Saving Seafood

Conservationists, tribes say deal with Biden administration is a road map to breach Snake River dams

December 17, 2023 — The U.S. government said Thursday it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted populations of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them.

President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sought that called the agreement a road map for dismantling them. Filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, it pauses long-running litigation over federal operation of the dams and represents the most significant step yet toward breaching them.

“Today’s historic agreement marks a new direction for the Pacific Northwest,” senior White House adviser John Podesta said in a written statement. “Today, the Biden-Harris Administration and state and Tribal governments are agreeing to work together to protect salmon and other native fish, honor our obligations to Tribal nations, and recognize the important services the Columbia River System provides to the economy of the Pacific Northwest.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Plaintiffs in Long Fight Over Endangered Salmon Hope a Resolution Is Near

August 16, 2022 — After decades of legal fighting over hydroelectric dams that have contributed to the depletion of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest, the Biden administration is extending settlement talks with plaintiffs who hope the resolution they are seeking — removal of the dams — is near.

The federal government has been sued five times over its failed attempts to save salmon in the Columbia River basin, and for violating longstanding treaties with the Nez Perce, Yakama and Umatilla tribes. But now the Biden administration and others say that restoring the salmon population is an issue of tribal justice, as well as the only real solution.

Last month, the administration released a report on the feasibility of removing four dams on the lower Snake River to aid salmon recovery, and another on how the energy they produce could be replaced. The first report, conducted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and released in draft form, found that sweeping changes are needed to restore salmon to fishable levels, including removing at least one and potentially all four dams on the lower Snake and reintroducing salmon to areas entirely blocked by the dams.

The Biden administration stopped short of endorsing the findings but said it was reviewing all of the information to determine long-term goals for the Columbia River basin. And earlier this month, the administration and plaintiffs in a related court case agreed to pause the litigation for a second year to continue working on “durable solutions” for restoring salmon runs while also tending to economic, energy and tribal needs.

Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who long resisted any salmon recovery plan that included removing the four dams, joined Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, a fellow Democrat, in commissioning a separate study released this summer. That study found removing the four dams was the most promising approach to salmon recovery.

Ms. Murray and Mr. Inslee have not yet taken a position on whether the hydropower dams should be removed, but the report concluded that it would require spending between $10.3 billion and $27.2 billion to replace the electricity generated by the dams, and to find other ways to ship grain from the region and provide irrigation water.

Ms. Murray is the most powerful Northwestern senator in Congress. But she will need the rest of the Democratic delegation to join her in support of salmon recovery efforts to turn the tide. The report states that removing dams would require congressional authorization, a funding strategy and a concrete timeline.

“What’s clear is that we need to support salmon recovery from every angle possible,” Ms. Murray said in a statement.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Declining Salmon Population Threatens Fishing Tourism in Pacific Northwest

August 24, 2021 — Beneath the vacancy sign at the Salmon River Motel, a black and white placard reads “Salmon Lives Matter, Give a Dam.” For years the motel has been a profitable business in this canyon town of 400 three hours north of Boise, with a mile-long Main Street that swells each summer with visiting sport fishermen.

Now the motel and other businesses here are at risk, as the fish that drive the local economy shrink in both number and size.

This year, regional fish and wildlife agencies recorded one of the smallest counts of adult spring Chinook salmon in a generation in the Snake and Columbia river basin. Last year was worse. A wide body of research connects their decline to rising temperatures and climate change, which have compounded the damage done to fish populations by hydroelectric dams.

The impact of this decline ripples along this species’ entire migratory route, from the tourist economies and tribal communities of the inland Northwest to the $2 billion commercial fishing industry in ocean waters as far as Alaska, where state fisheries report total harvest weight has dropped by half since the 1960s.

Across the inland Pacific Northwest, dwindling salmon runs have emptied motel rooms, tackle shops and restaurants. Business in Riggins this summer beat expectations as pandemic fears eased, but the continuing decline of the sought-after Chinook—the largest of all Pacific salmon—threatens to devastate economies and tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

Pacific Northwest heat wave sets up ‘grim’ migration for salmon on Columbia, Snake rivers

June 30, 2021 — This is shaping up to be a dire summer for fish and trees.

Temperatures in the Columbia and Snake rivers are already within two degrees of the slaughter zone of 2015, when half the sockeye salmon run was lost because of high water temperatures. An estimated 250,000 sockeye died that year long before reaching their spawning grounds.

The sockeye run is at its peak right now just as temperatures hit record highs across Washington state and in Idaho. Spring and summer chinook and steelhead migrating in the rivers also are at risk.

Salmon are cold-water animals. Temperatures above 62 degrees make them more vulnerable to disease, and as temperatures climb higher, they will stop migrating altogether.

The risk of heat stress is present in the mainstem rivers, but also in fish ladders, where salmon will turn around and head back down river if the temperature is higher at the top of the ladder than where they entered it. Cooling water released at the top of the ladders can only do so much as air temperatures reach unprecedented highs.

Water temperatures are already at dangerous levels despite an earlier start to cold-water releases from deep in the Dworshak Dam, on the Clearwater River, upstream of Lower Granite Dam on the Lower Snake River. Nonetheless, temperatures in the tailrace at Lower Granite are still edging above safe levels for salmon and are even hotter downriver.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Warming seas could wipe out Snake River chinook by 2060, scientists predict

February 19, 2021 — Snake River spring-summer chinook could be nearly extinct by 2060 and interventions are “desperately needed” to boost survival in every stage of their lives, scientists warn.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, modeled survival of eight populations of wild Snake River Basin spring-summer chinook during the ocean phase of their life, under various climate-warming scenarios.

Salmon hatch in rivers, but mature for years at sea before they return to the waters of their birth. It is a perilous life cycle that could become all but impossible for some already fragile salmon populations that make one of the most arduous of all journeys, all the way to Idaho. They travel more than 1,800 miles round trip, climb more than a mile in elevation, and tackle eight dams, each way: four on the main stem Columbia, then four more on the Lower Snake River.

Add just a little ocean warming, and it’s curtains. Populations declined in all eight basin chinook populations for which the scientists ran predictions. Just a little more than 1 degree Celsius temperature increase in sea-surface temperature produced dire effects — with mortality as high as 90% in warmer seas.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Rising water temperatures could be a death sentence for Pacific salmon

February 12, 2021 — In the Pacific Northwest, several species of salmon are in danger of extinction. The Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office has released a report on the state of salmon populations in the state’s watersheds—and the findings predict a grim future.

The report was commissioned by the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, established by the state legislature in 1998 in response to the Salmon Recovery Planning Act. Its findings showed that 10 to 14 species of  in the northwest are “threatened or endangered,” and five species are “in crisis.”

The findings, though alarming, are in line with population trends over the last few decades. The once prolific salmon populations in Washington State have been declining for years, and populations are now estimated to be at about 5% of historic highs.

The five species of salmon and steelhead that the report found to be most at risk are Snake River spring/summer chinook, Puget Sound chinook, Lake Ozette sockeye, Upper Columbia River spring chinook, and Puget Sound steelhead—a sampling that covers a wide geographic area in the state.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Conservation groups ask federal judge to halt salmon plan

January 22, 2021 — Salmon and steelhead advocates returned to court to again ask a federal judge to overturn the government’s plan to operate dams on the Snake and Columbia rivers in a way that pushes the fish closer to extinction.

The National Wildlife Federation and several other conservation groups, including Idaho Rivers United and the Idaho Conservation League, contend a biological opinion issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and associated documents and decisions by the Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration violate the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act.

Last year, the agencies completed an environmental impact statement ordered by Judge Michael Simon of Portland after he found the government’s 2014 plan to be illegal. In it, the agencies dismissed the idea of breaching the four lower Snake River dams as too costly while also admitting that dam removal offered the fish the best chance of recovery. Instead, the agencies chose a plan built largely on spilling water at the dams to help speed juvenile salmon and steelhead downstream during their migration to the Pacific Ocean.

Todd True, the lead EarthJustice attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the groups felt forced to file.

Read the full story at The Spokesman-Review

Studies give insight on plight of orca whales

December 30, 2019 — Two studies and a state report released this month build on the efforts to understand what’s impacting the region’s endangered Southern Resident orca whales and what steps could be taken to help save them.

Researchers and wildlife managers have for years suggested that the Southern Resident orcas, which spend several months of the year in the Salish Sea and coastal waters of Washington, are struggling to find large, nutrient-rich chinook salmon to eat.

Studies recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest the Southern Resident orcas are competing with other fish-eating orca populations of the North Pacific Ocean and that orca calves born to families without grandmothers have a lesser chance of finding chinook to eat and surviving to adulthood.

Meanwhile, a draft state report released Dec. 20 concludes it’s not clear whether a move long called for by environment and wildlife groups – to remove dams on the lower Snake River – would significantly boost the number of fish available to the region’s orcas.

Removing four dams on the lower Snake River in southeast Washington, where it curves from the Idaho border toward the Oregon border, could improve conditions in the river system for salmon, according to the report.

Read the full story at The Spokesman-Review

Environmental and fishing groups sue to save salmon

February 24, 2017 — Environmental and fishing groups are suing the federal government to provide cooler habitat for migrating fish in the Columbia River system of Washington and Oregon.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Seattle against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the agency.

The lawsuit was filed by Columbia Riverkeeper, Snake River Waterkeeper, Idaho Rivers United, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, and the Institute for Fisheries Resources.

It seeks to compel the EPA to create a temperature pollution budget for the river system, to keep rivers cool enough to support salmon and steelhead runs in the face of global warming.

Giant dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers create reservoirs that cause water temperatures to rise in summer months, hurting fish.

Read the full story from the Associated Press here