The Snake River sockeye is the oh-so common story of endangered species.
Snake River sockeye are unique. These fish swim farther (more than 1,800 miles from their spawning grounds to the ocean and back) and higher (almost 7,000 feet of elevation gain) than any other salmon on the planet. A century ago, as many as 40,000 sockeye made it back to this picturesque alpine lake, turning its waters red. But in 2007, just four fish survived this journey, and in 2006, only three crimson sockeye made it home to Redfish Lake.
While it's certainly important to take care of endangered species. We also need to focus on the effects of declines in salmon populations that aren't near extinction. As this breathtaking picture shows, there are many species, up and down the food chain, that depend on good salmon runs for survival. The salmon populations play a large role in the Pacific economy as well.
I apologize in advance for this being a long diary.
Save Our Wild Salmon has a great rundown on the Snake River sockeye.
But sockeye are both surprising and resilient. With help from a federal court and from salmon advocates fighting against the federal government, improvements were put in place that scientists say are helping these fish make their way back home this year. All indications are that more Snake River sockeye will return to Idaho this year than we’ve seen in a generation. ...
We shouldn’t confuse one good year with the true recovery of a species that has been on the federal Endangered Species List since 1991. The truth is that Snake River sockeye are still a long way from recovery and the short-term protections that salmon advocates fought for and won in federal court — the very actions that have saved these fish from disappearing — have already been eliminated by the federal government.
The federal government’s recently released salmon plan (also called a Biological Opinion, or "BiOp") rolls back — and even eliminates — many of the measures that have resulted in this year’s higher returns...
The Orcas are Dying
The Disappearance of Puget Sound Orcas
OrcaSeven Southern Resident orcas — also known as killer whales — from the endangered population in Washington’s Puget Sound disappeared in the summer of 2008 and are now feared dead. This could be the most significant die-off for Puget Sound orcas in nearly a decade.
The Orca Network has some less than exciting news about the Pacific Ocean Orca Whale populations.
"Restoring Columbia River Chinook salmon is the single most important thing we can do to ensure the future survival of the Southern Resident Community of killer whales," said Dr. Rich Osborne, research associate with The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, WA. "We cannot hope to restore the killer whale population without also restoring the salmon upon which these whales have depended for thousands of years. Their futures are intricately linked."...
Causes?
Dams
"The best science tells us," Garrett added, "that to revitalize Snake River salmon, we'll need to bypass the dams that block fish passage, and that dam removal, combined with a variety of economic investments, will bring benefits to upriver communities in eastern Washington as well as to Puget Sound."
The Columbia and Snake River Basin was once the world’s most productive salmon watershed, with tens of millions of fish returning annually. Today, returns hover near 1% of those historic levels. More than 200 large dams on the basin’s rivers are the major cause of this crisis, with 13 populations now listed under the Endangered Species Act, and four directly impacted by the lower Snake River dams. Yet, the Columbia-Snake Basin still holds more acres of pristine salmon habitat than any watershed in the lower 48 states.
Chemicals? Over 770,000 pounds of chemicals used by Sierra Pacific Industries since 1995
Compiled between 1995 and 2006, the data reveals that California's largest private landowner has used over 770,000 pounds of toxic chemicals to manage their tree plantations across Northern California. The questionable safety of these chemicals, and the sheer quantity used in the watersheds of California's rivers and streams, raises questions about whether SPI is using herbicides as a crutch, when they should be used as a last resort...It is also suspected to have caused male fish in the Potomic River to grow eggs.
Sea Lions Are Scapegoated
On Jan 2nd, the Sacramento Bee discussed the notion that the sea lions are to blame for the salmon shortages. Sea lions along Sacramento River blamed for salmon decline
Ask a Sacramento angler for reasons why Central Valley salmon populations have crashed over the past two years, and this is likely to be high on the list:
"Dozens of sea lions that live between Rio Vista and Verona year-round," said Sacramento fisherman Terry Horst. "That's a major problem because they eat tons of fish a day."...
Now Mark Dendy, a professor of biology and natural resources at American River College, has produced a survey of the Delta sea lion population. And, yes, there are resident sea lions, though not nearly as many as fishermen think.
According to Dendy, five individual California sea lions live most of the year in the Sacramento River. They account for most sightings between Isleton and Colusa...
"I don't think it's the cause of the collapse of the salmon fishery by any means," said Dendy, 54, who lives in Elk Grove. However, he said, "This has become a problem in the Sacramento Delta."
Interestingly, this problem, that may aid Salmon in receiving federal protection, came from protection.
Since 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) has made killing and harassing sea lions a crime. The law followed steep population declines caused by hunting for fur and blubber, and it was a success.
The population of California sea lions is not endangered and now could be as high as 300,000, with an annual growth rate near 6 percent, according to 2007 federal data...
State officials in Oregon, Washington and Idaho obtained federal approval in March to kill up to 85 sea lions. The Humane Society of the United States recently lost a federal lawsuit to prevent the killing, but it plans to appeal.
This seems a little harsh. The Sea lions are a problem, but it's not their fault. The Salmon populations decline is having a major impact on this whole ecosystem. For those of you keeping track the amendment in 1995 to the MMPA is what allows Oregon, Washington and Idaho to kill sea lions.
"All it's going to take," Dendy said, "is this continued uncontrolled growth of the population of sea lions and the destruction of habitats for fisheries, and you're going to see a huge problem like they have up on the Columbia River, and there won't be any more salmon. I believe the potential could be explosive."...
"I don't really begrudge the sea lions eating the fish,"
said J.D. Richey, a Sacramento fishing guide who shot his own video, posted on YouTube, of a sea lion eating a salmon at the Sacramento-American confluence. "I mean, they've been doing that longer than we have. But now that every salmon is precious, I think the sea lion factor gets a little bit bigger."
That's too funny! I don't begrudge the sea lion! But there are some in the comment section of this article that do...!
Anyone think that sea lions were kept in check by other wild life and the people in America before the invaders got here? Now those cute things have gone wild eating everything in sight? Not only do you have illegals crossing the border you have them coming in on ships as well into the delta. That has added to the damage. Then add in changing the flow of the water to the Cities and Farming causing build-up on the bottom of the rivers.
and (a reason that makes some sense)
It's painless, it's effective and it's good for the sport fishery. Once sea lions learn where to catch sport fish such as King Salmon, they never forget. Culling pests is good wildlife husbandry for sparse resources such as salmon. The idea of killing sealions may seem harsh, but it works and helps to restore depleted sport fish resources.
Potential Solutions?
Bay Delta Conservation Planning (BDCP)
The Bay Delta Conservation Plan is a unique undertaking initiated and funded by public water agencies with the active participation of environmental organizations, the state and federal fishery agencies, and other state and local organizations - all of whom are deeply invested in the long-term sustainability of the Delta. The goal of the BDCP participants is to formulate a plan that could ultimately be approved by the fish agencies as a habitat conservation plan under federal law and a natural community conservation plan under state law.
Delta Vision The Peripheral Canal
The Governator's Plan Arnold was recently awarded "Outdoor Villain of The Year" by Field and Stream Ahnold continues to push his peripheral canal during the budget crisis just three weeks ago.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top water policy advisers have recommended construction begin in 2011 on an aqueduct to carry water around the Delta, a version of the Peripheral Canal that California voters rejected in 1982...
The recommendations generally endorsed by the committee included giving special status to the Delta as a unique place deserving protection for the people who live, work and play there; restoring the ecosystem; promoting water conservation and efficiency; building new water storage and conveyance; and improving preparedness for floods and earthquakes.
The most controversial of those recommendations involve whether to build dams and whether to build a canal around the Delta. Such a canal could improve water supplies from the East Bay to Southern California and prevent fish from being sucked into pump stations. But it also could reduce the flow of water into the Delta, which could cause the concentration of pollutants to rise.
Criticism of Delta Vision and BDCP
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, campaign director of Restore the Delta is a critic of this canal scheme.
"Yesterday, the Governor released a statement with his advisors that the state needs a new water strategy with a new canal," said Parrilla. "With a $45 billion deficit looming over the state - which the Governor has yet to solve - it is unbelievable that the Governor and his advisors could be out touting a $12 to $24 billion water plan in order to benefit irrigating selenium loaded agricultural lands that do not drain properly."
She blasted the canal, touted by the Delta Vision panel and Schwarzenegger's staff as the "solution" to restoring the imperiled California Delta, for being a thinly veiled attempt by corporate agribusiness in the southern San Joaquin Valley to take northern California water.
more criticism from Truthout
Many in the fishing and environmental community feel that the Bay Delta Conservation Planning effort, along with the Governor's Delta Vision process, are politically manipulated processes to produce a predetermined goal - the building of a peripheral canal and two new Central Valley reservoirs. Fish advocates fear that, in spite of claims otherwise by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the appointed members of the panels that guide these processes, the infrastructure will be created to export more water from the estuary, when less exports are needed to restore the estuary.
Fish Farms:
There is much evidence that fish farms use more wild fish than they save. See bobzimway's rec list diary Food Feature: Fish Farm Fallacies. The basic summary of his work is that ocean fish are on the decline. Farmed fish are fed with wild fish product that is harnessed by trawling.
Farmed Salmon Don't Do Wild Well
The problem is that reintroducing fish species may be more difficult than previously imagined. CalTrout’s report follows a wave of new studies on fish navigation—while many fish return to their home streams to spawn, hatchery fish often don’t fare as well. New findings suggest this may be due to magnetic imprints the fish use to navigate through the water.
"We propose that salmon and sea turtles form imprints of the unique magnetic signature in their area, and this is how they find their way back to their home," says Kenneth Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "We found that some fish and turtles have the biologic equivalent of a GPS system that helps them with navigation."
While past research has shown that fish can read magnetic signatures like humans read a compass, Lohmann recently demonstrated that a stream’s magnetic field remains consistent enough over time to serve as a reliable source of information for the fish. The findings were published this month in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
This entire article in the PNAS (yes I know, terrible acronym) is worth reading. The abstract does relay their hypothesis.
Here we propose that salmon and sea turtles imprint on the magnetic field of their natal areas and later use this information to direct natal homing. This novel hypothesis provides the first plausible explanation for how marine animals can navigate to natal areas from distant oceanic locations... one implication, however, is that unusually rapid changes in the Earth's field, as occasionally occur during geomagnetic polarity reversals, may affect ecological processes by disrupting natal homing, resulting in widespread colonization events and changes in population structure.
Do Salmon smell their way home?
For salmon, olfactory cues are of primary importance in guiding the fish to their spawning grounds once they arrive in the vicinity of their target rivers and begin to migrate upstream (16–20). That salmon imprint on the chemical cues of their natal rivers and streams has been demonstrated through experiments in which young fish were exposed to specific chemicals during a critical period of development and subsequently released to undergo their normal migrations; these artificially imprinted salmon returned as adults to breed in streams that had been scented with the same chemical
New life for Endangered fish- Jan 2, 2009. The Chronicle discussed an experiment to breed a farmed fish hybrid that would do better at repopulating in the wild.
The fish that were released are a mix of 3-year-old coho from the Russian River and Olema Creek in Marin County. The combination may not seem like a big deal to most people, but the two populations are genetically unique, much like different races of people on different continents.
If they mate, as expected, the coho would repopulate the creek with an essentially new mixed race of salmon, a species of coho free from the debilitating problems that scientists are increasingly associating with hatchery inbreeding.
Bob Coey, a senior biologist for the Department of Fish and Game, said the effort is part of a groundbreaking coho recovery effort that started in 2001 when the fish population in the Russian River hit bottom.
There were once an estimated 20,000 salmon fighting their way up the Russian River, but logging, gravel mining, overgrazing, vegetation removal, and huge amounts of sedimentation associated with residential and commercial development destroyed the fish habitat.
It is not an isolated problem. Coho, which are more sensitive to water temperature and quality than other salmonid species, have been dying off all along the West Coast. They were given additional protections in 2005 under the Endangered Species Act but things have gone downhill from there. Fisheries analysts reported a 73 percent decline in the already dismal number of coho returning to the creeks and tributaries along the coast of California during the 2007-08 spawning season.
Coho now make up about 1 percent of their historic population. The Russian River may be hit worst of all the big rivers. The coho population in the river dropped to about 100 in the late 1990s. Coey said fewer than 10 fish returned to spawn in 2001.
Removing the Dams
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Independent Scientific Advisory Board concluded in 2006 that the Snake River sockeye captive breeding program — which is essentially the equivalent of life support for these fish — was unlikely to ever result in the recovery of the species unless other downstream impacts were addressed. Namely, scientists tell us that the best — and perhaps only — way to recover the endangered Snake River salmon runs is to remove four outdated and costly dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington.
What this year’s strong returns tell us is that there’s still hope for the world’s most endangered salmon. That is, when rivers are allowed to run just a bit more like rivers, salmon are resilient enough to surprise us with their ability to rebound...
Removing the four dams on the lower Snake River will clear the way for a cost-effective, biologically sound plan to recover these iconic fish...
Congress and the new administration can introduce solutions legislation to remove these four dams, protect communities, and replace their power with clean energy.
The New Federal BiOp Plan
The most recent BiOp plan calls for protection of the Delta Smelt. And this judge's ruling (which forced the new BiOp) could be a blueprint for how Salmon get their protections.
In his ruling in May 2007, Judge Oliver W. Wanger of the US District Court in Fresno ordered the agency to rewrite its 2005 opinion, saying "The Delta smelt is undisputedly in jeopardy as to its survival and recovery. The 2005 BiOp's 'no jeopardy' finding is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law."... Sherwood noted that excessive pumping and other operations of the state and federal water projects have also driven California chinook salmon and steelhead to the brink of extinction, resulting in the collapse of the multimillion-dollar salmon fishery in northern California and Oregon. Commercial and recreational salmon fishing in ocean waters off California and Oregon was closed for the first time this year, due to the collapse of Central Valley salmon.
And as a NorCal guy and a fan of protecting our environment the results of this new BiOp brought a smile to my face. LA Times- U.S. tightens the tap on water from Northern California
In a typical year, the smelt protections will slash California State Water Project deliveries 20% to 30% -- essentially maintaining the level of cuts ordered this year by a federal judge. Under the worst conditions, that figure could climb to 50%.
The Great Salmon-Fishermen Bailout
Disaster Relief Offered to Salmon-Related Businesses in Northern California
The California Salmon Council is conducting outreach efforts to identify eligible businesses that have been harmed by the 2008 salmon season closure due to the collapse of the Sacramento River Fall Chinook salmon population. This year’s salmon season closure has negatively impacted commercial fishermen, commercial charter boat operators, Sacramento in-river guides, fish processors and other salmon-related businesses.
In response to the unprecedented coastwide closure, Congress appropriated $170 million for disaster relief to be disbursed to the fishing communities in California, Oregon and Washington...
Eligible businesses must demonstrate that salmon is at least 30 percent of their normal business. They must also provide documentation indicating their loss up to a maximum of $225,000.
A sinking feeling for West Coast fishermen Poor dungeness crab demand is adding to the woes of west coast fishermen. If they weren't recently bailed out even more fishermen would be walking away. This declining industry to some has no future.
More Help Coming?
Mike Thompson is working to secure funding from Obama's new infrastructure plan for the Napa River Flood Project which will adopt living river principles.
Major objectives of the living river design include reconnecting the river to its historic flood plain, maintaining the natural slope and width of the river, allowing the river to meander as much as possible, retaining natural channel features like mud flats, shallows and sandbars, and supporting a continuous fish and riparian corridor along the river.
I would love to see the Klamath River Project fastracked as part of Obama's new infrastructure plan. It certainly makes sense given that the owner of the four dams in question is Warren Buffett's PacifiCorp. There is a tentative agreement on the table, with a target removal date of 2020. I think we can do better :) For much more information on these dams and the removal process check out this diary by Urtica dioica gracilis which concludes with links to all the great work by bobzimway especially this one which has an update on what Pacificorp wants to tear down these dams (spoiler, they want a lot).
Salmon News Roundup
Salmon Recovery panel distributes $19.8 million
Outdoors Notebook | Outlook good for summer salmon returns
Wild Fish Deserve Our Protection
There may be better days ahead for salmon runs
Outdoors briefs: Board debates Columbia chinook rules
Wild Salmon Dot Org Digg
UPDATE: Donate/Contact information
If you would like To Donate to Save Wild Salmon
and/or
contact Obama about Salmon