Upper Columbia Spring Chinook Salmon, Steelhead, and Bull Trout Recovery

1.5Desired Outcome

This vision statement includes: (1) meeting recovery goals established for listed populations of spring Chinook, steelhead, and bull trout, (2) achieving sustainable harvests of key species within the recovery region and the Columbia River following recovery, (3) realizing these objectives while recognizing that agriculture and urban development are beneficial to the health of the human environment within the recovery region, (4) continue harvest (tribal and non-tribal) according to existing harvest management processes during the recovery period, and (5) implementing a road map of non-regulatory, voluntary measures that is not intended to override anyone’s authority over habitat, hydropower, hatcheries, and harvest.

Recovery of listed populations is based on achieving recovery goals. Because listed anadromous fish species and bull trout have different life-history characteristics (see Section 2), this plan identified different recovery goals for the different species.

The specific goal for spring Chinook and steelhead is:

• 
  To ensure long-term persistence of viable populations of naturally produced spring Chinook and steelhead distributed across their native range.
  

The specific goal for bull trout is:

• 
  To ensure long-term persistence of self-sustaining, complex, interacting groups of bull trout distributed across the native range of the species.
  

This plan recognizes the importance of providing valid metrics for Upper Columbia tributary productivity. It is the policy of the UCSRB to emphasize juvenile salmonid productivity within each tributary as the primary indicator of habitat restoration success for each basin in the Upper Columbia. In addition to evaluating productivity for the entire life cycle (spawner to spawner ratios), this plan looks to identify a measure that focuses on effects of tributary habitat on juvenile salmonid survival, without the confounding effects of mortality outside the subbasin (commonly referred to as out-of-subbasin effects²²). This will be accomplished primarily by evaluating “smolts per spawner” and/or “smolts per redd.” Although this plan does not identify specific recovery criteria based on these factors, this will allow a consistent approach to evaluate the level of success for restoration and recovery actions in the Upper Columbia and the quality of habitat in tributaries.

1.5.1Abundance

This plan will identify actions that if implemented should result in population abundances (or effective population sizes) large enough to have a high probability of surviving environmental variation observed in the past and expected in the future, to be resilient to environmental and anthropogenic disturbances, to maintain genetic diversity, and to support or provide ecosystem functions. In this plan, abundance is expressed as the 12-year geometric mean²³ abundance of naturally produced adult fish on spawning grounds. The 12-year period falls within the recommended guidance of the ICBTRT (8-20 years) and represents two to three generations for spring Chinook and steelhead. The geometric mean provides a better indicator of central tendency than the arithmetic mean, which is often skewed by uncommon large and small returns. For spring Chinook and bull trout, abundance will be based on redd counts. Because of a lack of long-term redd counts, abundance for steelhead will be based on inter-dam counts and radio-telemetry studies.

1.5.2Productivity

This plan envisions that naturally produced, Upper Columbia spring Chinook and steelhead will support net replacement rates of 1:1 or higher, expressed as the 12-year geometric mean recruits per spawner.²⁴ This means that on average one or more offspring returns for every fish that spawns. Populations with growth rates greater than one are resilient to negative environmental conditions and can quickly rebound from low abundances. Thus, productivity rates at relatively low numbers of spawners (<500-2000 adults) will need to be considerably higher than one to allow the populations to rapidly return to abundance target levels. It is assumed that all historic populations had high productivity when populations were well below carrying capacity. This plan combines abundance and productivity together using the viability curve concept provided by the ICBTRT (see Section 4).

As noted above, this plan recognizes the importance of juvenile productivity within tributaries as an indicator of habitat restoration success. This will be accomplished by evaluating “smolts per spawner” or “smolts per redd.” Although this plan does not identify recovery criteria based on smolts per redd, it does allow for a consistent approach to evaluating restoration actions in tributaries.

Because of a lack of information on the population dynamics of bull trout in the Upper Columbia Basin, productivity will be estimated from temporal trends in redd counts. Recovery is expressed as a stable or increasing trend over a twelve-year period.

1.5.3Spatial Structure

This plan will identify actions that if implemented should ensure widespread or complex spatial structures of naturally produced spring Chinook, steelhead, and bull trout in the Upper Columbia Basin. This will be accomplished by not destroying habitat (or their functions) at rates faster than they are created or restored, by not artificially increasing or decreasing natural rates of straying, by maintaining suitable habitats (major and minor spawning areas; see Section 4) even if they contain no ESA-listed species, by maintaining and increasing source populations²⁵, and by addressing man-made (artificial) barriers to fish migration and movement.

1.5.4Diversity

Actions implemented under this plan will maintain both phenotypic (morphology, behavior, and life-history traits) and genotypic (genetic) within-population diversity. This will be accomplished by carefully managing and/or minimizing factors (e.g., introduction of non-native species, artificial propagation, hydropower reservoir effects, man-made barriers, and harvest pressures) that alter variation in traits such as run timing, age structure, size, fecundity, morphology, behavior, and molecular genetic characteristics.²⁶

In some cases, the mixing of hatchery fish (or excessive numbers of out-of-basin stocks) with naturally produced fish on spawning grounds can actually decrease genetic diversity within a population (Hallerman 2003). According to the ICBTRT (2005a), diversity of naturally produced populations, ESUs and DPSs can decrease because of hatchery adaptations of domestication, losses of genetic variability through supportive breeding, and erosion of natural population structure through homogenization. Recovery actions should be designed to reduce domestication and homogenization, and prevent gene flow rates greater than natural levels.

Importantly, historic (pre-development) diversity cannot be measured for any populations within the Upper Columbia Basin. Because spatial structure is the physical process that drives diversity, the two (spatial structure and diversity) are very difficult to separate (ICBTRT 2004). Therefore, following the recommendations of the ICBTRT (2004b), this plan will evaluate spatial structure and diversity together.

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