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Toxic Waters, Part 2: Focus Should Be Clean Up, Not Do Not Eat, Tribal Leaders Say

Washington State's recommended fish consumption rates boil down to just 6.7 grams per day per resident, or one eight-ounce fillet per month.In contrast, Oregon's rate to determine how much contamination is allowable in its waters assumes a 175-gram-per-day consumption rate, or about 24 eight-ounce fillets per month. — Washington State’s recommended fish consumption rates boil down to just 6.7 grams per day per resident, or one eight-ounce fillet per month.In contrast, Oregon’s rate to determine how much contamination is allowable in its waters assumes a 175-gram-per-day consumption rate, or about 24 eight-ounce fillets per month.

Terri Hansen, 1/12/14, Indian Country Today Media Network

The problems associated with contamination in Northwestern waters are mounting.

For years the many contaminants in Washington State waterways have prompted the state’s Department of Health to issue official warnings against eating Washington fish too frequently. Washington currently has fish consumption advisories issued throughout the state.

“The tribes are not only interested in protecting all the species of fish they eat, but they’re also concerned about protecting their economic interests,” said Ann Seiter, fish consumption rate coordinator for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Tribes are calling for major changes in pollution policy. When health officials from Washington and Oregon issued advisories for mid-Columbia River’s resident fish last September due to elevated mercury and PCB levels, tribal leaders were outraged.

“The focus should not be ‘Do not eat’–it should be ‘Clean up’–the Columbia River,” said Yakama Nation Chairman Harry Smiskin in a statement at the time.

The Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce and Warm Springs tribes urged the governors of Washington and Idaho to update water quality standards and fish consumption rates.

“The tribes believe that the long-term solution to this problem isn’t keeping people from eating contaminated fish—it’s keeping fish from being contaminated in the first place,” Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Chairman Joel Moffett said in a statement. “Armed with higher fish consumption rates and water quality standards, we hope there will be a greater motivation to remove pollutants from the Columbia River and its tributaries.”

Washington has also issued a lower Columbia advisory that warns of PCBs, DDT and Dioxin as well as other compounds. To the state’s east, an advisory has been issued for the Spokane River, which is contaminated with PCBs, lead and other harmful materials. There is also a statewide mercury advisory.

Washington and Idaho are reevaluating their fish consumption rates, which are used to calculate water quality standards that protect human health. The four Oregon tribes urged Washington and Idaho to adopt at least the same rate that Oregon uses to establish water quality standards protective of all fish consumers in the region, according to the White Salmon Enterprise.

Oregon’s 175-grams-per-day suggested consumption is a more accurate representation of how much fish most of Oregon’s residents actually eat. But even that does not go far enough, tribal leaders say. State and federal governments must act to clean the polluted sections of the Columbia River contaminating fish, Smiskin said.

“The fish advisories confirm what the Yakama Nation has known for decades,” Smiskin said. “State and federal governments can no longer ignore the inadequacy of their regulatory efforts and the failure to clean up the Columbia River.”

The Yakama Nation repeatedly identified contaminated sites along the Columbia, expressing concerns for the health and culture of the Yakama people and calling upon the state and federal agencies for cleanup actions that would protect the tribe’s resources, retained by them in the Treaty of 1855.

“The new advisories once again pass the burden of responsibility from industry and government to tribes and people in the region,” Smiskin said. “Rather then addressing the contamination, we are being told to reduce our reliance on the Columbia River’s fish. This is unacceptable.”

Toxic Waters: Consumption Advisories on Life-Giving Year-Round Fish Threaten Health

Terri Hansen ICTMN

The iconic Chinook salmon, for millennia a cornerstone of Pacific Northwest diet, spirituality, ceremony and even the tribes’ economy, is fast becoming toxic in Washington State.

And rather than focus on cleaning up the waterways that year-round salmon reside in, Washington state agencies have issued fish-consumption advisories. The less fish consumed, at the lower limits, the higher concentration of contaminants is deemed acceptable.

But salmon are not just a way of life. They are life. And, Northwest tribes say, the cavalier attitude toward their contamination not only risks health but also guts treaty rights and the very way of life of the land’s original peoples.

Studies of adult salmon indicate that Puget Sound Chinook salmon have higher concentrations of legacy contaminants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), than salmon from other parts of the Northwest. The state’s solution? Limit consumption to one Puget Sound Chinook fillet a week, and two Puget Sound resident Chinook (blackmouth) fillets a month.

Tribal peoples in Western Washington who eat their usual intake of fish and seafood–indeed, the traditional foods they have eaten for millennia–must do so now at risk of disease due to the toxins that lurk in their waters, not to mention in their state politics. People who eat fish more than once a month are not protected by Washington State water quality standards.

Fish, with their high levels of precious proteins and rich omega-3 fatty acids, are touted as improving health and extending life. But fish from polluted waters can expose unborn babies, infants, children and adults to mercury, lead, arsenic, PCBs and other toxins that can compromise immune function, cause cancer and adversely affect reproduction, development and endocrine functions.

Washington State’s Department of Health recommends that residents eat no more than two fish fillets a week, in concert with very strict selection, preparation and cooking criteria, to avoid toxicity. Compare that with Washington State’s Department of Ecology’s fish consumption rate (FCR) determination of an eight-ounce fish fillet a month, or 6.5 grams a day.

“Washington uses one of the lowest FCRs in the nation to regulate pollution in our waters,” said Billy Frank Jr., (Nisqually), chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

The less fish consumed by residents, said Frank, the more pollutants that can be dumped into waterways. The higher the fish consumption rate, the cleaner that Washington waterways will need to be. Establishing a higher consumption rate will force polluters to reduce the amount of new contaminants they dump into the water, keeping salmon and other seafood clean.

Studies reveal that Washingtonians are among the highest fish-consuming populations in the nation. That’s not surprising given that 29 federally recognized tribal nations exist within a state bound by the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River and the Salish Sea, with the state itself wrapped around Puget Sound and interlaced with numerous rivers.

“State government admits that the current rate does not protect most Washington citizens from toxics in our waters that can cause illness or death,” said Frank. Washington’s rate should be at least as protective as Oregon’s rate of 175 grams per day, equivalent to about 24 eight-ounce fillets per month, Frank said.

The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s (CRITFC) 1994 fish consumption survey revealed that the average Columbia River tribal member consumed 58.7 grams of fish per day, and also found that they typically ate the whole fish. The survey prompted Oregon to revise its FCR in 1994, which Oregon updated in 2011 in line with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendations. But industry in Washington, led by Boeing, say that Oregon’s standard is impossible.

Frank said the effort to adopt a more accurate FCR is one of the biggest public policy battles in the country, pitting human health against the economy.

“Industry leaders such as Boeing are digging in their heels to delay or kill rule-making on a more accurate rate because they say it will increase their cost of doing business,” he said.

“Tribal leaders were very disappointed when [Washington] failed to adopt fish consumption standards in 2012,” Ann Seiter, the FCR coordinator for the NWIFC, told ICTMN in reference to InvestigateWest’s five-part series on the issue in 2012.

InvestigateWest’s insightful five-part-plus series describes how former Governor Christine Gregoire was divided between acting for the tribes, powerful supporters who wanted stricter water pollution rules, and her supporters in the aerospace industry, like Boeing, which were against tightening FCR rules, in 2011–2012. Ecology stopped work on changes to water pollution rules in June 2012 with a delay to at least 2014, after which Gregoire would no longer be governor, the team reported.

“The tale of how Boeing and its allies beat back … Ecology’s attempt to change a fish consumption rate that pretty much everyone involved acknowledges is too low provides a fascinating look at how the levers of power are pulled in Olympia,” InvestigateWest said.

The tribes are upset with the continuing delays.

“They’ve taken their concerns to the EPA regarding their Trust responsibilities, as well as their obligations under the Clean Water Act,” Seiter said.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, river water should be clean enough so that people can eat the fish. Environment and fisheries organizations sued the EPA in October 2013 for non-compliance under the Clean Water Act for allegedly failing to protect Washingtonians from toxic pollution entering Puget Sound, the Columbia River, the Spokane River and other waterways.

In a letter to Ecology last June, the new Governor Inslee announced that he would organize an informal group of advisers from local governments, Indian tribes and businesses, according to InvestigateWest. Inslee’s letter to Ecology Director Maia Bellon, released last June 7, called for the agency to help educate Inslee’s advisory group, “including real-world scenarios illustrating how new criteria would be applied and how new implementation and compliance tools would work in the permitting context,” they reported. Ecology officials had already said the “implementation and compliance tools” could include giving businesses up to 40 years to cut pollution levels to the amount that presumably would be required once accurate fish-consumption rates are in place.

Tribal leaders responded by taking their concerns directly to Inslee, Seiter said.

In December China banned shellfish from the West Coast, citing, among other factors, high levels of inorganic arsenic in geoduck clams harvested by the Puyallup Tribe in the Redondo area of Puget Sound, according to Earthfix.opb.org. The ban underscored the direct negative economic impact of pollution on tribes.

“The tribes are not only interested in protecting all the species of fish they eat, but they’re also concerned about protecting their economic interests,” said Seiter.

Washington business associations, cities and counties together hired an engineering firm to prepare a report, released on December 4, 2013, that evaluated technologies potentially capable of meeting Ecology’s effluent discharge limits for revised human health water quality criteria for arsenic, benzo(a)pyrene (BAP), mercury, and PCBs. The report coincided with the public rollout and comment period for Ecology’s proposed rule changes to the state’s water quality standards in early 2014, including human health criteria involving the FCR.

“Currently there are no known facilities that treat to the [health water quality criteria] and anticipated effluent limits that are under consideration,” the report stated. It also reported limitations in proven technologies capable of compliance with the revised health water quality criteria.

One tribal official who spoke on condition of anonymity said tribal leaders are sticking close to these issues.

“As we discussed this ongoing environmental catastrophe, we decided we wouldn’t go to jail anymore like we did in the fish wars,” the leader told ICTMN. “But we are ready to go to war [to] protect the water.”

Tribes partner in marine survival research

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

Treaty Indian tribes have invested millions of dollars in hatchery programs and habitat restoration, but poor marine survival continues to stand in the way of salmon recovery.

Marine survival rates for many stocks of chinook, coho and steelhead that migrate through the Salish Sea are less than one-tenth of what they were 30 years ago.

“We have a solid understanding of the factors that affect salmon survival in fresh water,” said Terry Williams, commissioner of fisheries and natural resources for the Tulalip Tribes. “To improve ocean survival, we need a more complete understanding of the effects of the marine environment on salmon and steelhead.”

The Tulalip, Lummi, Nisqually and Port Gamble S’Klallam tribes are among the partners in the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, which also brings together state and federal agencies from the United States and Canada, educational institutions and salmon recovery groups. The Salish Sea is the name designated to the network of waterways between the southwestern tip of British Columbia and northwest Washington. It includes the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Strait of Georgia, the waters around the San Juan and Gulf islands, as well as Puget Sound.

Led by the non-profit Long Live the Kings and the Pacific Salmon Foundation, the project is coordinating and standardizing data collection to improve the sharing of information and help managers better understand the relationship between salmon and the marine environment.

The project is entering a five-year period of intensive research, after which the results will be converted into conclusions and management actions.

“A new collaborative approach is being taken,” Williams said. “The question is, what do we do with the information we have and how do we make predictions?”

For more information, visit the Long Live the Kings website.

Video: Yakama Nation’s Work to Bring Back the Salmon

ICTMN Staff, 12/29/13

Time was when the salmon ran so thick you could walk on their backs to cross the river.

That’s how the elders tell it.

Then came the dams. The dams cut off key points in salmon migration, preventing the mighty fish from returning to their birthplace to spawn future generations. It was obvious to the indigenous experts that this was going to affect not only the well being of the fish species but also of the entire forest—and ultimately, of the tribes themselves.

But now, 100 years later, Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples are using that same knowledge to restore the habitat. Northwestern tribes have toiled for decades to stop the degradation of salmon habitat and bring back the fish’s numbers.

The video below looks at the efforts of the Yakama Nation and its innovative programs. It was recently posted to the site of the website Washington Tribes, dedicated to disseminating information about the ways in which the state’s 29 tribes contribute to the economy, business, environment and many other areas. The site’s environment page is a treasure trove of examples of how other indigenous nations in the Northwest have toiled in similar, parallel efforts as well.

As Long As The Rivers Run: An Original Musical Play About Salmon And The Indians Who Love Them

Please join Red Eagle Soaring Native Youth Theatre on Sunday, December 15th for a performance of As Long As The Rivers Run, an original musical play by Roger Fernandes (Lower Elwha Klallam) about the historical and contemporary relationship between salmon and Northwest Native peoples. Reception and refreshments following, all are welcome.

Columbia River Treaty Recommendation Near Finalization

Jack McNeel

ICTMN 12/10/13

Will fish passage be restored from the Columbia River to Canada? Will a 15-tribe coalition significantly influence an international treaty that will last a lifetime? Can Canada and the U.S. agree to financial impacts affecting each country? Will ecological concerns get equal consideration with electric power rates?

These questions are part of the Columbia River Treaty recommendation that is due to go to the U.S. State Department in mid-December. Congress won’t be making any decisions at this point, in fact 2014 is the first year either Canada or the U.S. can notify the other whether to eliminate the treaty, retain it as is, or to modify it. Even then there is a 10-year clock for both countries to analyze and prepare for international negotiation. Despite that time lag, the next few months should decide the U.S. position on these critical questions, many of which effect Native people on both sides of the border.

The original treaty, ratified in 1964, had two primary purposes of flood control and hydropower but tribes had virtually no say in the development of the treaty. Much has changed in the past 50 years. One significant change is the many years of experience tribes now have in international treaty work, especially regarding the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Fifteen of the northwestern tribes have now formed a coalition to work together in obtaining considerations of importance to them in a future long-term treaty.

Joel Moffitt, Nez Perce and Chairman of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, spoke before the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on November 7, first pointing out the Columbia Basin Tribes are working with the U.S. Entity and other sovereigns and do not have their own alternative technical or draft proposals as might have been suggested by others.

Moffitt summarized what the Columbia Basin Tribes see as critical elements: Integrate ecosystem-based function as a third purpose equal to hydropower and flood risk management; Enhance spring and summer flows while stabilizing reservoir operations; Pursue restoration of fish passage to historic locations; Pursue with Canada post-2024 operations to meet flood risk management objectives, and finally, and important to power interests, balance the annual payment to Canada known as Canadian Entitlement.

He explained the impacts to “Columbia Basin Tribes, First Nations and other communities all the way up to the headwaters,” began with the construction of dams even before the present treaty. “The tribes have also been excluded from its governance and implementation. The Treaty does not include considerations of critical tribal cultural resources.” He went on to add, “The tribes believe that a modernized Treaty needs to address the Columbia Basin using a watershed approach that integrates ecosystem-based function, hydropower, and flood risk management on both sides of the border.”

Moffitt explained that this approach, among other things, should increase recognition and preservation of tribal first foods, increase salmon survival, increase resident fish and wildlife survival, and allow fish passage to historical habitats now blocked.

Matt Wynne, tribal secretary for the Spokane Tribe and a member of the 15-tribe coalition, commented, “The part that the Spokane Tribe is really interested in seeing to fruition is at least a study on anadromous fish passage above Grand Coulee Dam.”

Wynne added that he was happy with the overall draft recommendation. “It looks a lot more for Indian country than it ever has before. This was a really good move in a positive direction with the 15 basin tribes coming together and working together to have the ecosystem-based function as an element of the treaty. I’m really proud of how the 15 tribes have worked together.”

The public was introduced to the draft recommendation earlier this year and were encouraged to comment. Time has now expired for public comment but those comments were considered by the Sovereign Review Team in developing the regional draft which is going to the State Department.

The major conflict within the region is between the “power group” with the single focus of trying to reduce power rates for Pacific Northwest rate payers and the tribes and conservation groups who advocate an equitable role for eco-based functions which include fish passage to Canada. While the recommendation is near completion there is still a power struggle to better reflect the work of the region as opposed to the single focus of the power group.

Washington State’s Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell sits in a very pivotal seat at a pivotal moment. She chairs the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and is no doubt being lobbied hard by both groups. With 15 U.S. tribes involved and similar numbers of First Nations bands in British Columbia, Indian country has much at stake.

Winnemem Wintu reject Bay Delta Conservation Plan, denounce it as a death sentence for salmon and violation of Indigenous rights

December 9, 2013. Source: Winnemem Wintu

Chief Caleen Sisk will speak at rallies in Sacramento today and Friday and re-affirm the Winnemem Wintu opposition’s against the construction of the peripheral water export tunnels and the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), as Governor Jerry Brown’s administration releases the preliminary Environmental Impact Report and the BDCP plan to the public today.

As California’s State Water Project currently operates, far too much water is sucked from the San Francisco/Sacramento Delta, the largest estuary on the Pacific Coast, and sent to the state’s water brokers, who support unsustainable industrial agriculture, destructive hydraulic fracking for oil extraction and municipal developments in the desert.

The proposed peripheral tunnels, with a conservatively estimated price tag of $54 billion, will undoubtedly kill the sensitive Delta, a delicate mix of salt and freshwater, that is vital to the life cycle of California salmon as well as thousands of other fish and species.

“There is no precedent for the killing of an estuary of this size, so how could any study be trusted to protect the Delta for salmon and other fish? How can they even know what the effects will be?” said Chief and Spiritual Leader Caleen Sisk. “The end of salmon would also mean the end of Winnemem, so the BDCP is a threat to our very existence as indigenous people.”

As one of the many traditional salmon tribes in California, the Winnemem rely on access to salmon to maintain our cultural and religious practices. The peripheral tunnels if ever constructed would therefore be in violation of our indigenous rights to maintain our cultural practices with salmon, as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Recently at a public meeting in Redding, Governor Brown’s Deputy Director of the Natural Resources Agency Jerry Meral, disclosed that the peripheral tunnels are connected to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s plan to raise Shasta Dam by 18.5 feet, a project that would destroy or submerge nearly 40 sacred sites and destroy potential salmon spawning areas. We are currently working on plans to re-introduce our salmon above the dam into the McCloud River.

The planned Delta tunnels will require more water be taken from the Trinity River and the Shasta Dam, which is fed by the Upper Sacramento, McCloud and Pit Rivers. This will add even more stress to the struggling ecology of these rivers.

This plan is not meant to benefit the public of California, native and non-native, but purely to line the coffers of the lobbyists who have been buying off Gov. Brown all along, such as Beverly Hills Big Ag billionaire Stewart Resnick and his wife Lynda who contributed $99,000 to his 2010 campaign. The Western States Petroleum Association has spent more than $4.5 million in lobbying the state government in 2013 alone.

The peripheral tunnels are a violation of the public’s trust in Gov. Brown, and not the answer to dealing with the state’s forthcoming water shortages. There are better solutions.

The Winnemem are proud to announce that we will be standing with our allies during a press conference today and a rally Friday, Dec. 13 at the West Steps of the Capitol. Chief Sisk will speak.

These events are sponsored by Californians for A Fair Water Policy and dozens of other environmental, fishing, farming, government, and water agencies.

Monday, December 9, 2013

—Press Conference and Rally at the Capitol

—Location: Starting in Room 112, moving to West Steps if needed

—Starting Time: Noon with 12:30 p.m. press conference – arrive as early as 10:30 for possible walk to California Resources Agency.

Friday, December 13, 2013

—Friday the 13th Rally to begin the 120 Day BDCP Response Countdown

—Location: West Steps of the Capitol

—Starting Time: 11:30 a.m.

This rally is sponsored by Californians for A Fair Water Policy and dozens of other environmental, fishing, farming, government, and water agencies.

To stop this boondoggle please writ letters to Governor Brown expressing your opposition to the peripheral tunnels plan! Letters should be addressed to:

Governor Jerry Brown

c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814

– See more at: http://www.winnememwintu.us/news-and-media/#sthash.dUttYCD8.dpuf

EarthFix Conversation: A Call For Philosophical Shift On Use Of Hatcheries

Source: OPB.org

In the late 1800s, when dams were first built around the Northwest, salmon and steelhead stocks began to decline. Fish hatcheries were put forth as a solution. Wild fish were taken from Northwest rivers and spawned in captivity, ensuring future generations of fish could be released back into the wild every season.

Jim Lichatowich is a biologist who’s worked on salmon issues as a researcher, manager and scientific advisor for more than 40 years. He sat down with EarthFix’s Ashley Ahearn to talk about his new book: “Salmon, People and Place: A Biologist’s Search For Salmon Recovery.”

Ashley Ahearn: For someone who doesn’t know what a hatchery is or doesn’t understand how it operates, what happens at a hatchery?

Jim Lichatowich: Fundamentally at a hatchery, salmon are taken out of the river, put into ponds until they’re ready to spawn and then the eggs are taken. They’re fertilized. Various different procedures are used at different hatcheries but that’s basically it. The eggs hatch, the juveniles are reared in the hatchery for varying levels of time and then they’re released back to the river and expected to migrate downstream fairly rapidly and go out to the ocean and from that point on pick up the normal life history of a regular wild salmon.

I guess the idea of how hatcheries started and [what] sustained them was, habitat was degrading and the fish weren’t doing as well in the degraded habitat. So the hatchery became a solution, a way of circumventing the problems we were creating ourselves by building dams, pumping out irrigation water, poor forestry practices that put silt and sawdust into the streams. The hatchery was supposed to take the salmon away from that problem, circumvent the problem.

Ashley Ahearn: Jim you talk about the ‘machine metaphor’ for nature. What is that? Can you read a section from your book here?

Jim Lichatowich: Sure I’ll read where I talk about the machine metaphor and the fish factory. And I might add here that I use ‘fish factory’ instead of hatchery through a large part of the book because that’s what hatcheries were originally called when they were first being used. They were called ‘pisce factories,’ or fish factories.

“The fish factory and the machine metaphor are a perfect match. The mechanistic worldview reduced salmon-sustaining ecosystems to an industrial process and rivers to simple conduits whose only function was to carry artificially-propagated salmon to the sea. The mechanistic worldview still has a powerful grip on salmon management and restoration programs in spite of a growing scientific understanding that the picture of ecosystems created by the machine metaphor was seriously flawed.”

And really, it’s been the factory metaphor that has guided a lot of the operation of hatcheries.

Ashley Ahearn: One of the things I really liked about your book is these side channel chapters that you sprinkle in between some pretty heavy critique of the way we manage our fisheries in this region. One of your side channels that I particularly liked was when you write about a trip to Indiana to the St. Joe River. Tell me about that side channel.

Jim Lichatowich: Well I grew up outside of South Bend, Indiana and the St. Joe River flows through South Bend. When I grew up there the St. Joe was pretty much a sewer that didn’t have much in the way of fish life. And over the years, particularly since I left — I left there in the 60s — there’d been a lot of clean up. And with the introduction of salmon into Lake Michigan — the St. Joe flows into Lake Michigan — they built a salmon hatchery and had a Chinook salmon run up the St. Joe River. They had to build a hatchery and clean the river up, too.

I was there and I was walking along the river and I came to where a tributary came into the St. Joe, and there was a salmon carcass — a Chinook salmon carcass laying up on the bank of the stream — and it just struck me how out of place it was. Seeing carcasses along rivers is pretty common here, but in Indiana that was a sight. And later on in watching the river, I saw salmon trying to spawn and I knew that their spawning was not going to be successful because the gravel was so silted in that the eggs weren’t going to get oxygen. I talked to a biologist a couple of days later and they confirmed that there’s very little or no actual reproduction, even though there are fish out there spawning.

I thought, you know, this really robs the salmon of their whole heroic story of battling up stream to get to the place where they spawned and where they could complete the cycle of parent to offspring. Even though it’s looked on by sportsmen in Northern Indiana as a positive thing, and there were a lot of people fishing for these fish that were in the river, I somehow had this nagging feeling that ‘should we be doing this to other species? Should we take them from where they belong and put them in a place where they have no chance of surviving without our intervention in a hatchery and call it salmon management?’

Ashley Ahearn: Is that what is happening here in the Northwest? I mean, we have salmon. The salmon have lived here for thousands of years — it’s not like Indiana, but arguably it’s a similar closed … are we robbing the salmon of their story here in the Northwest?

Jim Lichatowich: Well when we rely on hatcheries instead of healthy rivers, then we are robbing them of part of their story. Fortunately most of the rivers in the Northwest can support some wild production, some more than others.

But by relying more and more on hatcheries we’re creating a charade of sorts where the river that can’t support a salmon becomes a stage prop where fishermen and fish play out their respective roles, reenacting something, an important part of our past, that now is sort of a hollow empty memory of it.

Ashley Ahearn: Jim from your perspective are all hatcheries bad? Is there a good hatchery?

Jim Lichatowich: I think there might be, but the answer to that question hasn’t been answered. There has been attempts to reform hatcheries in the past and they haven’t been successfully implemented. There is a lot of good science now that should help managers change the way hatcheries are being operated to begin to see if they can begin to be integrated into a natural production system in a watershed. But it remains to be seen whether that will actually happen.

Ashley Ahearn: So if you were in charge, what needs to happen? What would be your order of operations to get salmon recovery back on track in this region?

Jim Lichatowich: Well I have two kind of strong ideas and those strong ideas were what I followed in writing this book. One was from John Livingston who said that all environmental problems, and I take that to mean salmon problems, are like icebergs, because, like an iceberg, environmental problems have a visible tip and for the salmon that tip is dams, over harvest, poor hatchery practice, poor logging practice –- the litany of things that we’re all aware of. But he says in addition there’s this huge hidden mass that an iceberg has. In that mass he calls it, he says in that mass there are the myths, beliefs and assumptions about how nature works that drive the decisions that either create the issues or prevent them from being corrected. And I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. We need to examine that body of myths, assumptions and beliefs. What I call in my book, our salmon story, and improve upon it. Make sure it reflects the latest science and not some really outdated myths or beliefs.

Ashley Ahearn: Or machine metaphors.

Jim Lichatowich: Or machine metaphors, right. And the other is Gary Nabhan’s idea. In one of his books he says that animals don’t go extinct because someone shoots the last one, or a bulldozer scrapes the last habitat. They go extinct because the web of relationships that sustain them unravels. He then put it in anthropomorphic terms and said, they go extinct because of a lack of ecological companionship. I think that idea is intuitive but at the same time very powerful. It should lead us to instead of defining the salmon’s problem in terms of numbers, which is really limiting your definition to the symptoms, it would be defined in terms of the unraveling of those relationships. And recovery, instead of boosting numbers by releasing more hatchery fish, would be a mending of those relationships. Trying to re-institute those relationships, and that’s a different approach than what we’ve been doing.

Ashley Ahearn: It seems your solutions center around a fundamental philosophical shift that needs to happen in the way we view management.

Jim Lichatowich: That’s right, and that is a good summary of my purpose in this book, is to make an argument for that shift.

Jim Lichatowich is the author of “Salmon, People and Place: A Biologist’s Search For Salmon Recovery.”

Puyallup Tribe tracking salmon making their way to newly restored habitat

Eric Marks, salmon biologist for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, conducts a spawning survey downstream from a new logjam.

Source: Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission

The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is already finding salmon using newly restored habitat on the Clearwater River.

“Its great to see salmon using the habitat so soon after the completion of the project,” said Russ Ladley, resource protection manager for the Puyallup Tribe. “In a few months, the offspring of these fish we’re seeing migrate and spawn in the Clearwater will be able to use this habitat to rear and find food.”

So far this year, the tribe has counted more than 100 chinook and 250 coho in about a mile of restored river.

The project was managed by the South Puget Sound Salmon Enhancement Group (SPSSEG).

Last summer a total of 18 large and small engineered logjams were installed in the Clearwater River about two miles up from where it joins the White River. Placement of these log jams will reconnect flows to a network of 11 existing side channels, dissipate floods, and increase instream structure and cover in the river.

“Adding the wood and instream structure to the river will encourage the river to move and create habitat in a way it always had,” said Kristin Williamson, SPSSEG project manager.

The Puyallup Tribe conducts extensive spawning surveys throughout the Clearwater for chinook, coho and pink salmon. Data from spawning surveys help natural managers assess the success of habitat projects. Fisheries managers also use the data to help build future salmon fisheries.

“Spawning surveys are a simple and essential tool for managing salmon,” Ladley said. “Nothing beats getting out on the water and counting fish.”

Just downstream from the project site the tribe also recently built a new juvenile chinook acclimation pond. The Puyallup Tribe annually transfers as many as 800,000 juvenile spring chinook from either a state or Muckleshoot tribal hatchery and raises them in several acclimation ponds in the upper White.

“Coho and chinook populations in the White River have demonstrated an encouraging upward trend over the past 15 years. Hopefully this project and other similar efforts will allow this trend to continue and extend to other species such as steelhead that that have not responded favorably,” Ladley said. “The best way to bring them back is to repair what habitat we can and protect what they have left.”

Elwha exhibit at Burke explores reborn river

Oceanographer Daniel Hernandez strains to pull on the end of a seining net on the Elwha River in an effort to count the fish in a designated area.

An exhibit based on the Elwha book by Seattle Times’ Lynda Mapes and Steve Ringman opens Saturday at the Burke Museum.

By Keith Ervin, Seattle Times

Chinook salmon returned to the Elwha River this fall in numbers not seen in many decades.

Other creatures have followed the salmon in returning to the Olympic Peninsula valley after an 8-mile stretch of the river was reconnected to saltwater when the Elwha Dam was removed.

A Burke Museum exhibit that opens Saturday tells the story of a river, the people who have depended on it, the scientists who study it, and the changes wrought first by the construction of two dams and now by the biggest dam-removal project in U.S. history.

“Elwha: A River Reborn,” based on the book of the same name by Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes and photographer Steve Ringman, runs through March 9.

Mapes will speak, and members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe will talk and perform at the opening of the exhibit, which combines photographs, artifacts from an ancient Klallam village, a million-year-old salmon fossil and hands-on activities.

Children can play the part of a scientist or a journalist in “Camp Elwha,” an interactive exhibit inside a tent.

At the heart of the exhibit is the river, where salmon, steelhead and lampreys lost 70 miles of spawning grounds when dams blocked their passage more than a century ago.

It is also the story of the regeneration that has taken place since the Elwha Dam was removed in 2011 and will continue after demolition of the upstream Glines Canyon Dam is completed next year.

Mapes and Ringman followed the story, first in the pages of this newspaper and then in their 2013 book copublished by Mountaineers Books and The Seattle Times.

“This is a profoundly hopeful story,” said Mapes, who is currently a fellow in the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT.

“It shows that in the right place and with the right conditions, you really do have a chance to start over. You can take a place that’s been used for industrial development, even for a very long time, and have nature come booming back. “

An iconic image for her was a water ouzel in a restored tributary delicately holding a coho salmon egg in its beak “as if it were a glass of fine cabernet.”

George Pess, a NOAA fisheries biologist and a source for Mapes’ reporting, said that as salmon have returned, otters, bears, lampreys and many other animals have come back.

“Everybody kind of got the signal, whether it’s smell or sight, everybody knew something was happening that hadn’t happened in a long time that was important to the ecosystem,” Pess said.

Restoring the salmon to something resembling their once-legendary glory will take years, Pess said.

Bringing back towering trees where lake silt has replaced the humus-rich soil of a long-gone forest, Mapes said, will take much longer.

Although that won’t happen quickly, she said, “One of the things that struck me is how ephemeral the works of man are and how incredibly resilient nature is.”

The exhibit was created by the Burke Museum in collaboration with The Seattle Times, Mountaineers Books and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.