups: the recreational sportfishing industry,
the commercial fishing industry, marine recreational anglers,
freshwater recreational anglers, terrestrial resource conservation
organizations, aquatic resource conservation organizations, the
livestock and poultry production industry, the land development
industry, the row crop industry, and natural resource commodity
interests, such as petroleum or mineral extraction.
The National Fish Habitat Board and Salmon Stronghold Partnership
Board have three representatives from the same Federal agencies--NMFS,
FWS, and the Forest Service--and two representatives from the same non-
governmental organizations (NGO's)--Trout Unlimited and The Nature
Conservancy. Aside from these five members, and potentially one state
representative (depending on the Western State appointment to the
National Fish Habitat Board), membership is quite different among these
two bodies. Both the Federal agencies and the NGO's participating on
the Boards recognize the differences between these two efforts and the
value of supporting both.
The Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will coordinate with Fish
Habitat Partnerships (FHPs) that overlap with its focal area (i.e.,
salmon strongholds across Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and
California) to avoid duplication of efforts and potentially fill the
gaps that Fish Habitat Partnerships do not address, either
geographically or through programmatic initiatives that address
challenges across multiple basins. This cooperation and coordination
will be necessary in Alaska, since the state has been identified as a
regional salmon stronghold and contains three recognized FHPs. Members
of the Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will initiate discussions
with the Alaska FHPs at a National Fish Habitat meeting in Anchorage
this summer to determine how the partnerships can work together in the
State.
Question 3. Some principles of conservation biology would support
the stronghold concept. However, finding examples of existing
``stronghold'' programs is difficult. How would you describe the
defining characteristics of a species ``stronghold''?
Answer. The Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act defines a
``salmon stronghold'' as ``all or part of a watershed that meets
biological criteria for abundance, productivity, diversity (life
history and run timing), habitat quality, or other biological
attributes important to sustaining viable populations of salmon
throughout their range.'' S. 817, 111th Cong. 3(8) (2009). Because
the stronghold approach seeks to sustain viable populations ``across
their range,'' and abundance and diversity decrease dramatically from
strongholds in the north to those in the south, the term ``stronghold''
is relative. Each stronghold is identified and can only be described
within the context of the distinct geographic areas that conservation
planners use to organize the enormous landscape that supports wild
salmon. These areas are known as ecological regions, or ``eco-
regions.'' Within the eco-regions of CA, OR, WA, and ID (and southern
British Columbia), partners are convening to evaluate wild populations
and identify ``core strongholds.'' Because of the extraordinary
abundance and diversity of wild salmon populations throughout Alaska,
the Act recognizes the entire state as a salmon stronghold. Despite the
variations across eco-regions in the lower 48 states, some common
characteristics exist, which may be summarized as follows:
1. Strongholds meet the highest values for wild salmon
abundance and diversity. Salmon strongholds support the
greatest assemblage of wild salmon species with high abundance
and productivity and minimal influence of hatchery-reared
populations within an eco-region. Wild populations demonstrate
a high diversity of life history strategies, providing a
significant buffer against population extirpation in the event
of a short or long term disturbance to the system. The first
step in identifying salmon strongholds is for experts within
each eco-region to score populations according to three
criteria: abundance and productivity, percent natural origin
spawners, and life history diversity.
2. Strongholds make the highest proportional contributions
toward meeting conservation goals within an eco-region. In his
testimony on the Pacific Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act,
Dr. Gordon Reeves with the U.S. Forest Service stated, ``[T]he
identification and selection of a stronghold is premised on
principles of systematic conservation design, which are well
established in the scientific literature (see Soule and
Terborgh 1999). These include: (1) comprehensiveness--the
extent to which the network protects the desired level of
biodiversity and abundance; (2) irreplaceability--the inclusion
of areas or populations that are necessary to achieve the
conservation goals; and (3) efficiency--the network is designed
``[in] the most efficient manner that achieves the conservation
goals while minimizing the area involved.'' By entering
stronghold data collected through ``expert scoring'' (#1 above)
into network design software, conservation planners can
identify those locations that support the highest proportions
of an eco-region's overall wild salmon production within a
small area (relative to the entire eco-region). Investment in
those locations--salmon strongholds--will yield the biggest
bang for our buck in conservation returns.
3. Strongholds contain relatively unfragmented and ecologically
intact habitats. Scientists have conducted extensive research
that clearly demonstrates the adverse impacts of aquatic and
terrestrial habitat fragmentation and degradation on the
abundance and diversity of wild salmon populations. Salmon
strongholds contain high value and intact riparian, instream,
wetland, and (sometimes) estuarine habitats that are well
connected across the watershed. Trophic systems (the foodweb)
are intact, invasive species infiltration minimal, and key
areas of refugia are relatively unaltered. In short, the salmon
stronghold system is functioning with minimal human disturbance
relative to the other parts of the eco-region.
Question 3a. What precedents exist for this type of management, and
have stronghold management approaches resulted in measurable
conservation gains for the target species?
Answer. A key purpose of conservation biology is ``to retain the
actors in the evolutionary play and the ecological stage on which it is
performed'' (quote of G.E. Hutchinson in Meffe and Carroll 1999). The
establishment of strongholds, also known as reserves, is a primary tool
for meeting this goal and has been employed around the world to help
protect a vast number of organisms and resources (Margules and Pressey
2000). Generally, these are areas that currently have strong
populations and intact, functioning ecosystems because conservation
actions are most successful before populations or ecosystems begin to
decline. Strongholds have been established primarily for marine and
terrestrial systems. The stronghold network proposed by the current
legislation would be one of the first for freshwater fish.
While many strongholds and stronghold networks have been
established, it is difficult to fully assess their success (Gaston et
al., 2006). The reasons for this include the: (1) paucity of systematic
data; and (2) incompatibility of data that has been collected to
measure the performance of the individual efforts. However, studies
that have evaluated strongholds and strongholds networks found that
them to be generally successful in meeting their conservation
objectives.
For example, the North American Flyway, which is a series of
reserves on public and private lands along the migratory corridors of
waterfowl that were established by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, has
helped to maintain healthy waterfowl populations (Nichols et al.,
1995). Similarly, Halpern (2003) reviewed the biological response to
the establishment of 89 marine reserves worldwide and found that the
density of fish was 2 times greater, biomass was 3 times greater, and
size and diversity were 20-30 percent higher in reserves than in
adjacent areas. The effects of the reserves increased with the size.
Rates of declines of biodiversity in English reserves were generally
lower than or similar to compared to declines to outside areas (Gaston
et al., 2006). In addition, trends were most positive in larger
protected areas. For example, Andam et al., (2008) estimated that
forest reserves in Costa Rica reduced deforestation by 10 percent.
Scientists have suggested the stronghold (or similar) approach for
several years. Williams et al., (1989) and Moyle and Yoshiyama (1994)
were among the earliest to argue for this approach. Williams et al.,
noted that no freshwater fish that was listed under the Endangered
Species Act (ESA) up to that time had been removed because it recovered
sufficiently. The number of freshwater fish listed under the ESA
continues to increase, while few have been delisted to date (Williams
and Miller 2006).
As Pacific salmon, and other native fish, in the western United
States continue to decline, scientists are renewing the call for the
protection of areas with the strongest and most diverse populations and
most intact ecosystems (Williams and Miller 2006, Williams et al.,
2006, Gustafson et al., 2007). Unfortunately, I am not aware of any
example of where the stronghold approach has actually been applied for
salmon or any other freshwater fish, particularly on a large spatial
scale. Perhaps the best examples are the key watersheds, which are part
of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy of the Northwest Forest Plan
(NWFP) that guides management on Federal lands in western Oregon and
Washington and northern California, within the range of the northern
spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). Key watersheds had currently
good habitat, the best potential to respond to restoration, or were
municipal water supplies, and were distributed across the area of the
Northwest Forest Plan (Reeves et al., 2006). The purpose of the former
two types was to aid in the recovery of habitat of listed Pacific
salmon and other fish. Ten years after the implementation of the NWFP,
the proportion of key watersheds (70 percent) whose condition improved
was greater than that of non-key watersheds (50 percent). This was
achieved while allowing timber production and other activities to
occur.
Literature Cited
Andam, K.S., P.J. Ferraro, A. Pfaff, G. A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, and
J.A. Robalino. 2008. Measuring the effectiveness of protected areas
networks in reducing deforestation. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Science 105(42): 16089-16094.
Gaston, K.J., S.F. Jackson, L. Cantu-Salazar, and G. Cruz-Pinon.
2008. The ecological performance of protected areas. Annual Review of
Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 39: 93-113.
Gaston, K.J., K. Charman, S.F. Jackson and 12 co-authors. 2006.
The ecological effectiveness of protected areas: The United Kingdom.
Ecological Conservation 132: 76-87.
Gustafson, R.G., R.S. Waples, J.M. Myers, L.A. Weitkamp, G.J.
Bryant, O.W. Johnson, and J.J. Hard. 2007. Pacific salmon extinctions:
Quantifying lost and remaining diversity. Conservation Biology 21:
1009-1020.
Halpern, B.S. 2003. The impact of marine reserves: Do reserves work
and does reserve size matter? Ecological Applications 13: S117-S137.
Margules, C.R. and R.L. Pressey. 2000. Systematic conservation
planning. Nature 405: 243-253.
Meffe, G.K, C.R. Carroll, and contributors. 1999. Principles of
conservation biology. Second edition. Sinaeuer Associates, Sunderland,
MA.
Moyle, P.B. and R.M. Yoshiyama. 1994. Protection of aquatic
biodiversity in California: five-tiered approach. Fisheries 19920; 6-
19.
Nichols, J.D., F.A. Johnson, and B.K. Williams. 1995. Managing
North American waterfowl: The face of uncertainty. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 26: 177-199.
Reeves, G.H., J.E. Williams, K.M. Burnett, and K. Gallo. 2006. The
aquatic conservation strategy of the Northwest Forest Plan.
Conservation Biology 20: 319-329.
Williams, J.E. and R.R. Miller 2006. Conservation status of the
North American fish fauna in fresh water. Journal of Fish Biology
37(sA): 79-85.
Williams, R.N, J.A. Stanford, J.A. Lichatowich, and 7 co-authors.
2006. Return to the river: Strategies for salmon restoration in the
Columbia River basin. In R.N. Williams, editor. Return to the River:
Restoring salmon to the Columbia River. Pages 629-666.
Williams, J.E., J.E. Johnson, D.A. Hendrickson and 5 co-authors.
1989. Fishes of North America: endangered, threatened, and of special
concern. Fisheries 14(6): 2-21.
Question 3b. If the concept of a ``stronghold'' is based largely on
where the species has a relatively large population and intact habitat
(i.e., mostly based on ecological criteria), how are human economic and
social needs taken into account when selecting ``stronghold'' sites?
Answer. The identification of salmon stronghold sites is based
entirely on biological criteria, which includes abundance and
productivity, ``wildness'' (influence of hatchery-born fish), and
diversity of wild Pacific salmon and steelhead populations. Reliance on
biological criteria in the determination of stronghold boundaries
ensures that the effort to conserve strong populations is built on a
foundation of solid science that accurately reflects population health
and viability. This science-driven approach is essential if we are to
accurately identify strongholds and carry out the intent of the Pacific
Salmon Stronghold Conservation Act.
While a portfolio of watersheds is conferred stronghold status
based on science, economic and social needs will be taken into account
when decisions are made concerning where funds provided under this Act
are invested. The Stronghold Partnership's Charter states that the
Salmon Stronghold Partnership Board will consider the extent to which a
project will ``protect, improve, or promote local economic
opportunities associated with healthy salmon stronghold habitats and/or
populations, including responsible and sustainable resource use related
to fishing and recreation'' when the Board determines annual priorities
for funding. NASSP Charter, Section 5.2.5. By evaluating the potential
of a project to deliver economic benefits to stronghold communities,
the Board will consider not only the health of wild salmon populations,
but also the communities and economies that they help sustain.
The Board's intent to consider economic and social needs in its
determination of funding priorities can also be illustrated through the
``Rudio Creek'' project, which the Partnership helped fund in 2008.
Undertaken through a broad partnership, the Rudio Creek project
supported a rancher's efforts in the John Day basin to increase the
efficiency of his irrigation practices while promoting the health of
strong salmon and steelhead populations. The major objectives of the
project were to keep water in a critical spawning and rearing
tributary, Rudio Creek, while supporting the rancher's needs for
improved and more dependable irrigation infrastructure. Recently
completed, the project was hailed as a great success by the landowner
and the range of state, Federal, and private partners involved. All of
these parties applauded the project as a win-win in its capacity to
conserve local natural resources, while promoting the economic health
of a vital local ranching industry. Integrating all three components--
environmental, economic, and social needs of the communities that lie
within strongholds--into the development of a project supports what is
known as ``the triple bottom line,'' which is widely recognized as
critical to building lasting partnerships and implementing broadly
supported projects in rural regions.