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Executive Summary
Pacific salmon have disappeared from about 40% of their historical breeding
ranges in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California over the last century, and
many remaining populations are severely reduced. Most runs that appear plenti-
ful today are largely composed of fish produced in hatcheries. Recreational and
commercial fishing for several salmon species has been restricted or even prohib-
ited from the coastal waters of the region to the headwaters of many streams, and
tribal fishing has been much reduced. Petitions have been filed to list several
populations as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act; a
few have been listed, and more could be soon.
Salmon have great cultural, economic, recreational, and symbolic impor-
tance in the Pacific Northwest. As a result, their declines which have numerous
interacting causes have resulted in much concern. The often expensive efforts
to reverse the declines have been controversial and unsuccessful in many cases.
Faced with the possibility of dozens or perhaps even hundreds of listings of
Pacific salmon under the Endangered Species Act, and faced with controversies
over the effectiveness of proposed actions to slow, halt, or reverse the salmon
declines, Congress requested advice from the National Research Council (NRC).
In response, the NRC's Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology as-
sembled the expert Committee on Protection and Management of Pacific North-
west Anadromous Salmonids to review information concerning the seven species
of anadromous salmonids1 in the Pacific Northwest.
1This report deals with anadromous forms of the seven species of the genus Oncorhynchus. They
are chinook, chum, coho, pink, and sockeye salmon and the anadromous forms of rainbow and
cutthroat trout: steelhead and sea-run cutthroat. In this report, the general term salmon refers to all
seven species.
1
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
The committee was asked to "evaluate options for improving the prospects
for long-term sustainability of the stocks, and Eto] consider economic and social
implications of such changes" (statement of task; see Preface). It was asked to
perform the following tasks:
Assess the status of the salmon stocks.
Analyze the causes of declines.
· Analyze options for intervention.
The committee was asked to consider all stages of salmon life histories, including
the ocean phase, and to consider the appropriate roles of hatcheries. Congress did
not request advice on whether society should make the investments needed to halt
and reverse salmon declines. However, the committee's analysis of options for
intervention and their likely effectiveness should help to inform that policy deci-
sion.
STATUS OF SALMON POPULATIONS
The status of many specific salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest is
uncertain, and there are exceptions to most generalizations with regard to overall
status. Nevertheless, a general examination of the evidence of population de-
clines over broad areas is helpful for understanding the current status of species
with different life cycle characteristics and geographical distributions, and with
some caution, the following generalizations are justified:
· Pacific salmon have disappeared from about 40~ of their historical
breeding ranges in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California over the last
century, and many remaining populations are severely depressed in areas where
they were formerly abundant. If the areas in which salmon are threatened or
endangered are added to the areas where they are now extinct, the total area with
losses is two-thirds of their previous range in the four states. Although the
overall situation is not as serious in southwestern British Columbia, some popu-
lations there also are in a state of decline, and all populations have been com-
pletely cut off from access to the upper Columbia River in eastern British Colum-
bia. Even if the estimate of population losses of about 40% is only a rough
approximation, the status of naturally spawning salmon populations gives cause
. .
for pessimism.
· Coastal populations tend to be somewhat better off than populations in-
habiting interior drainages. Species with populations that occurred in inland
subbasins of large river systems (such as the Sacramento, Klamath, and Colum-
bia rivers)-spring/summer chinook, summer steelhead, and sockeye are ex-
tinct over a greater percentage of their range than species limited primarily to
coastal rivers. Salmon whose populations are stable over the greatest percentages
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
of their range (fall chinook, chum, pink, and winter steelhead) chiefly inhabit
rivers and streams in coastal zones.
· Populations near the southern boundary of species' ranges tend to be at
greater risk than northern populations. In general, proportionately fewer healthy
populations exist in California and Oregon than in Washington and British Co-
lumbia. The reasons for this trend are complex and appear to be related to both
. . .
Ocean conditions and human activities.
· Species with extendedfreshwater rearing (up to a year' such as spring/
summer chinook, coho, sockeye, sea-run cutthroat, and steelhead are generally
extinct, endangered, or threatened over a greater percentage of their ranges than
species with abbreviated freshwater residence, such as fall chinook, chum, and
pink salmon.
· In many cases, populations that are not smaller than they used to be are
now composed largely or entirely of hatchery fish. An overall estimate of the
proportion of hatchery fish is not available, but several regional estimates make
clear that many runs depend mainly or entirely on hatcheries.
Chapter 4 discusses some of the difficulties in evaluating the status of wild
populations and how these difficulties have been addressed in recently published
status reports. Regional trends are summarized, and the overall conditions of the
species are presented.
THE SALMON PROBLEM
The salmon problem is the decline of wild salmon runs and the reductions in
abundance of salmon even after massive investments in hatcheries. The de-
clines largely a result of human impacts on the environment caused by activi-
ties such as forestry, agriculture, grazing, industrial activities, urbanization, dams,
hatcheries, and fishing are widespread, although not universal. They have a
variety of causes, and they are exacerbated by the unusual life cycle of Pacific
anadromous salmon, which spawn in freshwater, migrate to sea to grow and
mature, and return to their natal streams to reproduce. Salmon thus require high-
quality environments from mountain streams, through major rivers, to the ocean.
Economic development and population growth have created widespread declines
in anadromous salmon abundance in the Pacific Northwest. Variations in ocean
conditions especially in water temperature and currents and the associated bio-
logical communities also contribute to the rise and fall of salmon abundance,
often thwarting the interpretation of events in freshwater and the surrounding
terrestrial systems.
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GENERAL CONCLUSION
To achieve long-term protection for a diversity and abundance of salmon in
the Pacific Northwest, two general goals must be achieved:
· The long-term survival of salmon depends crucially on a diverse and rich
store of genetic variation. Because of their homing behavior and the distribution
of their populations and their riverine habitats, salmon populations are unusually
susceptible to local extinctions and are dependent on diversity in their genetic
makeup and population structure (Chapter 6~. Therefore, management must
recognize and protect the genetic diversity within each salmon species, and it
must recognize and work with local breeding populations and their habitats. It is
not enough to focus only on the abundance of salmon.
· The social structures and institutions that have been operating in the Pa-
cific Northwest have proved incapable of ensuring a long-term future for salmon,
in large part because they do not operate at the right time and space scales. As
described in Chapter 13, differences among watersheds mean that different ap-
proaches are likely to be appropriate and effective in different watersheds, even
where the goals are the same. This means that institutions must be able to operate
at the scale of watersheds; in addition, a coordinating function is needed to make
sure that larger perspectives are considered.
As a framework in which to approach its deliberations, the committee chose
to focus on rehabilitation a pragmatic approach that relies on natural regenera-
tive processes in the long term and the selected use of technology and human
effort in the short term rather than on attempts to restore the landscape to some
pristine foyer state and rather than on a primary reliance on substitution, i.e., the
use of technologies and energy inputs, such as hatcheries, artificial transporta-
tion, and modification of stream channels. Rehabilitation would protect what
remains in an ecosystem and encourage natural regenerative processes.
The solutions will not be easy or inexpensive to implement; even a holding
action to prevent further declines will require large commitments of time and
money from many people in many segments of society in the Pacific Northwest.
Therefore, broad-based societal decisions are needed to successfully provide a
long-term future for natural salmon populations.
ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS
Natural and human-caused environmental changes affect all aspects of
salmon life histories. Although humans can do little in the short term to control
or even predict large-scale changes in environmental conditions, salmon-man-
agement programs must expect such changes and take them into account. Man-
agers must also recognize that the natural variability in environmental conditions
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
and people's desires for large and stable catches of salmon are often not compat-
ible. Natural changes in environmental conditions in the ocean, in fresh water,
and on land occur continually; sometimes they can lead to increased salmon
productivity in an area; at other times they can lead to decreased productivity.
The emerging understanding of interdecadal changes in the ocean climate
and the related mechanisms that affect salmon at sea have implications that are
both exciting and disconcerting to scientists thinking about resource manage-
ment. Humans are beginning to understand what happens to salmon during the
majority of their lives the portion spent at sea. Although we know little of the
details, the new insights already demonstrate that variations in salmon abundance
are linked to phenomena on spatial and temporal scales that humans and human
institutions do not ordinarily take into account. Consider that the apparent effec-
tiveness of hatcheries might have resulted from favorable ocean and climatic
conditions in the era when the hatcheries were built; what looked like human
manipulation of the total number of salmon might have been only a reapportion-
ment among different populations. Or consider that the decline of some popula-
tions might be a direct result of introducing new hatchery populations into an
ocean pasture of limited capacity.
The scale of human endeavor often has been incommensurate with the scale
of salmon ecology. Some of our current policies are based on deep ignorance: it
is not reasonable to assume that ocean conditions vary in ways that are generally
uniform and random in their impacts on populations of salmon. Interdecadal
variations and the importance of the ocean phase should be incorporated into
human thought, planning, and actions in response to the effects of and attempts to
repair damage that occurred during the freshwater phases of the salmon lives.
The possible overriding effects of interdecadal changes in ocean conditions on
salmon, the results of freshwater salmon management, and the overwhelming
focus of human attention on the more-visible freshwater phases of the salmon
history combine to provide the key ingredients for surprises in future.
Recently, natural environmental conditions in the Pacific Northwest appear
to have been unfavorable to salmon production. As changes continue to occur,
environmental conditions will probably favor salmon and lead to larger runs in
some areas for a time, even without human intervention. If such changes do
occur, they should be regarded as providing time to develop better strategies for
rehabilitation of salmon populations. They should not be used as reasons for
abandoning efforts to rehabilitate salmon, for they will surely be followed by
other natural changes. Inappropriate short-term responses to large-scale environ-
mental changes at sea or on land should be avoided, because there can be long
lags between causes and effects.
LIMITS ON SALMON PRODUCTION
The salmon production cycle has three principal components that determine
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
abundance: reproductive potential of adults returning from the sea to spawn,
which is affected by their growth at sea; production of offspring from natural
reproduction in streams and artificial propagation in hatcheries; and sources of
mortality (including natural mortality, fishing mortality, dam-caused mortality,
mortality from habitat alterations and changes in environmental conditions, and
so on). All three components are affected by changes in environmental condi-
tions as well as by human activities. Variation in the three components and their
interactions ultimately determine the ability to sustain salmon populations and
their production. These limitations cannot be easily overcome through technol-
ogy. Although it has been widely assumed that a loss of natural salmon produc-
tion can be compensated by enhancement (e.g., by increasing hatchery produc-
tion), chapters 6, 11, and 12 show that such an assumption is untenable by
explaining the need to conserve sufficient genetic variation in natural populations
to support the evolutionary and ecological processes needed for sustained salmon
production. Compensating for salmon loss from any source over the long term
therefore requires reducing other losses. Furthermore, an increasing appreciation
of the marine environment and its effects on the above components is emerging
as an essential consideration in salmon management.
VALUES
The salmon problem, like many other environmental issues, has been ad-
dressed through choices made within economic, political, and individual ethical
frameworks. Values and ethical positions held by people involved in and af-
fected by the salmon problem encompass a pluralistic, pragmatic, and evolution-
ary approach to natural resource management. Recognizing and articulating that
pluralism is important because problems in managing and protecting fish popula-
tions are due in part to the failure to articulate divergent interests, goals, and
values and to address them explicitly. Chapter 5 describes how the widely varied
ways that humans intervene in salmon populations are linked to socially validated
values.
From a policy perspective, the salmon problem is one of long-standing and
serious conflict in fact, interest, and values. People often invoke widely held
values to protect particular interests, but values are genuine sources of conflict in
themselves. Value conflict stems from different assessments of the desirable
goals of public action. From a scientific perspective, wild salmon populations are
an example of an ecosystem's natural capital. Our greatest success has been in
designing ways to use human-food benefits from wild salmon. Our correspond-
ing failure has been in protecting indirect and nonhuman benefits.
One way to present the salmon problem is to say that the value of the Pacific
Northwest's salmon-capital asset has depreciated over time as its productivity
has declined. A major problem is that the market does not account for the full
range of costs and benefits of salmon. That is called a market distortion. When
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
such market distortions exist, some resources are underpriced and overused, and
others overpriced and underused. Many nonmarket values of salmon are under-
represented and are not easy to measure or compare. Thus management decisions
often do not adequately reflect the importance of salmon to society and decisions
about resource use may not achieve societal goals. To correct the discrepancy
between social values and resource use, attempts can be made to design policies
that reflect the full range of resource values.
Full value is a public, not a private, question. Consequently, public choices
are central to the salmon problem. Public choices have to take into account many
owners with multiple preferences, attributes that are not fully observable and
sometimes unknown, and prices that reflect only part of the resources' full value
to society. The concept of full value points to the problem of "externalities" the
problem that some costs and benefits are beyond the accounting of the decision-
making unit.
Environmental variability creates economic uncertainty, which causes people
to discount the future more heavily, and this leads to pressures to increase rates of
immediate, direct use. Environmental variability also creates scientific uncer-
tainty about biological processes, which can be perceived to call for a cautious
approach and lead to pressures to lower rates of immediate, direct use. The
resulting tension between economic and scientific responses to uncertainty adds
complexity to decisions about appropriate rates of resource use. That tension is
widespread in decisions concerning the salmon problem.
Problems like these emphasize the need to develop more appropriate inter-
disciplinary approaches. The idea of rebuilding the salmon runs of an industrial-
ized ecosystem is heroically optimistic a hope that might not have occurred to
anyone except those who had rehabilitated the Willamette River Basin in Oregon
or Lake Washington near Seattle. Those environmental successes came through
the disciplined execution of the planning paradigm that has been fitfully applied
to the much larger Columbia River Basin. The extension of those experiences to
the multijurisdictional, multifunctional situations of the Pacific Northwest would
require coordinated action and learning on a new, larger scale a scale on which
planning and action have been tried but have not been successful. A more
explicit appreciation of the values, interests, and institutions involved in this
undertaking is required. Chapter 13 explores this further and urges constructive
change in institutions that include cooperative management, bioregional gover-
nance, and adaptive management.
GENETICS AND CONSERVATION
Pacific salmon reproduce in freshwater streams. Their progeny migrate to
the sea to grow and mature, and then return to freshwater streams to reproduce
and (nearly always) die. This pattern of freshwater reproduction and growth at
sea is called anadromy. Most of the adults actually return to the streams where
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
they hatched. This behavior-called homing is an essential part of salmon
biology and makes their genetics and conservation unusual. There is a great deal
of environmental variation among the various streams and lakes where salmon
spawn and in the rivers through which they migrate. Because of their anadro-
mous life cycles and homing behaviors and the variety of environments they
occupy, each salmon species tends to differentiate into local breeding popula-
tions called demes-that are in general reproductively isolated from other popu-
lations and adapted to each stream. To sustain productive natural populations of
salmon, it is crucially important to maintain this genetic variation and local
adaptation. Chapter 6 describes examples of such local adaptation.
However, more is involved than only local adaptation to venous streams.
Natural environmental fluctuations, including major disruptions caused by geo-
logical activity, can cause the extinction of local populations. Because homing is
not perfect, fish that stray from nearby streams can replenish those populations.
Strays are more likely to re-establish a population if the environment in the new
stream is similar to that in the stream where they hatched. Thus, strays into
tributaries in the same major river system or into nearby streams are more likely
to succeed than those that stray into very different environments. This network of
local populations (known as a metapopulation) provides a balance between local
adaptation and the evolutionary flexibility that results from exchange of genetic
material among local populations (Chapter 61. It likely also explains why artifi-
cial attempts to re-establish populations from a captive broodstock have often
failed-too often, the gene pool of the broodstock has had reduced variation or
has been derived from a population adapted to a different environment (Chapter
121. The metapopulation structure provides a balance between local adaptation
and evolutionary flexibility; therefore, maintaining a metapopulation structure
with good geographic distribution should be a top management priority to sustain
salmon populations over the long term. Many of the committee's recommenda-
tions are based on this crucial conclusion.
There is no ~correct" answer to the question of precisely how much biologi-
ca~ diversity and population structure should be maintained or can be lost to
provide a long-term future for salmon. Scientific estimates including uncer-
tainties associated with them are only part of the argument. Society must
decide what degree of biological security would be desirable and affordable if it
could be achieved, i.e., the desired probability of survival or extinction of natural
populations, over what time and what area, and at what cost. Nonetheless,
biological diversity and the structure of salmon populations are being lost at a
, . ~ 1. r ~' reproducing
substantial rate, and this loss threatens the sustainability of naturally
salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest.
HABITAT LOSS AND REHABILITATION
The main habitat requirements of salmon in freshwater include a stream or
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9
lake, the adjacent border of vegetation (riparian zone) that serves as the interface
between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the quality and quantity of water
(Chapter 71. The water must be clean enough and cool enough to support return-
ing adults, for eggs to hatch, and for young to survive and grow until they migrate
to sea. There must be enough water in the rivers at crucial times to make
migration possible, to allow fish to escape predators, and to allow fish to find
adequate food. Well-aerated streambed gravels are important for spawning.
Streamside vegetation provides shade, which keeps the water cool; it provides a
buffer against soil erosion, which maintains water quality; it provides living
space for various animals that provide food and nutrients for streams; and it
provides a source of large woody debris, which plays a key role in the formation
of physical habitat and storage of sediment and organic matter and provides
habitat complexity in stream channels, thus improving the stream environment
for salmon. These requirements for environmental conditions in streams and
adjacent riparian zones depend on the condition of the entire watershed in which
they occur.
Many human activities such as forestry; agriculture; grazing; industrial
uses; commercial, residential, and recreational development; and flood control-
have a variety of adverse effects on salmon habitats. For example, they can
increase soil erosion, reduce the amount of woody debris in streams, raise the
water temperature, add contaminants to the water, affect water flow, and reduce
the amount of water available, with resultant loss or degradation of riverine and
adjacent riparian and near-river habitat. Therefore, protection and rehabilitation
of riverine and riparian habitats and associated watershed processes will be an
integral part of rehabilitating salmon populations, although it is a major and
difficult undertaking (Chapter 83. In the past few years, genuine improvements in
protecting forested streams have been initiated. Nonetheless, for real progress to
occur, habitat protection must be coordinated at landscape scales appropriate to
salmon life histories, and they must be more consistent across different types of
land use (chapters 8 and 13~.
DAMS
Hundreds of dams have been built on rivers of the Pacific Northwest. They
range from small irrigation dams with a hydraulic head of only a few feet to
massive dams at Grand Coulee, Dworshak, and Hells Canyon on the Columbia
and Snake rivers that are several hundred feet high and completely block up-
stream and downstream passage of anadromous fish. Dams on various rivers-
some of them impassable have greatly reduced wild runs. Even smaller dams
(e.g., those associated with many hatchery operations and irrigation-diversion
dams) can block salmon runs. In addition to their effects on migration, large
storage dams affect the quantity and timing of water flow in the river as well as
flow velocities, water chemistry, and water temperatures. Reservoirs behind
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
dams can also inundate extensive areas of spawning and rearing habitat, although
in some cases the reservoirs provide new (but different) rearing habitat. Many
water diversions for irrigation lack protective fish screens of modern design;
installing such screens would reduce mortality of smelts as they migrate down-
stream.
Even when fish ladders provide passage for adult salmon, many young
salmon (smelts) migrating downriver die at dams. Although as many as 90% of
young salmon might survive passage over, around, and through any single major
project on the Columbia-Snake mainstem, the cumulative reduction in survival
caused by passing many projects has adversely affected salmon populations. To
counteract these effects, it is essential to improve the survival of smalls migrating
through hydropower projects, especially in the Columbia and Snake rivers. Seri-
ous consideration needs to be given to all available alternatives for doing so; even
a small improvement in survival would be helpful if it were repeated at several
dams.
Controversy surrounds the effects of dams and how best to mitigate them.
Alternatives include removal of dams, modification of turbines and other struc-
tural aspects of dams to improve fish survival during passage, drawdown of the
water during the seaward migration of smelts to restore the river's profile to its
pre-dam (river-grade) configuration to increase the flow rate and diminish the
smelts' travel time, drawdown of the river to some level above river grade,
augmentation of water flows during smolt migration to speed their passage
downriver, transportation of smelts around dams by truck or by barge, control of
predators in reservoirs and below dams, and spilling of water over dams instead
of through the turbines. However, there is a dearth of good scientific information
on which to base evaluations of the alternatives, some of which would be very
expensive and would cause large losses of hydropower revenues.
Dam removal and drawdown of those rivers to river grade would be enor-
mously expensive, would take many years, and probably would have long-term
adverse impacts on the rivers. However, because the many dams on the Colum-
bia River and its tributaries cumulatively have large effects on salmon survival,
the addition of any new major dams in undammed reaches in the system (e.g., the
Hanford Reach of the Columbia River) would make the situation worse; existing
dams should have adequate fish-passage facilities where feasible and appropriate
before being relicensed. The committee is unaware of any scientific data that
unequivocally support drawdown to a level above river grade as the best avail-
able dam-mitigation option for the Columbia River or the Snake River. Based on
limited information, transportation appears to be the most biologically effective
and cost-effective approach for moving smelts downstream. It should be contin-
ued on an adaptive basis (i.e., in such a way that additional information can be
obtained about its effectiveness). Additional information is needed on effects of
transportation on survival to the adult return stage, on homing, on success of
natural spawning, and on genetic diversity of returning adults. Because any
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11
action that could jeopardize all of the fish in a stream must be avoided, not all the
fish in any stream should be transported.
Research is needed on the effects of various options on the survival of both
smolt and adult migration through dam and reservoir systems. Any management
option should be applied on an adaptive (experimental) basis. The committee is
not recommending that the salmon be "studied to death," a criticism often leveled
at those who urge further studies. Indeed, enough is known now to take some
actions. In recommending "adaptive" actions, the committee is recommending
that any mitigative actions be taken in a way that allows their effects and effec-
tiveness to be measured and assessed objectively. For example, if some fish in a
stream are transported downstream, the action should be designed so its effec-
tiveness can be assessed and compared with other alternatives. Despite the
paucity of information, it is clear that no single approach would eliminate the
adverse effects of dams on salmon.
HATCHERIES
Hatcheries have been used for more than 100 years in attempts to mitigate
the effects of human activities on salmon and to replace declining and lost natural
populations. As a result, a major proportion of salmon populations in the Pacific
Northwest now consist largely of hatchery fish. These hatchery fish appear to
have had substantial adverse effects on native fish populations.
For many years, people did not recognize the potential for hatchery fish to
affect wild fish and did not believe that there was any limit to the ocean's capac-
ity to provide food for growing salmon. It therefore seemed that producing more
juveniles would result in more returning adults. The difficulties and shortcom-
ings of hatchery production did not become apparent until fishing pressure and
habitat-related mortality increased and marking technologies became available.
As a result, hatcheries were not part of an adaptive-management program; that is,
they were not considered as scientific experiments they were not even ad-
equately monitored so many of their effects were not well known.
It is now clear from synthesis of experience and from consideration of well-
established biological knowledge that hatcheries have had demographic, ecologi-
cal, and genetic impacts on wild salmon populations and have caused problems
related to the behavior, health, and physiology of hatchery fish. They have
resulted (among other effects) in reduced genetic diversity within and between
salmon populations, increased the effects of mixed-population fisheries on de-
pleted natural populations, altered behavior of fish, caused ecological problems
by eliminating the nutritive contributions of carcasses of spawning salmon from
streams, and probably displaced the remnants of wild runs (Chapter 121. Hatch-
ery fish have at times exceeded the capacity of streams and are increasingly being
associated with reduced marine growth and survival in wild salmon populations
(Chapter 121.
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Many of the problems stem from purposes to which hatcheries have been
put mainly to provide substitutes for natural populations lost or displaced be-
cause of human development activities. Because of their deleterious impacts
however, hatcheries should no longer be viewed solely as factories for producing
fish. Hatcheries should also be thought of as laboratories that can provide con-
trolled environments for studying juvenile fish and for testing treatments to im-
prove our understanding of what happens to juveniles after they leave spawning
areas. Seen in that light, hatcheries can be a powerful tool for learning about
salmon.
Hatchery planning, management, and operations should be changed so that
their goals are to assist recovery of wild populations and to increase knowledge
about salmon. As described above and in many parts of this report, especially
chapters 6, 11, and 12, precautions must be taken to protect the genetic diversity
and ecological productivity of naturally spawning populations of salmon. Those
precautions will include an overall decrease in hatchery-fish production and-
over the short term-in fishing opportunities. The basic guideline is to ensure
that any hatchery production for fishing is not detrimental to natural populations.
Because adaptive-management experiments should be tailored to the circum-
stances in different watersheds of the Pacific Northwest, decisions about use of
hatcheries will differ across these watersheds. Therefore, decisions about uses of
hatcheries should include a focus on the whole watershed and its linkage to the
region and the ocean pasture, rather than only on the fish.
FISHING
Fishing for salmon is important in the Pacific Northwest. It includes com-
mercial, recreational, and treaty fishing at sea and in rivers and is an important
source of mortality, especially for adults returning to spawn. Salmon mortality
caused by other human activities and structures such as dams, habitat loss or
degradation, pollution, and water diversion and by natural factors such as preda-
tors, disease, and environmental variability together usually exceed fishing mor-
tality. Those causes of mortality have a major effect on the production of adult
fish and thus influence the rate of fishing that can be sustained. However, fishing
is the easiest mortality factor to control. Control of fishing has rehabilitated
marine and anadromous fish populations in various parts of the United States.
Managing salmon fisheries is more difficult than managing many other fish-
eries because of the geographic distribution of salmon, their metapopulation
structure, and the fact that most adult fish spawn only once and then die. In the
jargon of Pacific salmon fisheries, managers refer to groups of salmon popula-
tions that are identifiable for management as stocks. Frequently, stock refers to a
geographic aggregate of populations that includes many local breeding popula-
tions of varied size and productivity; this is too large a unit for conservation of
genetic diversity and rehabilitation of salmon production. Managing at the stock
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13
level obscures critical biological complexity. But even managing such large
units is difficult because of the complex relationships, responsibilities, and obli-
gations among a large number of institutional entities in the region (including
nations, states, provinces, federal agencies, tribes, interest groups, and other or-
ganizations), the mandates of the Endangered Species Act and other laws, and the
diverse array of interests and values in the region.
For rehabilitation of salmon populations, the aim for fishery management-
as for other management efforts should be to achieve long-term sustainability
based on maintaining diversity of gene pools and population structures. There-
fore, a successful fishery-management component for protecting natural salmon
runs in the Pacific Northwest should explicitly recognize the need to maintain
and rehabilitate the genetic diversity of salmon and recognize the interdepen-
dence of genetic diversity, habitat, and salmon production. It must also account
for the uncertainty in scientific predictions and the inherent variability of biotic
and abiotic environmental factors.
In general, the aim should be to assure adequate escapements for depleted
populations. To achieve long-term sustainability, which requires sufficient ge-
netic diversity, fishing should occur only where the identity (i.e., the originating
population) of the salmon is known, when total fishing mortality is consistent
with productivity of the fish, and when the catching technology ensures minimal
mortality in depleted demos. This will require fishing methods that allow differ-
ent degrees of fishing effort on various salmon populations and that allow identi-
fication of fish taken from depleted demes so that they can be avoided or released
alive. Two methods of achieving these goals (but not the only ones) are terminal
fisheries and live-catch fisheries.
In general, the serious declines of wild salmon populations show that not
enough fish are being allowed to return to spawn. The number of fish returning
to spawn (escapements) must be substantially increased to conserve genetic di-
versity within and between domes, use available habitats, rehabilitate ecological
processes (including the return of nutrients to aquatic ecosystems), and increase
the sustainable production of salmon. Increasing escapements will disrupt fisher-
ies, industry, and communities, but it is necessary for restoring production. As
salmon abundance increases and fisheries begin operating at lower, but sustain-
able, catch rates, actual catches will gradually increase, although probably not to
the sizes of some historical catches, because those were based on excessive catch
rates. Implementing this recommendation will initially require low fishing effort
in many areas, especially in the ocean, and it will require cooperation from
British Columbia and Alaska, because many salmon that originate in the Pacific
Northwest are caught at sea off British Columbia and southeastern Alaska (chap-
ters 10 and 111.
A more holistic management approach must recognize the connections be-
tween the genetic resource base, habitat, and the resulting salmon production; it
must also account for the uncertainty in our scientific advice and for inherent
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
environmental variability. The committee has outlined a process intended to
improve the potential sustainability of salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Further-
more, the committee does not believe that the sustainability of Pacific Northwest
salmon can be achieved without limiting the interceptions of U.S. salmon in
Canada and obtaining the cooperation of Alaska. An effective and cooperative
Pacific Salmon Treaty is necessary. The committee does not provide specific
recommendations about altering specific fisheries, because there are numerous
options and interactions between fisheries. Achieving agreement on changes in
fisheries will be difficult and necessitates an effective institutional process.
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
The long and serious decline of salmon in the Pacific Northwest has been
promoted often unwittingly-by human institutions; effective remedies, if they
are to be found, will have to involve changes in those institutions. Growth in
human populations and economic activity threatens the continued existence of
salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Institutions developed in different times for
diverse purposes have been asked to do things foreign to their original objectives
and capabilities. Political changes have hindered attempts to take a long-term
perspective. There has been fragmentation of effort and responsibility.
Changing institutional structures is notoriously difficult, but it is possible.
Because the problems facing salmon have many aspects, a multidisciplinary
approach to their solution is essential. Indeed, if the money that has been spent to
date on salmon research had been spent with a more unified, regional vision,
greater progress would have been made in maintaining viable salmon populations
(Chapter 141. Unless agencies cooperate more effectively, salmon populations
are unlikely to recover.
One problem is that current institutions and the boundaries of their jurisdic-
tions usually do not match the spatial, temporal, or functional scales of the salmon
problem. In addition, current institutional structures lack both a fine-grained
aspect to respond to local concerns and variations and a coarse-grained aspect to
integrate across small regions and to make sure that the interests of a few small
areas do not jeopardize larger regional interests.
Because we often do not know what the effects of a management option will
be, management must be undertaken with an experimental, adaptive point of
view. Flexibility must be built into institutional structures to allow for changes in
management practices based on experience. Institutions must allow and encour-
age refocusing the energies of salmon management to recognize the importance
of demes in maintaining genetic processes and to maintain and expand their
diversity. The goal of management should be to achieve a biologically sound
escapement (instead of focusing on a "sustainable" or permissible catch) for each
metapopulation and an explicit adoption of time scales for management and
planning that are commensurate with the multiyear scale of salmon life cycles.
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Beyond those facilitating changes, the formal institutions that manage salmon
need to be restructured or refocused to reflect three important institutional prin-
ciples. First, decision-making authority should be shared among all legitimate
interests (cooperative management); legitimate interests that are excluded from
decision-making are likely to block desirable changes. Second, the organiza-
tional structures and decision-making processes should allow for local conditions
and variations and the management strategies should vary accordingly. Third,
systematic learning using appropriate experimental designs (adaptive manage-
ment) should be an essential goal.
As a first step, the relevant agencies in the Pacific Northwest, including the
National Marine Fisheries Service, should agree on a process to permit the for-
mulation of salmon recovery plans in advance of listings under the Endangered
Species Act, and the Pacific Northwest states, acting individually and through the
Northwest Power Planning Council, should provide technical and financial assis-
tance to watershed-level organizations to prepare and implement these preemp-
tive recovery plans.
A SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
TO ADDRESS SALMON PROBLEMS
A great deal is known about salmon and their difficulties, but a great deal
remains unknown or controversial despite the expenditure of large amounts of
money and time on research. Part of the reason for the lack of knowledge is that
people have not agreed on what information is needed, have duplicated each
other's work, and have been unwilling to fund needed research. An independent,
multidisciplinary, standing scientific advisory board should be established to
ensure that the limited money available for research is spent most productively to
answer the most critical questions in a timely manner. A standing scientific
advisory board would also help to ensure that when urgently needed actions are
taken, they are designed so that their effects and effectiveness can be properly
assessed. The board's reports should be public.
AN APPROACH TO SOLVING THE SALMON PROBLEM
The salmon problem took many years to develop, and its solution will re-
quire the commitment of considerable time, money, and effort. The committee's
analyses of the problems and potential solutions lead to the conclusion that there
is no "magic bullet." Therefore, like the problem itself, solutions will be complex
and often hard to agree on; to be successful, they will need to be based on
scientific information, including information provided by social and economic
sciences. In addition, to be successful, consensus will be needed about the size of
the investments to be made in solving the problem and how the costs should be
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UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
allocated. This means that solutions will have to be regionally based, just as the
salmon problem has regional variations (see Chapter 131.
The committee recommends the following general approach. For each ma-
jor watershed or river basin, the following should be assessed:
· All causes of salmon mortality, including their estimated magnitude and
the uncertainties associated with the estimates. Factors known to decrease natu-
ral production should also be listed.
· Ways of reducing those sources of mortality or compensating for them,
their probable effectiveness, and their drawbacks.
· The probable costs of each method of reducing mortality. To be most
useful, the estimates should include both market and nonmarket costs. To the
degree possible, it is important to identify what societal groups would bear the
major portion of the costs of each method and significant uncertainties in the
estimates. (For example, reductions in catch rates would primarily affect fishers
and tourists; changes in water use could affect agricultural interests or ratepayers;
changes in riparian management could affect forest-products industries or private
landowners.)
All the estimates would include substantial uncertainties, due both to lack of
knowledge and to fundamental environmental, socioeconomic, and biological
uncertainties. Nonetheless, such a process of assessment and evaluation is essen-
tial for rational decision making. They will provide a basis for evaluating op-
tions- for weighing benefits and costs and for identifying areas where research
is critical. All the recommendations in this report should be viewed in this
context: they need to be considered on a regional basis (i.e., major watersheds'
and in a comprehensive framework that includes an analysis of their costs, prob-
able effectiveness, and the ability and willingness of various sectors to bear the
costs.
This will be challenging for several reasons. First, in many cases, the desired
information has not been collated or does not exist. Second, considerable time
and resources will be needed to perform such analyses even for one watershed.
But the most important reason is that estimates of costs and how they might be
distributed will require intimate knowledge of each watershed and of people's
preferences and habits. These essential estimates should be made with input from
the people involved. The committee believes this approach will lead to improved
effectiveness and if not reduced costs-at least increased cost-effectiveness
and reduced controversy.
THE FUTURE
The best approach to establishing a sustainable future for salmon in the
Pacific Northwest is to use currently available information to develop workable,
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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comprehensive programs rather than reacting to crises. This report has analyzed
many parts of the salmon problem and assessed many options for intervention.
However, if current trends continue, the Pacific Northwest will continue to see
the effects of more people, more resource consumption, changing economic de-
mands and technologies, and changing societal values. Because the success of
programs to improve the long-term prospects for salmon in the Pacific Northwest
will depend on the societal and environmental contexts, it is important to develop
ways for improving our ability to identify changing contexts and to respond to
them. As long as human populations and economic activities continue to in-
crease, so will the challenge of successfully solving the salmon problem.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
genetic diversity
