|
Items in cart [0] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 324
1 ~
Institutional Analysis
INTRODUCTION
The long decline of salmon in the Pacific Northwest has been a slow process
by human timekeeping: for more than a century, overfishing, habitat destruction
and degradation, and substitution of naturally reproducing fish runs with hatch-
ery-produced fish has depleted the genetic diversity and abundances of salmon.
It has taken a long time for people to notice. The loss of wild fish was obscured
by hatchery production; the dwindling of salmon, especially those east of the
Cascade Mountains, was masked by the shifting of catch from the American
Indians, who depended upon fish for subsistence, to commercial fishers, who
came to depend on fish for economic survival. As salmon abundance declined,
the remaining populations have been made more vulnerable to natural fluctua-
tions (Schaefer 1981, Gilpin 1987, Goodman 1987, Hartman and Scrivener 19904.
What has taken a century to do will not be swiftly undone. The problems are
of human, institutional origin; remedies, if they are to be found, must entail
human, institutional change. If there were once thought to be easy remedies-
such as hatcheries or fish ladders or temporary fishing restrictions or large-scale
subsidies from the hydropower dams-they have proved to be less durable and
more painful than had been hoped. A harder, subtler remedy is deliberate institu-
tional redesign: the recovery team chartered under the Endangered Species Act
(ESA) after the listing of Snake River populations called for centralizing author-
ity in the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The recovery team saw
important institutional problems- fragmentation of scientific effort, responsibil-
ity, and authority, leading to a lack of accountability. Arguing only that "no one
324
OCR for page 325
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
325
is in charge" (Snake River Salmon Recovery Team 1994:6), the team recom-
mended NMFS, which has a legal mandate to protect the endangered populations.
Yet it would be asking too much of this one agency to bring about complex,
painful changes in the region's economy. There may be good reasons to central-
ize and shift the locus of authority, but this response is not adequate for the large,
highly diverse natural and social systems that form the habitat of Pacific North-
west salmon.
Institutions do matter. The bitter divisions and economic pain that are the
legacy of the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest stand as reminders
that the available means of protecting declining species produce strife and that
their costs are real. The available institutional incentives might well lead to a
continuing drumfire of petitions under the ESA.
It is against this sober specter of conflicts joined and impending that the
committee explored the possibilities for institutional change. We have found no
easy answers, but constructive possibilities can be identified. Three ideas shape
recent discussions of natural-resources policy in the American West: bioregion-
alism, cooperative management, and adaptive management. Each has a powerful
logic rooted in science or reason, each seems socially promising, and each is
systematic and thus suggests a strategy of reform. None will be easily adopted
comprehensively: each of these ideas forces changes in the "lords of yesterday"
(Wilkinson 1992) described in Chapter 5, the extractive approach to federally
owned resources that underlies much of the western economy. Because the
problems of salmon are intertwined with the routine operation of the economy,
the existing institutional structure cannot be easily replaced by one tailored to the
needs of salmon. An ecosystem approach must also include the humans within
the ecosystem. Each of the three principal organizing concepts thus blends
scientific and social questions, bringing diagnostic insights but also raising the
stakes for what must be changed if salmon are to be rehabilitated.
The tenor of this appraisal should not be mistaken for pessimism: much can
be done to improve salmon management, population by population, habitat by
habitat, season by season. A serious and determined effort which entails the
combined actions of parties now bitterly opposed and widely separated in space
and interests is likely, over time, to yield a rehabilitated set of salmon popula-
tions and, more important, a fund of human knowledge and a structure of man-
agement that seems likely to be able to sustain both fish and fisheries into the
indefinite future. But that serious and determined effort will take perseverance
and durable support from a people and an economy marked more than anything
else by their pace of change over the last century. Rehabilitating the salmon of
the Pacific Northwest will take decades, incur direct costs in the billions of
dollars (the cost of the Columbia River Basin effort to rebuild salmon populations
since 1981 is more than $1 billion, and current costs exceed $200 million per year
tHardy 19931), and require substantial realignments of property rights and gov-
ernmental institutions; all this will demand of the leaders of the region both
OCR for page 326
326
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
political courage and scientific acumen. These appear at first sight to be im-
mense, perhaps infeasible requirements, until we recall that over the last dozen
decades, a regional economy has grown in the Northwest, with an output valued
at hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and that novel government institutions,
such as the Bonneville Power Administration founded in 1937, and modified
property rights, such as constraints on water pollution or the duty to recycle, have
become accepted or even forgotten as routine. Much can be done, but it will not
be easy, especially at first.
When human responsibility does not match the spatial, temporal, or func-
tional scale of natural phenomena, unsustainable use of resources is likely and
will persist as long as the mismatch of scales remains (Lee 1993b). In pre-
industrial societies, where long-term dependence on renewable resources has
been the norm, a wide spectrum of institutions has emerged to link the scale of
human endeavor to the scales of nature (Suttles 1968, McCay and Acheson
19871. But since the Renaissance that linkage has not always been visible or
necessary in the short run and has often been displaced. Technological change
created new resources, extending the human control of nature and making some
substances, such as uranium, useful in new ways. As exploration enlarged the
reach of markets, natural resources entered world trade: valuable resources-like
furs, timber, and salmon were removed from their native habitats and sold in
distant markets at high profit. Unsustainable use was in full swing. But the
growing momentum of technological change brought substitutes to market when
natural supplies began to dwindle: new fibers for furs, new building materials for
timber, and artificially cultured fish for wild salmon. Unsustainable exploitation
could proceed to economic extinction, but the markets' warning signals of rising
price would simply induce inventors to innovate and consumers to shift to substi-
tutes.
If the march toward extinction of salmon is to be halted, scale mismatches
institutionalized over the last century need to be recognized and then reflected in
institutional changes that take matters of scale into account. This is not a call for
wholesale change: neither removal of mainstem dams nor drastic change in
property rights would in itself reopen migration routes for salmon or rebuild
natural habitat. But until salmon have migration routes and habitat that can
sustain their populations, decline will continue. In discussing bioregionalism,
cooperative management, and adaptive management, the committee's purpose
has been to use these ideas diagnostically to spell out the predicament faced by
salmon today. Only after the diagnosis has been put into perspective can sensible
paths to rehabilitation be identified.
BIOREGIONAL GOVERNANCE
The boundaries of property and government, like the less sharply etched
patterns of markets, rarely follow the outlines of biology and topography. From
OCR for page 327
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
327
an airliner above the Pacific Northwest, a passenger can see forest clearcuts, their
rectangular edges slashing across hillsides, with streambeds delineated by protec-
tive strips of untagged trees. Maps show straight-line political borders-cutting
across the curvatures of ecosystems and societies or ones that follow major
rivers. Yet rivers are the centers, not perimeters, of biological provinces; rivers
are thoroughfares where migration paths merge. And maps show institutional-
ized error: the border between central Idaho and southwest Montana was drawn
on what was thought to be the continental divide, but the divide turns out to be on
the higher range to the east, within Montana.
A simple idea for reform is to ground governance in bioregions: to shift the
margins of human control and responsibility to match natural boundaries. For
salmon, whose genetics are mapped to natal streams, the drainage basin is the
logical unit. The idea of managing fish populations as distinct entities, spelled
out in Chapter 11, may be feasible only within a geographic template anchored in
drainages and migration routes. The idea is simple and rarely implemented
since the arrival of non-Indians. The Olympic National Park in Washington state
encompasses a mountain range, a natural province; the Columbia River basin
defines the geographic scope of the Northwest's most ambitious plan for salmon
(NPPC 19921; the Forest Ecosystem Management Team (FEMAT) identified key
watersheds in the range of the northern spotted owl (see Figure 7-4~. But John
Wesley Powell's dream, a century ago, to organize the settlement of the arid West
around its river basins, was ignored in the rush to exploit the region's lands and
minerals (Stegner 1954~. A map of the Western states, with their straight borders,
shows where priorities came to rest. Key watersheds (Figure 7-4), drawn by
topography and gravity and populated by spotted owls, must contend with county
boundaries (Figure 13-1) drawn by humans with rulers and transits.
Today, the definition of property and state borders has long been settled.
More important, trade routes that link different biogeographic provinces are in
place: highways, transmission lines for electricity, water diversions, and others.
Along these human paths flow commercial transactions in which human values
define the relative scarcity of specific resources, including water, salmon, and the
farm and forest crops harvested from managed vegetation and animal popula-
tions. Any attempt to shift human jurisdictions so as to focus attention on the
welfare of salmon must begin with these boundaries and patterns.
Because the migratory range of salmon goes from Alaska to California, from
ocean, the biological range of the fish is too large and too diverse to be manage-
able as a single spatial unit. Most analyses (e.g., Johnson et al. 1991, Moyle and
Ellison 1991) and some policies (FEMAT 1993, Washington Forest Practices
Board 1993) use the watershed as the unit of planning. There are roughly 1,000
drainages in the Pacific Northwest, counting streams of order 6i and higher, and
iAn order 2 stream is formed by the confluence of two order ~ streams; an order 3 stream is
formed by the confluence of two order 2 streams, and so. The higher the order number, the larger the
stream or river.
OCR for page 328
328
Olympic
Peninsula
Northwest
Oregon
_ _
West-Central
Oregon
_ _
Southwest
Orennn
Northern
California
_ _
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
Puget Sound
Central
Washington
Lower
Columbia
Central
Oregon
FIGURE 13-1 Counties and subregions.
Source: FEMAT 1993.
roughly the same number of local governments in the region, but there is little
correspondence between the two sets of boundaries. Any attempt to manage the
natal habitats of evolutionarily significant units of the salmon population encoun-
ters this fact: human and salmon geographies do not match.
Intermediate-scale alternatives have been tried, with mixed results. The
Pacific Northwest River Basins Commission (PNRBC) divided the states of
Idaho, Oregon, and Washington into 11 subregions (Figure 13-2), following the
contours of major drainages (PNRBC 1969~. Beginning in 1987, northwest
American Indian tribes and fishery agencies gathered data and formulated plans
to manage the Columbia's salmon populations in 31 subbasins (see Figure 13-3),
but that biologically coherent approach to the assemblage of populations has been
shunted aside in the effort to save the four populations protected under the ESA
(Volkman and McConnaha 1993~. The PNRBC whose studies were informa-
tive, thoughtful, and in retrospect surprisingly accurate-was ignored by private
and public agencies alike; it was disbanded in 1981 as part of a government
efficiency drive (Executive Office of the President 19811. Promising analysis has
OCR for page 329
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
t ~l
~ - ~U ? ~ ~ R
- _ PUNNET :1 ~2 ~CLtRK F~K-
SOUNO _~. ~I_
_,J COLU# BtA ~= ~
~i~
7 em MIKE ~
~S_~.
329
~-
/~HE7Tt ~
7~7 ~ :4
COASTAL ~ BASIN ~ ~ ~ ~
FIGURE 13-2 Eleven Columbia basin, Puget Sound, and coastal basins that could serve
as bioregional planning units. Source: Pacific Northwest River Basins Commission, 1972.
in both cases led to little action, in part because both relied on administrative or
planning boundaries that have no visibility or acceptance among local communi-
ties. In sum, the Northwest has no socially established boundaries that corre-
spond to bioregions relevant to salmon.
Even if social and ecosystem boundaries were better matched, however,
bioregional management would face coupling between bioregions due to the
effects of stem, edges and common mode. Edge effects are spatial mismatches: if
the land uses in adjacent bioregions are drastically different, there can be spill-
overs. Heavy timber harvest in one bioregion may affect reseeding in a neighbor-
ing one. More generally, species that do well in sharply defined edges are often
successful in invading and displacing native species (Moyle and Yoshiyama
19941. Stem effects are couplings between regions due to shared biogeography,
such as migration routes in the mainstem of a large river system or in ocean areas.
The pressure on low-productivity fish populations due to mixed-population fish-
ing is a stem effect, as are the deaths due to dam construction and operation.
Common-mode elects are those whose spatial scale is larger than that of a
bioregion. A national economic recession or a climate change is a common-
mode effect. A sense of shared crisis can be heightened when common-mode
effects are felt, whereas stem and edge problems tend to sharpen conflicts be
OCR for page 330
330 UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETYIN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
FIGURE 13-3 Subbasins in the Columbia River Basin: Columbia River mainstem below
Bonneville Dam, Columbia River mainstem from below Bonneville Dam to the Snake
River, Columbia River mainstem from Snake River to Chief Joseph Dam, and Scaly
River mainstem from the mouth to the Hells Canyon Dam.
tween bioregions. The provision of mainstem habitat for salmon, a stem effect,
has proved to be the Achilles' heel of the Columbia River (see Chapter 91. The
Northwest Power Planning Council (NPPC) fish and wildlife program did not
address the question of how much river flow was biologically necessary in 1982,
when the program was formulated. The absence of biological rationale, in turn,
made the ESA petitions of 1990 both inevitable and, once filed, unanswerable.
Interdependencies among bioregions might not decrease in intensity with
distance in space, time, or function. Some scale mismatches resist localization
and thus resist the kind of resolution that the bioregional approach is meant to
foster. For that reason, complete decentralization to the bioregional level is
inadequate. Stem effects link bioregions that might not be adjacent: the endan-
gered chinook salmon of the Snake River are caught with many abundant fishes
in Alaskan waters; as long as ocean fishing continues, it is difficult or impossible
to persuade Alaska fishers that they must forgo targeting healthy populations for
the benefit of Snake River chinook.
Unless the institutions managing stem habitats are given appropriate re-
sources and jurisdiction, the system will be ungovernable-something that the
OCR for page 331
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
331
committee believes has happened in attempts to deal with the ocean fishery. For
example, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), responsible for
ocean-fishing management, has authority over neither ocean nor in-stream habi-
tat. In addition, financial and human resources available through PFMC or other
sources to meet salmon-related research needs have declined even as the needs
have increased. In the Columbia River Basin, money and information were
centralized in the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and NPPC; authority
was dispersed among fish and wildlife agencies, partly countered by the central-
ized powers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That combination, for both
historical and functional reasons, has been unable to reach stable resolution;
instability continues to undermine salmon.
A critical but elusive need is to handle and to contain conflict. Stem institu-
tions must have real influence because without a comprehensive perspective the
fragmentation of an ecosystem by jurisdictional boundaries promotes unsustain-
able use, as users pursue purposes that often turn out to be incompatible with
sustainable management of the whole ecosystem. For conflict resolution to suc-
ceed, common goals for the stem must be defined. Yet sustainable management
requires a decentralized, fragmented perspective as well, because decisions are
carried out by parties whose responsibilities are narrower than the breadth of the
analytic tools used by analysts at the stem level. Managing the tension between
bioregion and stem entails, paradoxically, the fostering of political competition.
The success of decentralized conflict resolution depends in large part on the
. . .
extent to which various interests see an opportunity to gain from compromise.
When the situation is perceived to be a zero-sum game with only win and lose
options, the incentive to compromise is undermined (Henna and Smith 1993~. If
a common vision can be crafted, however, conflict and the analysis inspired by
disputes can link the agendas of bioregions and stem institutions. In the Colum-
bia River Basin, for example, fishery enhancement is funded by hydropower
revenues. This arrangement is desirable on economic grounds because those
benefiting from electricity help to pay for the damage that its production has
caused. The impact on electric-power rates is small, but utilities and large users,
such- as aluminum refiners, have felt an organizational and political incentive to
act as watchdogs (e.g., Carr 1994), seeking to ensure that fishery managers
achieve results. Thus a political mechanism reinforces an economic means of
. .
recognizing error.
Tension between the centralized knowledge and control of stem institutions
and the decentralized experience of the bioregions is perennial. Central planners
and governments have a wide-angle, abstract view. Because they must deal with
diverse and complex aggregations, there is a constant temptation to oversimplify.
To managers at the center, it is imperative to channel the flood of information to
manageable proportions. Tradeoffs that make sense at the system level can be
incomprehensible or unjust from the local perspective, however.
Stem managers see things in a way that is bound to seem incomplete, unfair,
OCR for page 332
332
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
or ignorant to observers at the local level, whose experience is first-hand and
whose responsibility and information do not include factors important to overall
stability and other system-level properties. Because local knowledge is more
detailed, often more persuasive, and sometimes contrary to the inclinations of
those responsible for the stem, local actors find themselves in the position of
forcing stem managers to attend to matters that are being ignored, to integrate
values that are separated by abstract understandings of what is needed, to change
the stem manager's grasp of what an action means or the rules by which a
decision should be taken.
Those tensions are both inevitable and indispensable when neither stem nor
bioregion can see the whole picture a situation that seems likely to persist,
given the difficulties of grasping even parts of the whole today.
Cooperative Management
As conflict over natural resources intensified over the last generation, ob-
servers and disputants increasingly turned to cooperative management, "power-
sharing in the exercise of resource management between a government agency
and a community or organization of stakeholders" (Pinkerton 1992:331~. Yet
sharing of power has been resisted, in part because the American culture of
accountability is rooted in a legal structure in which official government can seek
advice but not yield its statutory powers. Although conflict has persisted, coop-
erative management has a persuasive political claim to representing those with
the most at stake, even if it is not a claim that can simply be meshed with the
bioregional perspective discussed above.
Given their differing objectives, representatives of user groups, the scientific
community, and government agencies should share knowledge, power, and re-
sponsibility. In principle, cooperative management brings resource-users and
others with stakes in the resource directly into the management process. It
assumes that stakeholders have data, understanding, and motivation that can help
government officials to assess problems and devise solutions; that cooperation
will moderate equity problems that often arise; and that if resource-users are
more fully involved, they will be more likely to perceive the management system
as legitimate and hence to comply with rules and regulations (McCay 1988 p.
327, Jentoft 1989, Pinkerton 1989~.
Cooperative management of salmon rehabilitation implicitly recognizes the
central role of equity in fashioning solutions to difficult questions of natural-
resource management. If the salmon problem is largely a human problem and if
approaches to it are likely to have large social and economic costs, then many of
the people affected will demand to be involved trying to solve it. Residents,
workers, fishers, those who depend on tourists and environmentalists have a
right to be involved in governance. Their actions have a direct bearing on the
welfare of the salmon. Some, such as many residents of coastal communities,
OCR for page 333
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
333
have few alternatives when salmon populations decline in abundance or when
management rules change. The practicalities of implementation demand that
whatever is decided receive support from those who are affected. "People will
not support what they cannot understand, and they cannot understand that with
which they are not involved" (FEMAT 1993:89~. However, as the number of
competing interests in a resource increases, the costs, procedural complications,
and complex policy tradeoffs of cooperative management are likely to increase as
well, often in apparent disproportion to the scope of involvement.
Cooperative management is a general approach to governance that does not
dictate the structure of organizations, except that it is probably easier to achieve
cooperation among smaller groups of people and in organizations that are less
bureaucratized than the ones that characteristically administer complex policies.
Cooperative management implies an institutional change, however, a shift in the
structure of power that acknowledges the role of various interests consumers,
representatives of different industries, environmentalists in policy, planning,
implementation, and evaluation. Traditional outsiders act in cooperation with
each other and with the government agencies that exercise legal mandates in
fishery management and have traditionally controlled most of the financial re-
sources and information used in management.
Cooperative management of salmon and water is already institutionalized in
the Pacific Northwest. First, beginning with treaty fishing-rights litigation in the
late 1960s, the treaty tribes and the state of Washington finally worked out
genuine cooperative management for salmon fishing in the Puget Sound in the
middle 1980s, and a federal court oversees a similar arrangement in Oregon
(Cohen 1986, Pinkerton 1992, Hanna and Smith 1993~. Second, the Pacific
Fishery Management Council has designed its decision structure to promote ac-
tive consultation with its salmon advisory committees. Three committees com-
prising state- and federal-agency scientists, treaty-tribe scientists, university sci-
entists, and representatives of user groups and environmental interests are formal
advisers to the council on all decisions related to salmon-fishery management. In
addition, numerous public meetings provide forums for public comment on regu-
latory decisions and management plans (PFMC 19931. Third, in 1990, as the
threat of filings under the ESA materialized, the Salmon Summit recognized a
wide range of interests as legitimate and redefined the arena for cooperative
management to include fisheries, utilities, and the other claimants to multiple use
of Pacific Northwest rivers.
The largest attempt to cooperatively manage is the framework established by
the Northwest Power Act. By creating a regional planning council, the act
brought the governors of the Pacific Northwest states to a decision arena domi-
nated by BPA management, augmenting the presence of the Northwest's con-
gressional delegation, which had played an important but little-noticed role in the
creation and management of the regional electric-power system (Lee et al. 19801.
The Power Planning Council broadened the political base of the BPA as the
OCR for page 334
334
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETYIN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
governors, through the council, gained authority and influence over this region-
ally important federal agency.
The council also took its statutory mandate for public involvement seriously,
affording opportunities for comment to citizens and organized groups as it devel-
oped plans for electric power and for fish and wildlife in the Columbia River
Basin. As is often seen in this variant of open government, however, the com-
plexity of the issues and the large geographic scope of the region made it impos-
sible, in a practical sense, for those without substantial resources to stay involved.
By the middle 1980s, the "public" with which the council and BPA consulted was
a population of organizations, not individuals: electric utilities with direct eco-
nomic interests in the federal hydropower system; a small set of consumer and
civic groups, such as the League of Women Voters, who could field volunteers to
follow the council through meetings in four states; and state fishery and wildlife
agencies and American Indian tribes with stakes in the council's fish and wildlife
program. Indeed, two organizations, the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference
Committee, an organization formed by electric utilities and large industrial con-
sumers of electric power, and the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, a
parallel organization created by the tribes and fishery agencies, gained influence
within their communities largely because of the magnitude and complexity of the
issues raised by the Northwest Power Act. Because the council eschewed any
role in managing catch levels, fishing groups played little active role in its delib-
erations, and their interests were represented by state agencies. Although the
Northwest Power Act process falls short of the ideal of "power-sharing in the
exercise of resource management" (Pinkerton 1992), it did join the agendas of
fisheries and hydropower in a way that has forced conflict into the open and
fostered joint action.
Despite the existence of numerous cooperative arrangements on several
scales, people remain largely divided, engaged in finger-pointing rather than
collaborative problem-solving, and few government agencies operate with for-
mal or legitimized involvement of affected groups or members of the public.
Most seem satisfied with the formalities of public hearings, public review and
comment on proposed rules and other documents, and the use of advisory com-
mittees to supplement the inputs of lobbyists. This is consultative, not coopera-
tive, management and has as yet done little to bring people together to collaborate
on one of the biggest challenges imaginable.
The novelty of cooperative management suggests that the assumptions be-
hind it deserve critical examination. As might be expected given both the experi-
mental nature of many cooperative management arrangements and the diversity
of social and ecological systems and their contexts, the results of studies of
cooperative arrangements for fisheries are mixed (Pinkerton 19891. McCay
(1988) found great difficulties in implementing cooperative management in a bay
clam rehabilitation project because of conflicting and unrealistic expectations
and roles and because of scientific uncertainty, but identified accomplishments as
OCR for page 337
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
337
River basin program of the Northwest Power Planning Council (Lee 1993a). A
recent retrospective analysis by two senior members of the council staff (Volkman
and McConnaha 1993) came to conclusions remarkably similar to those in the
studies by Walters et al. and Hilborn and Winton. Third, an abortive attempt to
borrow the flexibility implicit in an experimental approach was tried in 1987 in
state-forest management in Washington State (Halbert and Lee 1990, Pinkerton
1992~. Finally, the idea of adaptive management areas, in which timber harvest
would be combined with ecosystem management, is being studied in the USDA
Forest Service (USFS) program to manage federal forest lands in the Pacific
Northwest (FEMAT 19931.
This body of experience has produced lessons about the practicability of
adaptive management and the institutional conditions that affect how experi-
ments on the scale of ecosystems can be conducted:
.
i
Learning takes from decades to as long as a century2.
Patience narticu
larly in institutional settings, such as government, that work on much faster
cycles, is both necessary and difficult.
· Systematic record-keeping and monitoring are essential if learning is to
be possible. But collecting information is expensive and often hard to justify at
the outset and during times of budget stringency because the benefits of learning
are hard to estimate quantitatively.
· Cooperative management in the design and execution of experiments is
Indispensable. Experimentation within the context of resource use depends on
the collaboration of resource-users.
· Adaptive management does not eliminate political conflict but can affect
its character in important, if indirect, ways.
Paradoxically, each of those lessons runs counter to or at cross-purposes with
the administrative framework of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Conserving
species and habitats whose biology is poorly understood requires patient observa-
tion and analysis that take into account the economic needs of resource-users and
that rely on the painstaking fashioning of political consensus. But the urgency
that prompts listing of a species as endangered raises the perceived risk of failure
and inhibits experimentation even though urgency also makes learning more
tangibly valuable.
When one considers the alternative ways to approach biodiversity conserva
2The decade-scale variation in the ocean habitats of salmon, discussed in Chapter 3, adds another
complicating factor. Although improved understanding of the systematic effects of oceanographic
change can illuminate some of the variation in salmon abundance, it is likely that study of particular
populations will still need to accumulate information through several ocean fluctuations before reli-
able patterns can be found.
OCR for page 338
338
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETYIN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
lion analyzed by Moyle and Yoshiyama (1994), it is apparent that an experimen-
tal approach like adaptive management is more likely to work better at the earlier
stages of depletion before a procedurally inflexible approach is triggered by
severe decline in abundance. It is also among these healthier populations that the
risks of experimentation are more likely to be tolerable, and that the long times
needed for reliable learning can be afforded. The committee's recommendation
to move toward management by population, using such methods as terminal
fisheries, is a way to decouple the fate of populations that are endangered, and
thus subject to extraordinary protection, from populations that might be able to be
managed in a way that can permit more rapid learning. Even with these changes,
the move away from hatcheries, which permit far greater control of salmon
populations, at much lower monitoring cost, and toward ecosystem management
will raise the expense of learning and demand much more precise intervention
into the life cycles of specific, identified populations (~7olkman and McConnaha
1993~. How to carry out experimentation and learning under the more demand-
ing conditions has not been well explored; indeed, experience with artificial
propagation suggests that even that presumably easier problem of adaptive man-
agement has been formidable (Hilborn and Winton 1993~.
FEMAT (1993) suggested that adaptive management be conceptualized as a
cycle of planning and adaptation. In contrast with the image of planning as an
orderly process, adaptive management is replete with surprises, given the frag-
mented jurisdictions and conflicting claims that characterize the salmon habitat.
Those destabilizing elements, which appear to be inherent in the social dynamics
of adaptive processes, underscore the importance of patience, persistence, and a
politically grounded determination to make constructive use of inevitable con-
flicts. Disputes are sure to arise within the spans of space, time, and functional
interaction that characterize human behavior; indeed, the conflicts that gave rise
to the Northwest Power Act and that have reappeared transformed under the
Endangered Species Act are part of a long-term search for an accommodation
between humans and the natural environment symbolized by and partly summa-
rized in the plight of salmon.
Lee's (1993a) analysis of adaptive management arrived at a similar set of
conditions that influence the feasibility of an experimental approach (see Table
13-1~. Today, the last two requirements of adaptive management institutional
stability and an organizational culture that enables experimentation and learn-
ing do not exist. Creating and sustaining them seems difficult or impossible,
given the depth of conflict and the fact that open conflict has widened in scope
since the American Indian fishing-rights litigation began a quarter-century ago.
The problem is one of institutional frailty. Science can identify the problem, but
solving it requires political will and steadfast managerial leadership, which sci-
ence cannot supply. Without a durable commitment to the goal of rehabilitation,
with its painful costs, it is unlikely that social conditions under which learning
OCR for page 339
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
TABLE 13-1 Institutional Conditions Affecting Adaptive Management
339
There is a mandate to take action In the face of uncertainty. But experim.entat~on and
learning are at most secondary objectives in large ecosystems. Experimentation that
conflicts with primary objectives will often be pushed aside or not proposed.
Decision makers are aware that they are experimenting. But experimentation is an open
admission that there might be no positive return. More generally, specifying hypotheses to
be tested raises the risk of perceived failure.
Decision-makers care about improving outcomes over biological time scales. But the costs of
monitoring, controls, and replication are substantial, and they will appear especially high at
the outset when compared with the costs of unmonitored trial and error. Individual decision-
makers rarely stay in office over times of biological significance.
Preservation of pristine environments is no longer an option, and human intervention cannot
produce desired outcomes predictably.
And remedial action crosses jurisdictional boundaries and requires coordinated
implementation over long periods.
can take place will be maintained. And without experimental learning, human
resuscitation of the declining salmon population will be hit or miss.
The principles of reform, if not its details, can be stated:
· Bioregional scale. Jurisdictions and patterns of economic flows should
take into account the scale of salmon habitats. Rules and practices in stem
habitats, especially rivers and ocean fishing areas, should reflect the need to
rehabilitate salmon. In particular, halting the decline of all populations that
stakeholders judge to be worth saving must be accorded the highest priority, even
at substantial risk to human communities and other, healthier species of fish and
wildlife. Intertemporal rules, such as interest or discount rates and lengths of
contracts or leases, should take into account that changes in abundances of salmon
and in our understanding of the biological needs of managed salmon have under-
gone substantial shifts on time scales of about a decade. Flexibility to take into
account new learning at the decadal time scale is essential.
.
Cooperative management and social diversity. Stakeholders in salmon
and the economic values of their habitats are highly varied and often see them-
selves as locked in zero-sum struggles, in which the gains of some can come only
at the expense of others. Yet the emergence of cooperative management over the
last two decades, taking into account the interests of those whose economic
claims might be small or unrealized, has demonstrated that arrangements afford-
ing compensation to those who yield their claims to exploit a resource can be
negotiated and carried out. Assured compensation is, moreover, more conducive
to social stability and investment than the pursuit of highly fluctuating and dimin-
ishing resources. Acting on the bioregional scale decentralizes authority. This is
OCR for page 340
340
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
valuable especially when it fosters diversity in the approach taken to protection
and management of salmon. Diversity is a sensible response to the large uncer-
tainties that remain in our scientific understanding of salmon biology. And
diversity in social arrangements and institutions would enable salmon rehabilita-
tion to persist even in the face of common-mode disruptions, such as economic
recession and climate change. Decentralization should, however, honor obliga-
tions along stem habitats; that has not been done during the decline of the salmon
over the last century, and acknowledging and reversing this history is a central
challenge to the establishment of cooperative management now.
· Experimentation and adaptive management. Because salmon popula-
tions are far from their natural equilibria and because the salmon life cycle is
comparable in length with many societal rhythms, learning about salmon is
obscured by changes among human observers. Persistent, accurate observation is
essential to learning, particularly because learning is likely to take decades or
longer. Learning by trial and error is inherently slower than deliberate experi-
mentation because errors are often hard to recognize or diagnose correctly, and
because trials are not designed for replication or controlled comparison unless an
experimental framework is taken into account. Given the already slow pace of
learning imposed by environmental fluctuations and the time scale of the salmon
life cycle, experimentation should be used as often as it can be afforded, under
institutional conditions that provide assurance that experiments can be carried to
conclusion. Those conditions have not often been available in the past. An
objective of reform should be to make them more readily available in the future,
by ensuring funding for ecosystem-scale research and monitoring and by giving
scientists a place in the scheme of cooperative management.
Following those principles, the committee would design institutions whose
jurisdictions follow major river basins or biologically related drainages, whose
decision-making accords power and influence to the socially diverse human
groups that inhabit those ecosystems (including appropriate economic incen-
tives), and whose governing procedures and resources enable experimentation
and ensure faithful monitoring of ecosystem variables. But such a design will
have no life unless those who are governed by it take a role in the processes of
design and institutional reform. The recent history of the Pacific Northwest
shows a clear biological crisis with environmental and economic impacts that
cannot be denied. But there is not yet a social crisis of the kind that, in an open,
competitive society, can become the wellspring of institutional change.
A PROPOSAL FOR CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION
The salmon problem is regional in scale: although specific causes and pos-
sible remedies vary, salmon populations throughout the Pacific Northwest are in
serious decline. The human resources to deal with these declines are substantial
OCR for page 341
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
341
but limited. The money and, more important, time to attend to populations that
are or will be in trouble over the next decade might well be insufficient to provide
for the recovery of all those populations (NRC 1995b); that has been the experi-
ence of the ESA (Tobin 1990) even without the extraordinary stresses present in
the Northwest. In addition, institutional changes are difficult to achieve and their
effects difficult to predict, in large part because institutional responses to change
are based on the responses of individuals to the potential changes in their circum-
stances. For that reason, the committee does not attempt to recommend in detail
institutional and procedural changes needed but offers an outline for change as a
basis for responding to the decline of salmon populations in a more flexible and
more biologically effective fashion than is possible for other species. The details
must be worked out by the individuals and institutions of the region.
The committee proposes that the relevant agencies, including the National
Marine Fisheries Service, agree on a process to permit the formulation of salmon-
recovery plans in advance of listings under the ESA and that the Pacific North-
west states, acting individually and through the Northwest Power Planning Coun-
cil, provide technical and financial assistance to watershed-level organizations to
prepare and implement these preemptive recovery plans. The USFS, Department
of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of State should
also provide technical and financial assistance. The concept of a preemptive
recovery plan is described more fully below.
When a salmon population appears to be threatened or endangered, the cur-
rent institutional structure responds with a federal process. Either in response to
a petition or on its own initiative, NMFS, a federal agency, gathers information,
hears advocates, and decides whether to list the population as threatened or
endangered under the ESA. Listing a species triggers a variety of federally
mandated actions, including the preparation of a recovery plan for the population
under consideration. Listing a species and the adoption and implementation of
the recovery plan can be conflicted, politicized, and delayed because they can
involve such actions as designation of critical habitat and the prohibition or
reduction of various activities and therefore can bring the risk of serious eco-
nomic disruption (NRC l995b). The economic risks are often borne by people
different from those who bear the losses due to salmon-population declines.
Partly as a result, the seriousness of the risks is often perceived differently. Given
the hundreds of populations and metapopulations (networks of populations) into
which salmon are divided by their life histories, the widespread decline of many
of those populations and metapopulations, the inadequacy of resources of NMFS
and the other government parties to the ESA process, and the fact that the ESA
process can be triggered by petitioners who can take action without committing
substantial resources of their own, the ESA today carries the risk of producing
disorder in the Pacific Northwest, whatever the merits of its policy of saving
endangered species.
The committee has emphasized three components of a constructive course of
OCR for page 342
342
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
action. First, biologically distinct salmon populations spawn in watersheds and
migrate to sea along streams that typically flow beyond their natal watershed; as
recruits to ocean and inriver fisheries, salmon can be exposed to mixed-popula-
tion fishing. Action to protect a given population must therefore be organized
within the biologically relevant drainage and along its migration route in fresh-
water and at sea. That is, action should be bioregional and include protection or
improvement of migration paths.
Second, although it is clear that much of the habitat modification carried out
by humans over the last 150 years has been detrimental to salmon, fishery science
cannot ensure the recovery of any specific salmon population. Science can
identify changes that are likely to be necessary but cannot specify a course of
action that is known in advance to be sufficient to guarantee rehabilitation and
conservation of a species. There is no correct answer to the question of how
much biological diversity and population structure must be maintained or can be
lost to provide a long-term future for salmon. Scientific estimates including the
uncertainties 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 probablity of survival or extinction of natural
populations over what time and what area, and at what cost. Therefore, a long-
term adaptive, experimental approach is both logically compelling and pragmati-
cally indispensable for a large collection of demes like those of Pacific salmon.
Third, acting on the bioregional scale requires cooperation among diverse
landowners and water-rights holders. In many biologically relevant regions, the
land is controlled by different public and private entities and water flow is shaped
by withdrawals and impoundments controlled by landowners and others. There
is no single body of law, nor a practical way to consolidate governing powers,
sufficient to put each bioregion under the supervision of a single managing entity
today. From that practical reality grows the need to rely on cooperative manage-
ment as a way to act in the face of fragmented control.
The potential for disruption of human activities embodied in the ESA can
provide a stimulus for cooperative management if cooperation enables the di-
verse entities in a bioregion to improve their control of events. Because of the
groundwork carried out by generations of fishery biologists and most recently
summarized in FEMAT and the subbasin planning process of NPPC, it is possible
to identify the geographic outlines of salmon bioregions. And with the resources
available within the Columbia basin under the Northwest Power Act, it is pos-
sible to formulate and to begin implementation of adaptive management aimed at
ensuring the survival of salmon populations. Although the cooperation and re-
sources that can be marshaled in the near future are unlikely to be sufficient to
save all the populations that are or might become threatened, it is possible to
move beyond the watchful defensiveness of today's uncertain situation.
One way to harness the ESA's potential for disrupting human activities in a
biologically constructive fashion is to foster the development of preemptive re
OCR for page 343
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
343
covery plans, which incorporate binding contractual commitments from funding
sources to undertake adaptive management to rehabilitate a specific salmon popu-
lation within its bioregion and migration route. The plans would include a set of
experimental actions and monitoring methods that ensure the learning of lessons
important for salmon management as soon as possible probably 20 years in
many cases-and that lead to a scientifically grounded expectation that the salmon
population would increase during that time while preserving its genetic integrity.
A recovery plan would need to reflect the commitments undertaken by all the
parties that control the various elements of its execution. For that reason, it is
likely that cooperative management would characterize plans' development and
implementation. The plans would be preemptive in the sense that NMFS would
agree that while a recovery plan it has adopted is in operation, the salmon popu-
lation it covers is protected as much as is possible under the ESA. Protection of
populations would be improved by including in the preemptive recovery plan
minimum sustainable escapements for salmon populations and approaches for
filling out the dendritic habitat of salmon populations.
In sum, the formulation and adoption of a plan would forestall a petition
under the ESA to protect the population covered by the plan. No filing on a
population would be acted upon by NMFS after a state certified that a recovery
plan was being developed and that positive steps were being taken or seriously
planned to improve prospects for conservation and rehabilitation of the salmon
populations, unless a petitioner demonstrated that a population decline warrant-
ing emergency protection superseded the state's certification; this policy would
allow time for a plan to be developed but leave the possibility that NMFS could
reject a proposed plan (or lack of a plan) and take additional action.
A preemptive recovery plan is attractive because it permits control of the
ESA process, but mobilizing the divergent interests in a bioregion, designing an
adaptive-management program, and ensuring funding to implement the plan re-
quire resources beyond the capability of the inhabitants of most bioregions.
Therefore, the active support of state governments is essential. The committee
does not believe that any legislation prevents or discourages this from being
pursued (although a way would need to be found to allow the government to
delay action on a petition to list a species). State governments have already
begun to act at the watershed level in natural-resources policies (Oregon Water-
shed Improvement Council EKrueger 1994] and Washington Watershed Restora-
tion Partnership Program "Harrison 199411. More important, states exercise legal
authority over water rights and existing land-use planning and zoning powers.
Finally, the states in the Pacific Northwest already act through NPPC, the agency
with the most highly developed base of knowledge relevant to protection and
enhancement of salmon on the bioregional scale; it can also direct funding to
support recovery-plan implementation within the Columbia River Basin. The
activities of the states should be augmented by the USFS and DOI's Bureau of
Land Management (BLM), where these agencies are developing adaptive-man
OCR for page 344
344
UPSTREaM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
agement areas and watershed-level plans under FEMAT. Assistance will also be
needed from the Pacific Fisheries Management Council and the International
Pacific Salmon Commission to set fishing restrictions to protect specific popula-
tions, and from other relevant agencies that operate beyond state boundaries.
It is unclear whether the support and resources available through federal and
state governments will be enough to induce participants on the bioregional scale
to create preemptive recovery plans. And it is possible that preemptive plans
could seem so attractive that the organizing efforts would strain the resources
available from the states and NPPC. If that were the case, it would be necessary
to set priorities to provide resources first to bioregions harboring fish populations
that are already declining seriously. Regional and state agencies seeking to
stretch their resources must take into account, however, the stem effects that link
watersheds through migration routes. By focusing on bioregions in trouble to-
day, planning and action could rapidly encumber the limited capacity of the
Snake River and other waterways to provide flows for migration or could force
drastic, long-term constraints on fishing in an attempt to limit depletions from
mixed-population fisheries. Such stem linkages entangle the fates of salmon
from distant, apparently unconnected bioregions; that entanglement is clarified
but not removed by preemptive recovery plans. Although preemptive recovery
plans would have a bioregional focus, it is critical to their success that they take
into account the entire life cycle and environment of salmon, including such
factors as ocean conditions, international fisheries, large-scale interactions among
salmon populations, as well as more obvious but more local factors.
The prospect of constructive action to conserve and rehabilitate at least some
salmon populations without the conflict and delays encountered under the present
ESA regime leads the committee to advance the idea of preemptive plans. This
approach requires no new legislation, and the resources that it calls into play are
already available within the region. Although the shifts in incentives proposed
are incremental, the bioregion-scale learning that the adaptive plans would pro-
duce is likely to lead to more substantial change over the next several decades.
The proposed strategy also becomes more compelling as salmon abundances
decline, in that bioregions that fail to act are more likely to face petitions under
circumstances not of their own choosing. By increasing the incentive to act on
behalf of salmon populations, institutional mechanisms can play a role that is
more constructive than the protective but conflicted stance of those institutions
today.
Preemptive recovery plans seek a better biological result for salmon, but that
intent could be undermined by people with divided interests. For example, the
1987 Timber, Fish, and Wildlife agreement in Washington's state-regulated and
managed forests had the active support of the environmental community initially,
but nongovernment participants found themselves overwhelmed by the volume
of regulatory work (Halbert and Lee 19903. It took several years of learning and
friction to reach a practicable mode of operation (Pinkerton 19921. Given the
OCR for page 345
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
345
mistrust and conflict that are the legacy of the decline of salmon in the Pacific
Northwest, it is essential that all parties potentially involved understand that a
preemptive recovery plan is a negotiated settlement among parties with different
goals (see Lee 1993a: 104-1 131. Indeed, in this respect, the proposal has much in
common with habitat conservation plans (HCPs), which are required by Section
10 of the ESA (added in amendments to the act in 1982) of private parties who
seek a permit for "incidental take" of listed species (NRC l995b). Like the
preemptive recovery plans proposed here, HCPs are negotiated settlements; but
HCP negotiations potentially involve fewer parties and their basis might be
slightly narrower i.e., the right to use some habitat for purposes other than
conservation in exchange for setting other habitat aside for conservation.3
A recovery plan is an experiment, not a guaranteed recipe for rebuilding
salmon populations; there are no guaranteed recipes. The experimental character
of adaptive management requires continuing vigilance by all parties involved in
implementing a plan. The spatial and temporal scales of human actions aimed at
rehabilitating salmon need to match the large range of spatial, temporal, and
biological scales of salmon populations. The committee's recommendation builds
in these scales of action. Meshing the biological requirements with the institu-
tional rules by which human disagreements are addressed will not be easy. We
have proposed, for example, that once a recovery plan covering a 20-year period
is adopted only clear evidence that warrants emergency action under the ESA
would be accepted as grounds for reopening the plan's contractual obligations.
As knowledge accumulates about what salmon need from the habitat, recovery
plans already in force might become outmoded, just as the wholesale use of
hatcheries to replace lost habitat now seems counterproductive. Yet unless the
experimental arrangements embodied in a recovery plan are given time enough to
work and perhaps to fail, we will never accumulate reliable knowledge of what
does and does not make a difference.
It is the duty of government agencies like NMFS, charged with the legal
responsibility to protect the nation's interest in endangered species, to persevere
in the face of political turbulence so that reliable knowledge of species and
ecosystems under pressure can be gained. Independent scientific advice can be of
considerable value in testing administrative judgments, as discussed in Chapter
14, but advice informs rather than substitutes for political courage. How much
political courage is needed depends heavily on how effective a cooperative man-
agement alliance is built during the formulation of the recovery plan. Given the
need to act on a bioregional scale so that human actions can take into account the
3See Thornton (1991, especially pages 639-652) for a thoughtful discussion of habitat conserva-
tion plans under the Endangered Species Act similar in direction to the one we provide here. Region-
ally based, negotiated approaches to conservation plans were also endorsed by a recent National
Research Council report on the Endangered Species Act (NRC l995b).
OCR for page 346
346
UPSTREAM: SALMON AND SOCIETY IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
needs of salmon throughout their ranges, cooperative management is more likely
to succeed when there are social, political, and economic ties that reinforce action
on the bioregional scale. The human, social underpinnings of a recovery plan
need to be considered as an important variable from the outset (see McCay and
Acheson 1987~; salmon rehabilitation is social action.
A few subbasins in the Pacific Northwest appear to offer particular promise
for implementing the approach described above. Some examples follow; these
are based on committee members' experiences, not on a systematic review, and
they are not intended to exclude any area not mentioned.
Columbia River System
Yakima River, Washington
Attempts are already under way to rebuild salmon populations in the Yakima
basin. Most of the upper Yakima falls within the boundaries of either the national
forest system (Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie, Gifford Pinchot) or the Yakima reserva-
tion. The lower part of the basin contains large agricultural areas (apples, alfalfa,
hops, etc.) and rangeland. There is an effort to develop a basin-management plan
for salmon restoration with at least most of the key participants e.g., tribal,
federal, state, and private- involved.
Grande Ronde River, Oregon
The Grande Ronde was one of two subbasins identified as pilot areas for the
Oregon Governor's Watershed Restoration Initiative. The USFS and BLM have
also spent considerable resources on analysis of habitat in the Grande Ronde
River Basin. An interagency restoration group has already been formed; as in the
case of the Yakima River Basin, local planning has already begun. Most of the
Grande Ronde watershed is in federal ownership although there are some impor-
tant private landowners along the river. This subbasin contains ESA-listed
chinook.
McKenzie River, Oregon
The McKenzie River flows into the Willamette River at Eugene, Oregon,
and is the focus of much political attention. The adjacent land includes large
areas of USFS and BLM forests and some substantial wilderness areas, but there
are sizable tracts of private forest land and agricultural and urban development.
Spotted owls abound along the McKenzie River, which might place some con-
straints on adaptive management. The Pacific Rivers Council (based in Eugene)
is trying to form a local basin coalition (Eugene Water and Electric Board and
Lane County 1992~.
OCR for page 347
INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS
Coos Bay, Oregon
347
Coastal Streams and Estuaries
The other basin identified for local cooperative planning by the Oregon
Governor's Watershed Restoration Initiative (and hence an officially sanctioned
mandate to do bioregional adaptive management), Coos Bay is typical of coastal
watersheds in Oregon and Washington. Headwaters are in private forests, and
lowlands are in agricultural and urban areas. There is considerable political
support for restoration here (CooIey and Heikkila 1994~.
Rogue River, Oregon
The Rogue River, a large and scenic river in southern Oregon, is unusual
among large coastal streams of the region in that it has only one major impound-
ment (Lost Creek Reservoir), and that one is very near the reveres source. The
river has been designated a wild and scenic river and is the subject of substantial
recreational fishing and tourism. Biologically and physically, the basin-which
includes federal, state, and private land is of great actual and potential value as
a salmon-production area.
Willapa Bay, Washington
Willapa Bay is potentially a huge salmon-production area if natural produc-
tion processes are allowed to operate (Chapter 2~. The Willapa Alliance has an
effort, though somewhat frail, to get the bioregional planning process started.
Nisqually River, Washington
Near the southern tip of Puget Sound, the Nisqually suffers from most woes
except a large urban center. The Fort Lewis military reservation, which owns a
large section of the Nisqually, is making serious attempts to conduct environmen-
tal planning. The Nisqually River Council, along with the Nisqually Tribe and
other landowners, forged a local coalition to develop and implement salmon
restoration strategies. This basin could show some substantial gains if attention
were paid to restoring floodplain connections and a more natural flow regime and
if policies regarding hatcheries and fishing in the area were adapted successfully
to rehabilitation.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
adaptive management
