President Joe Biden opened a new chapter in the history of salmon recovery in the Columbia Basin last week with the release of a presidential memo titled "Memorandum on Restoring Healthy and Abundant Salmon, Steelhead and Other Native Fish Populations in the Columbia River Basin."
It's a historic document, marking the first time a sitting president has waded into the complicated issues of hydroelectric power production, agriculture, fish and transportation in the Columbia Basin. And for this, the president and the White House Council on Environmental Quality should be applauded. I suspect they discovered very early in the 12-month, closed-door negotiations that there are no easy answers in the basin.
It's great to see the administration specifically call out its "treaty responsibilities to Tribal Nations." The federal government has a long and inglorious history of ignoring tribal treaties, so any time a sitting president acknowledges the federal government's respect for tribal treaties it feels like progress.
It's also encouraging to see at least a partial settlement in the ongoing litigation over the hydroelectric system. The Bonneville Power Administration will provide $10 million annually over the next 20 years to support tribally led studies on reintroducing salmon above Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, including examining ways to address fish passage at the two major facilities. This provides a real chance for sustainable salmon populations to return to an area completely cut off from salmon since the 1940s.
I suspect the administration's interest in salmon recovery was at least partially influenced by Deb Haaland, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the first Native American to hold a cabinet seat in the history of the United States. When institutions are composed of a diverse group of leaders — with ethnic, cultural and economic diversity — new perspectives and ideas can take hold.
I hope this is one of those moments.
But I can only suspect that Haaland played a role, because the process completely lacked transparency and the negotiations excluded the very stakeholders — Northwest public utilities — that have been financing salmon recovery in the basin. I hope going forward that federal agencies show more respect for open government than the White House CEQ displayed over the past 12 months.
Per the president's memo, federal agencies have 120 days to review programs that affect salmon, steelhead and other native fish in the Columbia Basin, and identify and initiate steps needed to advance the policy.
Within 220 days, the agencies are directed to provide the Office of Management and Budget with an assessment of programs that could advance the policy, and to prioritize those programs "to the extent feasible in their program and budget planning.
The presidential memo offers a great opportunity to find additional financing to take salmon recovery beyond the mouth of the Columbia River.
Northwest public utility ratepayers have been the biggest contributors in financing the largest endangered species recovery program in the nation. Now that Biden has raised salmon recovery to a national issue, it's in the national interest for the federal government to appropriate money consistent with that national goal.
A good first step in reaching the president's goal of sustainable salmon and steelhead populations would be to provide funding for more study of salmon in the ocean.
Northwest ratepayers have spent billions of dollars studying salmon in the Columbia Basin. There is a tremendous library of knowledge on habitat restoration and hatchery operations. We know every wart on the hydroelectric system, but know very little about the life of salmon after they make it to the ocean. How big of an issue is delayed mortality? What impact are predators such as sea lions having on juvenile salmon in the ocean? What impacts are rising ocean temperatures having on salmon?
It's remarkable that we don't know where salmon go when they leave the river, but we know when and where to catch them on their way home.
It's also long past time to consider more restrictions on the commercial ocean harvest of salmonids. So far this year commercial trawlers have caught 150 percent of their allowed salmon bycatch in waters off Alaska and killed nine orcas.
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act defines bycatch as "fish that are harvested in a fishery but which are not sold or kept for personal use. This includes the portion of the catch that is discarded back into the sea and unobserved mortality due to a direct encounter with fishing gear that does not result in the capture of that species by a fisherman."
Chinook salmon bycatch in the Gulf of Alaska is almost entirely composed of fish from southeast Alaska, British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The bycatch numbers are likely just a small factor in the decline of salmon runs on the West Coast, but a factor nonetheless. If a sea lion munches on 100 salmon at the fish ladder at Bonneville Dam, teams are scrambled to kill or remove it, because we think every salmon is precious.
Shouldn't the ocean trawling industry have that same standard?
The Northwest has invested billions of dollars into habitat restoration. It's spilling water instead of generating carbon-free electricity, and the region continues to discuss breaching dams. But it's OK for endangered fish bound for the Columbia and Snake rivers to be killed as bycatch in a pollock fishery?
While salmon runs up and down the West Coast are depressed, the salmon fishery in Alaska is having a booming year.
Statewide salmon harvest has exceeded the preseason forecast by 26 million fish, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Total commercial salmon harvest, as of Sept. 1, was 186,000 Chinook, 17.9 million chum, 1.5 million coho, 145.3 million pink and 49.9 million sockeye for a total harvest of 215 million salmon, according to ADF&G.
To think that we will recover Northwest salmon and steelhead populations by rehabilitating habitat, placing moratoriums on sport fishing and curtailing hydroelectric production is ludicrous.
A juvenile salmon that leaves the river and dies in a net in the ocean is a waste of Northwest ratepayer money.
Northwest tribes knew how to harvest salmon so they would return year after year. They fished in the rivers and streams, not in mixed-stock ocean fisheries, where it's impossible to discriminate between pollock and salmon, or between hatchery and endangered stocks.
Until there's a true understanding and accounting of the impacts of ocean harvest and a willingness to make deep — and enforced — cuts to the commercial salmon harvest throughout the North Pacific Ocean, Northwest salmon populations will likely continue to teeter on the brink of extinction.
Before we make more cuts to Northwest hydroelectric production, federal agencies should take a deep look at ocean conditions and harvest.
The Northwest has spent billions of dollars on three of the four H's — habitat, hydro and hatcheries. It's time for federal agencies to build their knowledge of the ocean life of salmon, and take a long look at the forgotten H — harvest.
Steve Ernst began covering energy policy and resource development in the Pacific Northwest in 1999. He has been editor of Clearing Up since 2003, and has been a fellow at the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and University of Texas.
