Summary of Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit, the Spirit of the Salmon Plan
Produced by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, 1998
PUT THE FISH BACK INTO THE RIVERS !
Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit: The Columbia River Anadromous Fish Restoration Plan of the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama Tribes provides a framework to restore the Columbia River salmon, simply stated: put the fish back into the rivers. Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit is the culmination of the leadership and wisdom of the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama fish and wildlife committees and the technical work of reservation fisheries and the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission staffs. This tribal salmon restoration plan outlines the cultural, biological, legal, institutional and economic context within which the region’s salmon restoration efforts are taking place. This long-term plan addresses virtually all causes of salmon decline and roadblocks to salmon restoration for all anadromous fish stocks: chinook, coho, sockeye, steelhead, chum, eels (Pacific lamprey) and sturgeon, above Bonneville Dam. Underlying Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit is tribal recognition of the “connection of all life,” respect for nature and the natural structure and function of the salmon’s ecosystems, and the wise use of technical expertise.
A. GOAL
Restore anadromous fishes to the rivers and streams that support the historical cultural and economic practices of the tribes. Emphasize strategies that rely on natural production and healthy river systems. Protect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Reclaim the anadromous fish resource and the environment on which it depends for future generations.
B. OBJECTIVES
1. Within 7 years, halt the declining trends in salmon, sturgeon, and lamprey populations originating upstream of Bonneville Dam.
2. Within 25 years, increase the total adult salmon returns of stocks originating above Bonneville Dam to 4 million annually and in a manner that sustains natural production to support tribal commercial as well as ceremonial and subsistence harvests.
3. Within 25 years, increase sturgeon and lamprey populations to naturally sustainable levels that also support tribal harvest opportunities.
4. Restore anadromous fishes to historical abundance in perpetuity.
C. BROAD STRATEGIES
- Begin improving in-channel stream conditions for anadromous fish by improving or eliminating land-use practices that degrade watershed quality.
- Protect and increase instream flows by limiting additional consumptive water withdrawals, using the most efficient irrigation methods, preventing soil compaction and riparian vegetation removal and wetland destruction; where necessary, restore soil, restore riparian vegetation and re-create wetlands.
- Actively restore watersheds where salmon populations are in imminent danger of extirpation. Use “Coarse Screening Process” to develop demonstration projects.
- Use supplementation to help rebuild salmon populations at high demographic risk of extirpation.
- Use supplementation to reintroduce salmon to watersheds from which they have been extirpated.
- Use flow, spill, drawdowns, peak efficiency turbine operation, new turbine technology, and predator control projects to improve inriver juvenile salmon survival; avoid fluctuations caused by power peaking operations.
- Protect and restore critical estuary habitat.
- Establish Alaskan and Canadian ocean fisheries based on chinook abundance.
- Use stored cold water, additional ladders, ladder improvements and ladder maintenance to enhance mainstem adult passage; incorporate 24-hour video fish counting.
- Improve water quality by eliminating sources of toxic pollution that accumulates in fish tissue and by reducing discharges of other contaminants to meet water quality criteria for anadromous fish.
- Closely monitor tributary production and escapement to improve management.
- Conduct research on Pacific lamprey and design artificial propagation strategies to supplement natural production.
- Develop artificial propagation and management strategies for white sturgeon populations above Bonneville Dam.
D. MANAGEMENT ACTIONS
Specific management actions are detailed in the tribal salmon restoration plan. The two-volume plan addresses the causes of salmon decline, outlines survival requirements for salmon, sets survival standards by life history stage and offers three types of recommended actions: institutional, technical and watershed or sub-basin specific.
The tribal technical recommendations are presented in sets of hypothesis statements that summarize various restoration problems. The hypotheses are organized by salmon life cycle stages. Individually, they propose near- and long-term actions, identify expected results and name the institutional and decisional processes required to carry out the recommended actions (for a complete list of technical recommendations see Volume I, Section 5; for sub-basin recommended actions see Volume II). The following are examples of the type of recommendations included in the report by life cycle stage.
Habitat Restoration: To protect and recover tributary habitat, the plan proposes that land and water users and managers meet a series of habitat conditions associated with survival rates, for example, 10% egg-to-smolt survival for Snake River spring and summer chinook. The use of the “Coarse Screening Process,” where applicable, will determine the allowable level of watershed impacts. This process requires federal and state land and water managers to maintain or improve fish habitat. If they do not meet the habitat standards � for example, water temperatures can be no higher than 60� F � land and water managers must take action that will achieve compliance.
Production: Rather than continuing current hatchery rearing and release methods, the plan outlines the development of new propagation strategies to reestablish naturally spawning salmon runs. With so many Columbia basin stocks at such low numbers, supplementation, which is what the tribes call their propagation proposal, is now an indispensable part of any restoration plan. While accounting for genetic concerns, the tribal plan asserts that increasing likelihood of further extirpations is in fact the far greater genetic risk.
Passage: Young migrating salmon are now being transported in trucks and barges. Stop collecting them for transport, the plan urges, and let them swim down the river to the ocean on their own. To support anadromous fish, mainstem habitat must be returned to natural conditions which are linked to a 71% downstream passage survival rate, closer to those that existed prior to construction of the dams. This can be done by providing dam drawdown, additional spill, and water flows, among other measures that are set forth specifically in the plan. The tribes’ preferred alternative for Snake River Dam drawdown would require structural modifications at Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, and Ice Harbor dams to allow for drawdown to natural river level. Drawdown to natural river level is generally intended to restore flows to the water surface elevations that existed in the Snake River prior to impoundment. John Day Dam drawdown to spillway crest should be considered a high priority. All drawdowns are intended to be year around in duration.
Harvest: Plan recommendations include proposals for reducing chinook mortalities in North Pacific fisheries and the adoption of abundance-based salmon management in ocean fisheries. The plan addresses the problem of incidental mortalities and other harvest issues.
Sub-Basin: Detailed recommendations are provided for 23 major watersheds above Bonneville Dam. The measures focus on habitat protection and rehabilitation and on returning fish to these streams using supplementation techniques.
Future management of these culturally and economically valuable anadromous fish must take a more holistic view, integrating decisions across all stages of their life cycles. The bottom line in the tribal approach toward restoring anadromous fish populations is to increase their total survival rate to the point where we can maintain healthy naturally reproducing populations which can survive natural cycles of environmental variation and allow full exercise of fishing rights reserved by our tribes in treaties with the United States government.
Toward this end, we have identified survival standards for each life-history stage of spring and fall chinook (Table 5C.2) and actions which we feel will achieve these standards. We will work toward achieving these standards in an adaptive manner, realizing that present knowledge is imperfect and changes in this plan will be necessary over time, and that trade-offs can be made in the path we take, so long as the long-term objectives are met. We will hold ourselves and the people of the Columbia Basin accountable to the same rigorous standard:
We must increase total survivals to the point that anadromous fish can maintain healthy naturally reproducing populations which allow full exercise of treaty reserved fishing rights.
E. RATIONALE
Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit: The Columbia River Anadromous Fish Restoration Plan of the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakama Tribes provides a framework to restore the Columbia River salmon, simply stated: put the fish back into the rivers. The Columbia River treaty tribes take a holistic “gravel-to-gravel” approach to the management of the salmon, which differs from approaches of many other groups in a variety of respects. This approach focuses on the tributary, mainstem, estuary, and ocean ecosystems and habitats where anadromous fish live. The various salmon species pass through vast expanses of geography during the course of their lifecycle. A typical salmon starts life as an egg in the gravel of a stream, often hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean where they graze and gain the majority of their adult size. Between stream bed and ocean, salmon need a wide variety of quality habitats in order to grow and develop from a small freshwater fish into a large marine feeder. Because salmon depend on the health of several different ecosystems for their survival, and because so many different cultures in the Pacific Northwest hold them in such high esteem, the salmon are both a bellweather and a lightening rod in the struggle which now rages to retain the ecological and cultural integrity of this vast region. The biological context for the tribal recovery plan consists of the habitat within which the salmon live, the rich collection of biological strategies which the salmon have evolved to flourish in these habitats, and the connections of land, water, plans and animals which scientists call the ecosystem.
Wy-Kan-Ush-Mi Wa-Kish-Wit integrates this gravel-to-gravel approach into an adaptive management framework. The tribes agree with others who advocate an adaptive approach that requires action even in the face of uncertainty. According to adaptive management principles, that action must be carefully monitored and evaluated so that natural resource managers learn and change their actions on the basis of what they have learned. Using an adaptive framework, this plan identifies the survival changes in current water, land and fish management needed to produce the necessary survival rates. The actions endorsed in this plan are designed to measure whether or not survival levels are being achieved. Should the recommended measures not attain sufficient rates of survival, the plan calls for modifications and additional actions.
The stated goal and objectives require gravel to gravel salmon survival levels for naturally reproducing populations approximately double the present level in seven years, and quadruple present rates in twenty-five years. This will result in natural production levels greater than replacement while also providing for commercial, ceremonial, and subsistence levels consistent with the treaties.
The broad strategies outlined above are measures that we believe are needed and appropriate to achieve these objectives. There may be other actions that will achieve the objectives of this plan. The tribes are flexible on the details of specific actions as long as the end result, as measured by overall survival rates and fish abundance, is consistent with the above objectives.
Unlike other plans, this plan establishes a foundation for the United States and its citizens to honor their treaty and trust obligations to the four tribes. If implemented, it would at least begin to meet ceremonial, subsistence, and commercial needs of tribal members and to return fish to many of the tribes’ usual and accustomed fishing places, as guaranteed in the 1855 treaties. If these obligations were met, the non-Indian public would be a beneficiary, enjoying its legal allotment of harvestable salmon and sharing a healthier, more natural river system.
Table 5C.2. Survival rates of naturally produced Snake River spring and fall chinook under various management strategies.
