Wild Chinook Salmon Management: An International Conservation Challenge

Abstract

The complexity of managing wild chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) stocks arises primarily from marine migrations across political boundaries, the currently seriously overfished condition of stocks along the North American Pacific Coast, and detrimental impacts from activities of competing users of the freshwater habitat. Despite the fact that data and analytical capabilities are adequate, many chinook salmon stocks continue to decline. This is happening bemuse consistent management standards are lacking or not applied by decision-making bodies in favor of various unquantified socio-political alternatives. Yielding to socio-political pressures occurs even at the biological staff level, resulting in compromised biological recommendations that further undermine the fundamental management goal of long-term stock health and viability. We describe three chinook salmon case histories as paradigms of the problem: (1) the Georgia Strait stock where managers have failed to apply management standards aimed at increasing spawning escapements; (2) the Klamath River stock where managers have applied situational management standards which continuously compromise or ignore spawning escapement objectives; and (3) the upper Columbia River bright stock where conditional standards are being applied by numerous regulatory entities placing spawning escapement needs at a lower priority than other considerations.