The Caddis Fly: Oregon Fly Fishing Blog

A Register-Guard editorial last week predicts the the recent decision in the Sandy River hatchery lawsuit will make way for changes on the McKenzie River that will protect endangered Upper-Willamette Spring Chinook Salmon.

Haggerty’s ruling is handwriting on the wall for the McKenzie hatchery. The alarming downward trend in the river’s wild chinook population, along with the high rates of introgression, made it appear from the start that the plaintiffs had a strong case. Haggerty’s decision reinforces the message that a fundamental changes in the McKenzie hatchery’s operations are on the way.

Read more on the Sandy River Lawsuit here.

ODFW is currently seeking public comment on the Coastal Multi-Species Conservation and Management Plan. The commentary below was sent to us by Joe Ferguson of the Steamboaters on the North Umpqua.

The draft Coastal salmonid Management Plan (CMP) is available for comment until February 10. The CMP was developed by ODFW staff with limited public input, and is primarily a hatchery and harvest plan that is designed to continue most of the current management practices. It is scientifically suspect, and represents a high risk for wild fish on much of the Oregon coast. A more detailed article will appear in the Osprey soon.

A series of public meetings on the coast begins in late January.To review the CMP, the 25-page Executive Summary, the schedule of public meetings, and the IMST report discussed below, go to: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/fish/CRP/coastal_multispecies.asp

Comments can be emailed to ODFW at: ODFW.CoastalPlan@state.or.us

I will acknowledge here that ODFW is under considerable pressure from elected officials and a large segment of the sport fishing population to provide fish for consumption and not to focus on protection and recovery of wild fish. I also recognize that hatcheries are absolutely necessary; we’re not going to return to conditions that existed 200 years ago.

However at some point Oregon must move towards protection/recovery of wild fish, and the draft CMP fails in this regard. The draft CMP was reviewed by two separate scientific groups, with parallel findings: The Independent Multi-Disciplinary Scientific Team (IMST), authorized by the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds (15 pages, available on ODFW’s CMP website); and a separate Panel assembled by Steamboaters and the Native Fish Society consisting of Steven Cramer & Associates, Chuck Huntington, and Dr. Chris Frissel (30 pages, key points are itemized on pp 3 & 4). NFS will post on their website shortly, or email me at J-FergusonPLS@comcast.net for a copy.

From the IMST report (p 1): “However, we have major concerns that the CMP places excess faith in hatcheries, makes multiple assumptions with minimal data if any, (and) limits discussion to the pressures that ODFW can regulate thereby omitting major land use and socioeconomic pressures….”

Key issues with the plan:

1) There is no comprehensive plan designed to benefit wild fish.

2) Hatchery impacts are not considered a primary or secondary limiting factor for wild fish populations. Hatchery planting increases from 6 million to 6.3 million.

3) Impacts to wild fish habitat from climate change (both freshwater and ocean), O&C legislation, and human population increases on the coast are ignored.

4) There is no plan for habitat protection or improvement. Impacts to habitat are not defined; habitat improvement is left for others to accomplish with little guidance.

5) The monitoring plan lacks both specificity and the necessary funding.

6) Chum salmon and spring chinook are at risk, and anadromous cutthroat populations are depressed. The CMP devotes minimal effort to their recovery.

I urge you to read these scientific reviews and contact the department and the Commission with your concerns.

From the Native Fish Society: “It is undisputed that hatchery operations can pose a host of risks to wild fish…it is clear that the Sandy River Basin is of particular importance to the recovery of the four [Endangered Species Act] listed species and is an ecologically critical area” wrote federal Circuit Court Judge Ancer Haggerty in his ruling yesterday that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policies Act when it approved the State of Oregon’s management of the Sandy River Hatchery.

Native Fish Society, an Oregon City-based conservation group working to recover self sustaining populations of wild fish throughout the Northwest, along with Eugene-based McKenzie Fly Fishers, sued NMFS in a last ditch effort to prevent the extinction of Chinook, steelhead and coho in the Sandy River. The populations had declined to less than 1000 wild steelhead and coho and only 1300 wild spring Chinook. The State of Oregon had received NMFS’ blessing under the Endangered Species Act to continue to drown the river with over a million hatchery fish.

The judge found fault with NMFS because it “treats the success of the [hatchery] programs as a given, an issue called into doubt by ODFW’s miserable track record of containing stray rates.”

“The science is irrefutable. The law is irrefutable. And, Judge Haggerty affirmed this. It is the most significant decision benefiting wild fish in Oregon in over a decade,” said Mike Moody, Executive Director of Native Fish Society after hearing the ruling. “Hatchery fish cause significant ecological and reproductive problems for wild fish. There is no evidence that hatcheries have been effective in the recovery of wild populations. In fact, the evidence shows they foster a slow march toward hatchery induced extinction. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife cannot claim ignorance of this when some of the most significant studies were authored by past and current employees.” Moody added, “The actions brought by Native Fish Society focus solely on the hatchery on the Sandy River. Its objective is the recovery of native, wild fish on the Sandy River. Native
Fish Society is not trying to close down fishing of any kind, but rather to ensure recovery of wild fish.”

Bill Bakke, Director of Science and Conservation for Native Fish Society said, “As a grassroots advocacy organization, we see it as our responsibility to ensure that laws such as the Endangered Species Act are followed. We have spent the 17 years of this organization’s existence working with ODFW to restore wild fish runs to sustainable, harvestable levels in the Sandy River. Instead, our efforts were met with plummeting fish populations while ODFW and NMFS pumped out hatchery fish and papered over the problem. Someone had to step up and say we are not going to allow you to push these fish into extinction.”

The Native Fish Society and McKenzie Fly Fishers argued that NMFS should have analyzed a broad range of alternatives and prepared an Environmental Impact Statement under the National Environmental Policy Act. The groups also argued that the agency allowed too many hatchery fish to interbreed with the wild fish, and that weirs and acclimation ponds man made structures in the river that were supposed to prevent the interbreeding were not likely to succeed so NMFS was wrong to approve them under the Endangered Species Act. JudgeHaggerty agreed.

“Today is a great day to be a wild fish in the Sandy River” said Bakke.

“As anglers and as citizens, we take the long term view that the top priority of fishery managers should be to preserve and enhance our native fish populations so they remain available to future generations. The science is clear that this goal won’t be achieved using current hatchery practices. We are gratified that the court agreed that business as usual is not only unacceptable, but as we maintained, in this case violated the law,” said Arlen Thomason, Conservation Chair for the McKenzie Flyfishers.

Native Fish Society and McKenzie Flyfishers are represented in this case by Portland lawyer Dave Becker and Pete Frost of the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene.

NFS Fact Sheet
Native Fish Society launched the “Save Sandy Salmon” campaign in 2011 and asserts:
• Historically, runs of native fish in the Sandy River basin once ranged as high as 20,000 winter Steelhead, 10,000 spring Chinook, 15,000 Coho, and 10,000 fall Chinook.
• Today, the numbers of wild native fish in this system have declined precipitously. Wild winter steelhead average less than 970 spawners annually, wild spring Chinook now average less than 1,300, and wild Coho now average approximately 900. The runs of fish returning to the Sandy River basin are now dominated by artificially bred fish produced by the hatchery.
• Hatchery bred fish cause significant ecological and reproductive problems for wild fish. Hatchery fish occupy habitat and compete for food needed for wild fish to survive and to spawn, they attract predators and prey on smaller wild fish (both of the same species and of other species), transmit diseases, and compete for spawning grounds.
• Also, when hatchery fish interbreed with wild fish it reduces the genetic fitness of the wild fish for generations afterwards. Steelhead born of hatchery parents in the wild might produce only one eighth to one third of the offspring that two breeding wild fish would produce.
• Programs at the Sandy hatchery are not conservation programs, but rather are harvest programs used to 1) mitigate loss of fishing and harvest opportunities due to loss of habitat and migration blockage resulting from the Columbia Basin hydropower system, and 2) augment fishing and harvest opportunities on the Sandy River.
• The goal of the hatchery program is to produce artificially bred fish that will contribute to commercial and sport fisheries in the Columbia River Basin and Sandy River. In no instance has a salmon hatchery restored a depressed wild population to the point where it is self sustaining.

Great interview with salmon biologist Jim Lichatowich on OPB:

By relying more and more on hatcheries we’re creating a charade of sorts where the river that can’t support a salmon becomes a stage prop where fishermen and fish play out their respective roles, reenacting something, an important part of our past, that now is sort of a hollow empty memory of it.