The story of salmon recovery in Washington state is a mixture of
good and bad news, according to the latest “State of the Salmon” report
issued by the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office.
It’s the usual story of congratulations for 20 years of salmon
restoration and protection, along with a sobering reminder about
how the growing human population in our region has systematically
dismantled natural functions for nearly 150 years.
“We must all do our part to protect our state’s wild salmon,”
Gov. Jay Inslee said in a news
release. “As we face a changing climate, growing population and
other challenges, now is the time to double down on our efforts to
restore salmon to levels that sustain them, our fishing industry
and the communities that rely on them. Salmon are crucial to our
future and to the survival of beloved orca whales.”
The report reminds us that salmon are important to the culture
of our region and to the ecosystem, which includes our cherished
killer whales. It is, however, frustrating for everyone to see so
little progress in the number of salmon returning to the streams,
as reflected in this summary found in the report:
Salmon have a tough life. Not only must they escape predators
and find enough food to eat — as do all wild animals — but they
must also make the physiologically taxing transition from
freshwater to saltwater and then back again to start a new
generation.
In a four-part series being published in the Encyclopedia of
Puget Sound, I explain some of the latest research findings about
how chinook, coho and steelhead are struggling to survive in the
waters of Puget Sound.
The first part is called “Opening the black box:
What’s killing Puget Sound’s salmon and steelhead?” It
describes the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, a major research
effort involving more than 200 scientists in the U.S. and Canada.
The effort is coordinated by Long Live the Kings in the U.S. and by
the Pacific Salmon Foundation in Canada.
The second part, titled “Size means survival for
salmon,” takes a look at salmon and steelhead’s place in the
food web from the “bottom up,” as they say. Specifically, what are
the fish eating and what is limiting their access to a healthy food
supply?
Still to come are discussions about predation (“top down”) in
Part 3, and other factors that affect survival, such as disease and
chemical exposure, in Part 4.
Our goal for this project has been to describe the important
research findings in careful detail without getting lost in complex
scientific analysis. I also describe, at the end of Part 1, some
new findings regarding potential competition among salmon for food
in the Pacific Ocean.
Nineteen years ago this month, then-Governor Gary Locke made a
bold declaration about salmon that would echo through time:
“Extinction is not an option.”
Juvenile chinook salmon depend
on high-quality habitat for their survival.
Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It was a call to action that would lead to major protection and
restoration efforts throughout Puget Sound. Still, today, chinook
salmon have not experienced a population rebound, as many people
had hoped. The failure to thrive has been a disappointment to many,
yet we are often reminded that it took 150 years to push salmon to
the brink of extinction and it will not be easy to ensure their
future.
Last week, concerns about the survival of chinook salmon
prompted a coalition of Puget Sound tribes to propose a series of
“bold actions,” as I reported in the
Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, later reprinted in the
Kitsap Sun.
“The way we are managing lands is not working,” stated salmon
expert Dave Herrera, speaking for the tribes. “It may be working
for people, but it is not working for fish.”
The bold actions, spelled out in a
three-page proposal (PDF 380 kb), include greater controls on
the use of land and water, among other things. I won’t describe the
details, which you can read in the memo. The ideas were prompted by
a new Chinook Salmon Implementation Strategy, designed to
accelerate an increase in the Puget Sound chinook population.
The tribes complained that the proposed strategy, as drafted,
mostly mimicked the 10-year-old
Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan. That plan has made limited
progress in restoring wild salmon runs, despite millions of dollars
spent to protect and restore habitat while limiting fishing and
controlling hatchery production.
In his
speech of June 1998, Gov. Locke worried about the risk of
extinction for these migratory fish, which are an economic asset as
well as a celebrated symbol of the Northwest.
Former Gov. Gary
Locke
“In several Puget Sound watersheds, our wild salmon have less
than a decade to live, unless we act now,” Locke said in 1998. “And
in many more rivers and streams, if the status quo continues, our
wild salmon will be gone before my daughter Emily graduates from
high school. So we just don’t have any time to waste. For better or
for worse, we are about to make history.”
Locke’s speech was indeed historic, as he launched an
unprecedented endeavor to rebuild salmon runs at great financial
cost. The governor seemed to understand the challenge, as I noted
at the time in my coverage of the speech before more than 100
county officials in Tacoma:
“Locke appears to be glancing over his shoulder, ready to duck
for cover, as he talks about the financial and political
commitments required to keep salmon from disappearing in various
parts of the state,” I wrote.
“We need to wake up every morning ready to challenge the status
quo,” Locke said, adding that basic changes are needed in the way
businesses and average citizens use their land and water
resources.
“There is a risk,” Locke said, “in just delivering that message,
let alone acting on it.”
The following year, the Washington Legislature created the
Salmon Recovery Funding Board to prioritize state and federal
funding for salmon recovery. And the next governor, Chris Gregoire,
ushered in an even greater ecosystem-recovery effort under guidance
of the Puget Sound Partnership.
Wetlands are critical habitat
for salmon.
Photo: Eric Grossman, U.S. Geological
Survey
Today, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened without
these salmon- and ecosystem-recovery efforts. Would the salmon be
gone, as Locke predicted? It’s hard to say, but researchers have
learned a great deal about what salmon need to survive, and the
money is being better targeted toward those needs. As a result, it
is understandable why some people are both disappointed with the
past and hopeful for the future.
One of the great challenges facing public officials today is to
find ways for local governments to truly live up to the standard of
“no net loss” of ecological function — a standard required by the
state’s Growth Management Act. When new developments affect
“critical areas” — such as fish and wildlife habitat — they must
include vegetated buffers and stormwater controls to minimize the
damage. Then they must enhance degraded habitat — either on-site or
off-site — to make up for losses that cannot be avoided.
I used to believe that this goal was unachievable, and I have
questioned many state experts about it. How can any developer
construct a commercial or residential development and walk away
with no net loss of habitat function? The answer is to include a
serious restoration component.
One example is the Hood Canal Coordinating Council’s In-Lieu Fee
Program, which I wrote about last month in
Water Ways (May 19). This program was started on a large scale
to mitigate for construction at the Navy’s submarine base at
Bangor, but it also works on a small scale, as I mentioned in that
blog post.
When an older site is redeveloped, there may be no ecological
loss, since the damage was done in the past. But when a developer
builds in a new location, the local government is charged with
measuring the loss, coming to terms for mitigation and making sure
the mitigation is carried out. The concept of “no net loss” works
only if the mitigation is permanent — another major challenge in
many areas.
If no net loss can be achieved while major restoration efforts
continue, we will see a net increase in salmon habitat in the Puget
Sound region, and that will be a cause of celebration. One success
has been in the program Floodplains by Design,
which improves critical off-channel habitat for salmon while
reducing flooding problems for nearby residents. Checkout the story
I wrote for the Encyclopedia
of Puget Sound and the blog post in
Water Ways, April 15.
Washington State Department of Commerce, which oversees the
Growth Management Act, is in the process of updating its
Critical Areas Assistance Handbook (PDF 6 mb), which serves as
guidance for local regulations. New information about how to
protect habitat for all life stages of salmon will be a key
addition to a revised version, soon to be released for public
review. See the
CAO page on the Department of Commerce website.
Local governments in every part of the state must become part of
the discussion if we expect them to carry out the mandate of
protecting habitat for salmon. Money for planning and regulatory
enforcement must be worked out. One idea I’ve heard is a regional
approach that involves a group of compliance officials working to
enforce the rules for multiple counties and cities.
No doubt the salmon-recovery effort must be improved. Challenges
remain for issues including fishing, predation by marine mammals
and climate change. But if the protection and restoration of salmon
habitat can outpace unmitigated damage from development, we may be
justified in believing that extinction is not an option.
Total returns of coho salmon to Puget Sound this year are
expected to be significantly higher than last year, and that should
help smooth negotiations between state and tribal salmon managers
working to establish this year’s fishing seasons.
But critically low runs of coho to the Skagit and Stillaguamish
rivers in Northern Puget Sound could limit fishing opportunities in
other areas, as managers try to reduce fishing pressure on coho
making their way back to those rivers.
In any case, both state and tribal managers say they are
confident that they can avoid the kind of deadlock over coho they
found themselves in last year, when a failure to reach agreement
delayed sport fishing seasons and threatened to cancel them
altogether. See reporter Tristan Baurick’s stories in the Kitsap
Sun,
May 4 and
May 28.
“We’re in a much better situation than we were last year,” Ryan
Lothrop, a salmon manager with Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife, told a large gathering of sport and commercial fishermen
yesterday in Olympia.
Puget Sound Partnership continues to struggle in its efforts to
pull everyone together in a unified cause of protecting and
restoring Puget Sound.
This week, the Puget Sound Leadership Council, which oversees
the partnership, adopted the latest Puget Sound Action
Agenda, which spells out the overall strategies as well as the
specific research, education and restoration projects to save Puget
Sound.
Some 363 projects, known as
near-term actions, are included in the latest Puget Sound Action
Agenda. They line up with three strategic priorities. // PSP
graphic
The goal of restoring Puget Sound to health by 2020 — a date
established by former Gov. Chris Gregoire — was never actually
realistic, but nobody has ever wanted to change the date. The
result has been an acknowledgement that restoration work will go on
long after 2020, even though restoration targets remain in place
for that date just four years away.
A letter to be signed by all members of the Leadership Council
begins to acknowledge the need for a new date.
“As the scope and depth of our undertaking expands along with
our understanding, federal and state funding is on the decline,”
the letter states. “We’re increasingly forced into a position where
we’re not only competing amongst ourselves for a pool of funding
wholly insufficient to accomplish what needs doing, but we are also
feeling the impacts of cuts to programs supporting other societal
priorities as well. If we continue at our historic pace of
recovery, which is significantly underfunded, we cannot expect to
achieve our 2020 recovery targets.”
The cost for the near-term
actions in the Action Agenda total nearly $250 million, with most
going for habitat restoration.
PSP graphic
This is not necessarily an appeal for money to support the Puget
Sound Partnership, although funds for the program have been
slipping. But the partnership has always been a coordinator of
projects by local, state and federal agencies, nonprofit groups and
research institutions — where the on-the-ground work is done. That
much larger pot of money for Puget Sound efforts also is
declining.
“These are threats that compel us to action, fueled by our
devotion to place,” the letter continues. “We at the Puget Sound
Partnership, along with our local, tribal and regional partners,
have a vision of a resilient estuary that can help moderate the
increasing pressures of a changing world.
“How we aim to accomplish our vision is found in this updated
Action Agenda. For the next two years, this is the focused,
measurable and scientifically grounded roadmap forming the core of
the region’s work between now and 2020 and beyond.”
The newly approved Action Agenda is the outcome of a greater
effort to reach out to local governments and organizations involved
in the restoration of Puget Sound. Priorities for restoration
projects were developed at the local level with an emphasis on
meeting the priorities and strategies developed in previous Action
Agendas.
Who will do the projects? Most
are proposed by *local groups, including cities, counties, special
purpose districts, local integrating organizations and lead
entities. // PSP graphic
The latest document is divided into two sections to separate
overall planning from the work involved parties would like to
accomplish over the next two years. The two parts are called the
“Comprehensive Plan” and the “Implementation Plan.”
As determined several years ago, upcoming efforts known as
“near-term actions” are focused on three strategic initiatives:
Stormwater: Prevent pollution from urban
stormwater runoff, which causes serious problems for marine life
and humans.
Habitat: Protect and restore habitat needed
for species to survive and thrive.
Shellfish: Protect and recover shellfish beds,
including areas harvested by commercial growers and recreational
users.
Actions are focused on 29 specific strategies and 109
substrategies that support these ideas. Projects, which may be
viewed in a list at the front of the “Implementation Plan,” are
aligned with the substrategies.
“This leaner, scientifically grounded strategic recovery plan is
a call to action,” the letter from the Leadership Council states.
“We know that our restoration efforts are failing to compensate for
the thousands of cuts we continue to inflict on the landscape as
our population grows and habitat gives way to more humans.
“We know that salmon, steelhead and orcas — the magnificent
beings that in many ways define this corner of the world — are
struggling to persist as we alter the land and waters to which
they’re adapted,” the letter concludes. “And we know that warming
temperatures and acidifying seawater are moving us toward a future
that we don’t fully understand and are not entirely prepared for.
Hard decisions are ahead, and we’re past the point where additional
delay is acceptable.”
