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

5.5.6Responsible Parties

5.5.7Coordination and Commitments

The Upper Columbia Basin already has a habitat technical team, known as the Upper Columbia Regional Technical Team (UCRTT) that was created by the UCSRB to recommend region-wide approaches to protect and restore salmonid habitat; develop and evaluate salmonid recovery projects; and develop, guide, and coordinate recovery monitoring plans. This plan recommends that the UCRTT serve as the habitat technical committee to the Implementation Team.

Local habitat groups will be responsible for identifying specific habitat restoration actions and coordinating activities within their respective subbasins. This plan recommends that these groups prioritize the implementation of specific actions following the strategy outlined in Section 8.0. All proposed habitat recovery actions will be coordinated with local stakeholder input and local stakeholders will be included in the development of any of the planning processes that may affect their interests. If necessary, the UCRTT could provide technical guidance and review to the local recovery groups.

The State of Washington (through the Salmon Recovery Funding Board), PUDs, Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration, Bureau of Reclamation, and Army Corps of Engineers), the Yakama Nation, the Colville Tribes, and various other Federal, State, and local agencies are funding and will continue to fund habitat actions in the Upper Columbia Basin. Habitat conservation plans, binding mitigation agreements, and biological opinions ensure that habitat restoration actions have funding and will continue operating into the future.

5.5.8Compliance

Habitat actions are currently monitored through processes like the Upper Columbia Monitoring Strategy (Hillman 2004), Salmon Recovery Board, biological opinions, relicensing agreements, BPA and BOR programs, Colville Tribes monitoring program, U.S. Forest Service programs, DOE programs, and others. Under the guidance of the Upper Columbia Monitoring Strategy, adopted by the Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board, the UCRTT coordinates monitoring within the Upper Columbia Basin. This plan will rely on the Upper Columbia Monitoring Strategy (which is continually updated to incorporate new information) and the UCRTT to make sure that habitat recovery actions are implemented correctly, habitat actions are monitored for effectiveness,¹³³ and VSP parameters are measured and tracked over time to assess recovery of populations, the ESU, and the DPS.

5.6Integration of Actions

At this time it is very difficult to assess the cumulative (sum) beneficial effects of actions across all sectors (Hs), because regionally accepted tools for adding effects across sectors are currently not available. Two investigational methods were used to estimate potential effects in this plan; a simple multiplicative approach and a modeling approach. Both approaches will be more fully developed in the future. These preliminary approaches and their results are described below. In this section the plan only addressed spring Chinook and steelhead. Methods used to assess cumulative beneficial effects on bull trout will be explored at a later date.

5.6.1Multiplicative Approach

This approach used information from Sections 2, 3, and 5 to determine if the actions recommended within the plan are likely to achieve recovery. The simulation also used additional information and assumptions (which are outlined below) to evaluate the actions that have either been recently enacted, or recommended within the recovery plan. Below, we outline by sector the associated assumptions and information that were used to estimate the increase in productivity (survival).

For all sectors, a 50% hatchery effectiveness (reproductive success) rate was assumed for steelhead. As such, the values for productivity reported here for steelhead differ from those reported in Section 2. ¹³⁴ The run was reconstructed using 50% of the hatchery fish included with naturally produced fish to determine productivity values. The exercise calculated for all sectors a low and high potential increase in productivity. The lower and upper estimates were determined by modeling (e.g., EDT for habitat) or professional judgment. A more detailed discussion of this approach and preliminary results provided in Appendix I.

Harvest

As discussed in detail in Section 5.2 and in the Harvest Module (Appendix I), harvest on Upper Columbia steelhead and spring Chinook has been significantly reduced over the last several decades. As a result, there is little opportunity to reduce harvest rates beyond their current limits. The recovery actions identified in this Plan may result in a small reduction in harvest through improved management strategies, harvest methods, and marking techniques. Therefore, for the purposes of this exercise, the plan assumed a range of change in potential productivity from 0% (lower potential) to 1% (upper potential) (Table 5 .19).

The plan also estimated potential survival benefits associated with terminating all harvest on spring Chinook and steelhead. The results indicated a potential increase of 9-10% in productivity of spring Chinook, but steelhead productivity actually decreased. The reason is because a large number of hatchery produced steelhead would escape to spawning grounds and “swamp” the spawning population. Hatchery produced steelhead currently have a lower reproductive success than naturally produced fish (the plan optimistically assumed a reproductive success of 0.5 for hatchery steelhead) and therefore would drive the productivity of the population down to low levels. Harvest on hatchery produced steelhead means fewer hatchery fish escape to spawning grounds. This results in a greater percentage of the spawning escapement consisting of naturally produced fish that are more productive than hatchery steelhead.

Hatcheries

The theoretical difference between the productivities for steelhead estimated in Section 2 was used to determine hatchery changes that contribute to productivity. The historical steelhead run was reconstructed using two different reproductive success scenarios for hatchery spawners: (1) hatchery spawners were as effective as wild spawners (100%; H = 1) and (2) hatchery spawners did not contribute to returning spawners at all (0%; H = 0).

In the Wenatchee and Entiat rivers¹³⁵, there is a 63% difference between zero contribution of hatchery spawners (return per spawner is 0.81) and 100% effectiveness (return per spawner is 0.25). In the Methow and Okanogan rivers the difference is 89% (0.89 if H = 0 and 0.09 for H = 1). Because no data currently exist in the Upper Columbia¹³⁶ to determine true hatchery spawner effectiveness, it was assumed in this exercise that hatchery spawners are half (50%; H = 0.5) as effective as naturally produced spawners for both steelhead and spring Chinook. It was also assumed that the relationship between 100% hatchery spawner effectiveness and 0% hatchery spawner effectiveness for steelhead applies to spring Chinook within the Wenatchee, Entiat, and Methow rivers.

In the absence of empirical data, improvements in hatchery practices may result in a 3-5% survival increase in naturally produced spring Chinook and steelhead in the Wenatchee-Entiat populations, and a 5-10% increase in the Methow-Okanogan populations (Table 5 .19). The greater increase in the Methow-Okanogan populations reflects the recommended action of collecting local broodstock within tributaries rather than composite fish at Wells Dam. These survival changes also appear to be supported by AHA modeling results (see Appendix J).

Hydro Projects

The calculated increases in juvenile survival from the draft QAR (Cooney et al. 2000) were applied to the calculated geo-mean of returns per spawner from Section 2 for spring Chinook and steelhead. This was applied basin-specific, where applicable. The estimated increase in juvenile survival from Table 24 in Cooney et al. (2000) was used for all five PUD dams, and their estimated increase in juvenile survival in the lower Columbia River from McNary to downstream from Bonneville dam (14.5% improvement; Table 27 in Cooney et al. 2000, plus an additional improvement of 8% and 9% for steelhead and spring Chinook, respectively, based on long-term gains in the FCRPS) was also applied to the estimated increases from the HCPs on local hydro dams. This exercise assumed 1:1 increase in spawners from an increase in juvenile survival from the proposed actions (i.e., a 10% increase in juvenile survival resulted in a 10% increase in spawners). Based on this information, productivity could increase between 35-51% for spring Chinook populations and 30-40% for steelhead populations (Table 5 .19). These estimates were used for both low and high productivity potentials.

Habitat

EDT results for the Wenatchee, Entiat¹³⁷, Methow, and Okanogan were used to determine what percent increase in productivity could be expected from implementing habitat actions recommended in the Plan. Density-independent survival changes as smolts per spawner were estimated across a range of spawner abundances less than 2,000 spawners, the minimum recovery abundance for large populations established by the ICBTRT. Because the extent to which the proposed habitat actions would be implemented was unknown, EDT modeled two different scenarios: (1) implementation intensity of 33% and (2) implementation intensity of 100% (See Appendix F). This provided a potential range of effects from recommended habitat actions. It is important to note that full intensity (100%) in all assessment units is not feasible or practical, because it does not consider socioeconomic factors. This scenario is useful for planning purposes because it provides an upper bound on the relative benefits of implementing habitat restoration actions at maximum effort (full intensity) within each subbasin.

Under the 33% intensity scenario (lower potential), productivity of spring Chinook populations could increase 3-25% (Table 5 .19). Under 100% intensity (upper potential), productivity of spring Chinook populations could increase 3-36% (Table 5 .19). Productivity of Upper Columbia steelhead populations under the 33% scenario could increase 14-47%, while steelhead productivities under the 100% scenario could increase 31-64% (Table 5 .19). Note that there is no estimate for Entiat steelhead because there was no EDT analysis completed for this population.

Integration across Sectors

To determine the total change in survival for each population, the changes in productivity (calculated as the ratio of proposed productivity to current productivity within a sector) were multiplied across sectors to estimate the total survival multiplier from the proposed actions. For Upper Columbia spring Chinook populations, survival could increase 67-98% under the lower potential productivity scenario or 72-149% under the higher potential productivity scenario (Table 5 .19). Survival for steelhead populations could increase 53-130% under the low productivity scenario or 58-171% under the higher productivity scenario (Table 5 .19).

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