Pacific Northwest Salmon Research Articles

Environmental Problem Analysis and Policy Recommendations on Pacific Northwest Salmon

Environmental issues are becoming hot topics nowadays. As the steps of industrialization and urbanization expand, the conflict between economic development and environmental protection appears to intensify and catch people's eyes more frequently, from the disappearing Amazon rainforest to the pollution of Mississippi River. Over the past few months, the news of one species, salmon, dying out in the northwestern part of the United States drew our team's attention. In this paper, I would like to present my research on Pacific Northwest salmon from the perspectives of problem statement, policy proposal, and political analysis.

Pacific Northwest salmon are in big genetic trouble

Pacific Northwest salmon are in big genetic trouble

Economics and the Endangered Species Act: Critical Habitat Designation for Pacific Northwest Salmon and Steelhead (Extended Abstract)

Economics and the Endangered Species Act: Critical Habitat Designation for Pacific Northwest Salmon and Steelhead (Extended Abstract)

Ocean Iron Fertilization and Indigenous Peoples' Right to Food: Leveraging International and Domestic Law Protections to Enhance Access to Salmon in the Pacific Northwest

Ocean iron fertilization (OIF) is a new and controversial climate change mitigation strategy that seeks to increase the carbon-absorbing capacity of ocean waters by depositing significant quantities of iron dust into the marine environment to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton blooms. The photosynthetic processes of these blooms absorb carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it to the ocean floor. OIF has been criticized on several grounds, including the foreseeable and unforeseeable adverse consequences it may cause to the marine environment, as well as the daunting challenge of reconciling several potentially overlapping sources of international and domestic environmental law, which may lead to difficulties in regulating OIF effectively. Notwithstanding these challenges, OIF recently has produced a valuable benefit unrelated to its carbon sequestration purpose. In 2012, the Haida indigenous community in Canada conducted an OIF experiment that sought to restore its decimated supply of Pacific Northwest salmon stocks, upon which the Haida community relies for subsistence and self-determination. The experiment significantly increased salmon stocks within the span of one year.This Article addresses whether indigenous communities like the Haida in the U.S. Pacific Northwest region could assert a legal right to employ such a strategy in the future to help restore and maintain a cultural food source that has been depleted in part due to climate change impacts. The Article confirms that international environmental law, international human rights law, and federal Indian Law in the United States provide a firm foundation for enshrining a legal right to food for federally recognized U.S. tribes in this region. It proposes a potential exception to a future international environmental law treaty framework governing OIF experiments that would protect indigenous communities’ rights to enhanced access to salmon as a subsistence and cultural food resource that is essential to self-determination.

Evidence that summer jellyfish blooms impact Pacific Northwest salmon production

AbstractInterannual variability in salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) production in the northeast Pacific is understood to be driven by oceanographic variability and bottom‐up processes affecting prey availability to juvenile salmon. Scyphozoan jellyfish have an important role in shaping the pathways of energy flow through pelagic food webs. While jellyfish obtain high production rates and biomasses as major consumers of zooplankton production, they have few predators and may divert plankton production away from higher trophic levels. Although jellyfish are planktivorous and juvenile coho (O. kisutch) and Chinook (O. tshawytscha) salmon are mainly piscivorous, they may be indirect competitors for plankton production. Ecosystem model simulations suggested that among all trophic interactions within the Pacific Northwest coastal food web, juvenile salmon are particularly sensitive to jellyfish blooms, and that salmon production will be suppressed in years of high summer jellyfish biomass. Pelagic surveys off Oregon and Washington (1999–2012) were used to examine the interannual relationship between salmon production and the dominant jellyfish species, the sea nettle Chrysaora fuscescens, off the Pacific Northwest coast. There was a significant, negative correlation between sea nettle biomass and the strength of adult coho and Chinook salmon returns to the Columbia River. Examination of spatial distributions across years showed a positive association between sea nettles and salmon. Within individual years, significant differences between the distribution of sea nettles and yearling coho and Chinook salmon generally occurred during cooler ocean summers, perhaps due to the greater expanse of optimal salmon habitat resulting from more upwelling. Whether the association is behavioral or a product of oceanographic processes, association enhances the opportunity for indirect competition. Examination of feeding incidence in September showed that salmon stomachs were less full at locations with higher sea nettle biomass.

Fish and chips: cross-cutting issues and actors in a co-managed fishery regime in the Pacific Northwest

The goal of biological resource management regimes is to balance human uses of resources with their inherent regenerative capacities. While accomplishing this goal, managers usually face a multiplicity of stakeholder groups bringing a suite of different, and at times conflicting, interests and values to the management table. In the case of the migratory Pacific salmon, the resource regimes are comprised of a series of hierarchically nested institutional arrangements, engaged in cross-level and cross-scale interactions. Co-management institutions have emerged, at least in part, to address these challenges, encompassing a diversity of stakeholders, providing a forum for the sharing of different beliefs, values and perspectives and, importantly, an institutional response to a suite of cross-scale challenges. This article examines how institutional innovation, specifically the emergence of the Pacific Northwest salmon co-management regime, created new roles and legitimized the participation of new actors. In turn, this has transformed tribal co-managers into “cross-cutting actors”, active in management arenas at multiple jurisdictional and spatial levels in which they represent different interests or constituents. Wearing “different hats”, these tribal actors mobilize a suite of cross-cutting issues, relevant within different policy subsystems, and create bridges among actors who may be opponents in other fora. This has altered the emergence and trajectory of conflict and cooperation as well as problems of institutional interplay and addressed some of the scale-related challenges that exist within the Pacific salmon management regime.

Users as essential contributors to spatial cyberinfrastructures

Current accounts of spatial cyberinfrastructure development tend to overemphasize technologies to the neglect of critical social and cultural issues on which adoption depends. Spatial cyberinfrastructures will have a higher chance of success if users of many types, including nonprofessionals, are made central to the development process. Recent studies in the history of infrastructures reveal key turning points and issues that should be considered in the development of spatial cyberinfrastructure projects. These studies highlight the importance of adopting qualitative research methods to learn how users work with data and digital tools, and how user communities form. The author's empirical research on data sharing networks in the Pacific Northwest salmon crisis at the turn of the 21st century demonstrates that ordinary citizens can contribute critical local knowledge to global databases and should be considered in the design and construction of spatial cyberinfrastructures.

The Challenges of Tracking Habitat Restoration at Various Spatial Scales

Evaluating the ecological effectiveness of the hundreds of millions of dollars invested to recover Pacific Northwest salmon has a number of prerequisites— principally, detailed knowledge of management actions. In the absence of coordinated ecological monitoring, basic restoration project metadata (type, location, timing, etc.) is the primary source of information guiding restoration planning and management decisions. There are surprisingly few sources of habitat restoration information at scales appropriate to salmon recovery, ranging from small sub‐watersheds to multistate evolutionarily significant units. We evaluate the consistency of two Columbia River basin restoration inventories developed in different ways but similar in goal: to inform future project placement. We compared the Pacific Northwest Habitat Project Database, compiled by researchers at NOAA Fisheries Service, and the Subbasin Inventories, compiled by local entities within each of 62 subbasins. Confederating these two data holdings, we found 11,805 projects in the Columbia River Basin, with only 13% (1,549/11,805) in common. Subbasin‐scale inventories capture more locally sponsored projects than do large‐scale data compilations. Attributes (date, cost) of projects in common to both datasets matched less than half the time, suggesting organizations working on the same project are reporting independently and differently to either the database or inventories. We found that the lack of common data standards and lack of knowledge about accessible data sources are major hurdles to making data available for decision making.

Archaeological Evidence for Resilience of Pacific Northwest Salmon Populations and the Socioecological System over the last ~7,500 years

Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides an alternative conceptual view of the potential for sustainable harvests and can suggest possible social mechanisms for managing human behavior. Review of the ~7,500-year-long fish bone record from two subregions of the Pacific Northwest shows remarkable stability in salmon use. As major changes in the ecological and social system occurred over this lengthy period, persistence in the fishery is not due simply to a lack of perturbation, but rather indicates resilience in the ecological–human system. Of several factors possibly contributing to resilience, low human population size and harvesting pressure, habitat enhancement, and suppression of competing predators do not appear to be of major importance. Flexible resource use, including human use of a range of local resources, many of which are linked in a food web with salmon, likely contributed to resilience. Most important were the beliefs and social institutions (including ownership, regulation, rituals, and monitoring) that placed restraints on salmon use as a common pool resource. In contrast, only a small fraction of our modern society relies economically on or has direct interaction with the fish, which limits our concern and willingness to fundamentally change behaviors that contribute to habitat degradation and loss, the main challenges facing salmon populations today. Salmon recovery efforts may benefit substantially from investing more resources into establishing links between community groups and actual fish populations, which would create a sense of proprietorship, one of the keys to resilience in the indigenous salmon fishery.

Towards sustainable fisheries: Assessing co-management effectiveness for the Columbia River Basin

AbstractCo-management theory argues that incorporating local knowledge into fisheries science decision-making can lead to more sustainable fisheries through improved fishery dynamics, reduced harvest pressure, and increased regulatory compliance. The Maine lobster fishery, Japanese fishing cooperatives, and Alaska’s Community Development Quota Program are all considered successful models of fisheries co-management. Co-management arrangements between Pacific Northwest treaty tribes and state managers were first established in the 1970s, following court decisions upholding the tribes’ treaty rights to fish. However, the long-term effectiveness of Pacific Northwest salmon fisheries co-management is not fully understood. Here I present an historical analysis of co-management effects for the Columbia River salmon fishery, from both an ecological and social perspective. My research objectives are to (1) evaluate the perceived impact of tribal participation in salmon fishery management decisions (2) assess social, economic, and ecological impacts of fisheries co-management, and (3) understand barriers to co-management efforts in terms of institutional and political frameworks. Building on Evelyn Pinkerton’s research, I use archival materials, scientific literature, and interviews with key actors to define key developments in Columbia River salmon fishery co-management, including legal decisions and the establishment of tribal fish commissions. I then conduct a preliminary analysis of co-management effectiveness over time. Initial results suggest that tribal participation in fisheries management has led to ecologically and socially sustainable fisheries management practices in the Columbia River basin, although political disagreements have held back progress. For example, tribal fisheries co-management has led to improved ecological management practices, including new requirements for counting fish harvest levels and monitoring of habitat quality. Co-management has created economic opportunities, such as niche markets for native-caught fish and added-value processing, which can generate larger profits from smaller fish harvests. Increasing tribal fisheries capacity through co-management has also forwarded community efforts to ensure cultural survival by maintaining traditional fishing practices. Institutional and political barriers to co-management that include sovereignty issues, regulatory conflicts, and funding needs present challenges to resolving habitat management problems for the region.

Use of ELISA to monitor bacterial kidney disease in naturally spawning chinook salmon

Bacterial kidney disease (BKD) caused by Renibacterium salmoninarum (Rs) is a serious problem among Pacific Northwest salmon hatcheries and has raised concerns that salmon reared in hatcheries may spread BKD to natural populations. In order to monitor the potential spread of this disease to salmon spawning in nature, a method must be available to collect and analyze tissues from naturally spawning salmon. Kidney tissue analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is the standard method to detect the presence of Rs in salmon sampled in hatcheries. In this study, we tested the validity of using ELISA on kidney tissue collected from intact carcasses recovered on the spawning grounds to monitor BKD in naturally spawning populations by comparing ELISA optical density (OD) values from kidney tissue that was subjected to conditions that simulated decomposition in a carcass and collection during a spawning ground survey with samples freshly collected from salmon at a hatchery. Mean ELISA OD levels were 1.060 for the samples prepared by the normal preparation and 1.115 for samples prepared by simulating spawning ground survey collection. There was no significant difference in mean ELISA OD between the 2 sample preparations and the relationship did not significantly differ from 1:1 (slope = 0.946). This demonstrates that BKD prevalence in natural populations can be monitored using ELISA conducted on samples from intact carcasses recovered on spawning ground surveys. This will be an important tool for monitoring the effect of hatchery supplementation on naturally spawning salmon populations.

Salmon, Wildlife, And Wine: Marine-Derived Nutrients In Human-Dominated Ecosystems Of Central California

Pacific salmon transfer large quantities of marine-derived nutrients to adjacent forest ecosystems with profound effects on plant and wildlife production. We investigated this process for two highly modified California wine country rivers, one with consistent salmon runs (Mokelumne River) and one without (Calaveras River). Mokelumne River Chinook salmon transported biomass and N comparable to Pacific Northwest salmon streams. Calaveras River levels were much less. Scavenger numbers correlated with salmon carcass counts over time on the Mokelumne River but not the Calaveras River. Likewise, salmon carcasses were consumed significantly faster on the Mokelumne River. Native riparian vegetation as well as cultivated wine grapes adjacent to Mokelumne River spawning sites received 18-25% of foliar N from marine sources, significantly higher than vegetation along the Calaveras River. These data suggest that robust salmon runs continue to provide important ecological services with high economic value, even in impaired watersheds. Loss of Pacific salmon can not only negatively affect stream and riparian ecosystem function, but can also affect local economies where agriculture and salmon streams coexist.

Public Understanding of Science in Pacific Northwest Salmon Recovery Policy

ABSTRACT In the arena of salmon recovery policy, stakeholders often propose that science should guide policy, frame their positions in scientific terms, and construct scientific arguments to support their positions. However, there are also appeals to involve citizens more thoroughly in policymaking. An important step in bringing science and citizens together is to investigate how citizens understand the processes, actors, institutions, and knowledge of science. Discourse analysis of the testimony of 51 nonscientist stakeholders to Congressional committees between 1998 and 2000 revealed that 14 used discourses of science. These understandings related to scientific process, scientific knowledge, and scientists as policy actors. Individual citizens employed multiple culturally available discourses based on a traditional, authoritative understanding of science to support their own positions, while others' views were invalidated based on a skeptical-realist understanding. Findings provide mixed comfort for policymakers and resource managers.

Maximum Temperature Limits for Chinook, Coho, and Chum Salmon, and Steelhead Trout in the Pacific Northwest

Wild salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest are imperiled by a variety of anthropogenic environmental modifications, not the least of which is increasing maximum water temperatures. While many reports have been written on physiological or population-level influences of temperature in terms of the decline of wild salmon, synthesis of these diverse sources is needed for evaluation of numeric temperature criteria and their potential in salmon recovery planning. Various sensitive life stages and biological processes are impacted differently for different salmon species. This article reviews the literature for chinook, coho, chum, and steelhead, which are currently listed in the Columbia River Basin under the Endangered Species Act. Spawning, incubation and early fry development, juvenile rearing and growth, smoltification, and migration are considered. Swimming speed, disease susceptibility, chemical considerations, and lethality are also reviewed. Regional population growth and climate change will exacerbate the difficulties of recovering Northwestern salmon beyond remnant runs. Ethical analysis of the assumptions underlying recovery policy decisions, proposals for regime-based water quality standards, and a systems level vulnerability analysis are components of the recovery planning discussions. Specific numeric maximum temperature criteria that can be integrated into a broader recovery planning process are described for sensitive life stages of three species of Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead.

Pacific Northwest Salmon: Forecasting Their Status in 2100

Throughout the Pacific Northwest (northern California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and the Columbia Basin portion of British Columbia), many wild salmon stocks (a group of interbreeding individuals that is roughly equivalent to a “population”) have declined and some have disappeared. Substantial efforts have been made to restore some runs of wild salmon, but few have shown much success. Society's failure to restore wild salmon is a policy conundrum characterized by: (1) claims by a strong majority to be supportive of restoring wild salmon runs; (2) competing societal priorities which are at least partially mutually exclusive; (3) the region's rapidly growing human population and its pressure on all natural resources (including salmon and their habitats); (4) entrenched policy stances in the salmon restoration debate, usually supported by established bureaucracies; (5) society's expectation that experts should be able to solve the salmon problem by using a technological scheme and without massive cultural or economic sacrifices (e.g., life style changes); (6) use of experts and scientific “facts” by political proponents to bolster their policy positions; (7) inability of salmon scientists to avoid being placed in particular policy or political camps; and (8) confusion in discussing policy options caused by couching policy preferences in scientific terms or imperatives rather than value-based criteria. Even with definitive scientific knowledge, which will never be complete or certain, restoring most wild salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest to historic levels will be arduous and will entail substantial economic costs and social disruption required. Ultimate success cannot be assured. Given the appreciable costs and social dislocation, coupled with the dubious probability of success, candid public dialog is warranted to decide whether restoration of wild salmon is an appropriate, much less feasible, public policy objective. Provided with a genuine assessment of the necessary economic costs and social implications required for restoration, it is questionable whether a majority of the public would opt for the pervasive measures that appear necessary for restoring many runs of wild salmon. Through the 21st century, I conclude that there will continue to be appreciable annual variation in the size of salmon runs, accompanied by the decadal trends in run size caused by periodic changes in climatic and oceanic conditions, but many, perhaps most, stocks of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest likely will remain at their current low levels or continue to decline in spite of heroic, expensive, and socially turbulent attempts at restoration.

Enhanced fit through institutional interplay in the Pacific Northwest Salmon co-management regime

This article examines the dynamic institutional landscape of Pacific salmon management and allocation in Washington State, focusing on tribal efforts to enhance fit through institutional interplay. Affirming rights reserved by Northwest Indian tribes in treaties signed in the 1850s, the courts established a framework for the co-management of salmon by state and tribal governments. Within this structure, tribal efforts have significantly enhanced the fit between management institutions and natural systems. This has occurred through institutional changes in the production of knowledge for management, linking local, regional and international allocation processes, altering the mandates of existing institutions and creating new ones with more salmon-centric agendas.

Messages from Frank’s Landing; A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way

Review: Messages from Frank's Landing; A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way By Charles Wilkinson Reviewed by Cate Gable Berkeley, California, USA and Paris, France Messages from Frank's Landing; A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way. Charles Wilkinson. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000, hardback, 118 pages. 0-295-98011-7 US$22.50 cloth Charles Wilkinson and the University of Washington Press have produced an elegant little book that packs a punch. Messages from Frank's Landin; A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way captures, through the eyes of Nisqually tribal leader and activist Billy Frank Jr., the history of the tribe's efforts to save their culture, their river, and Pacific Northwest salmon runs. The tale is complex, as any environmental story is, but this one is made even more layered by the clash of cultures and the inevitable web of government policy makers stretching over many decades and regimes. The white man's version of this story starts in the Pacific Northwest in the 1800s; the 1818 Treaty between England and the United States acknowledged a joint tenancy but allowed Americans territory primarily below the Columbia River. In 1846, Washington and Oregon were ceded to the United States, and the Donation Land Act of 1850, a precursor of the Homestead Act, ensured that a steady stream of settlers began entering the southern Puget Sound area. I say the white man's story. . . because, of course, the Nisqually peoples had been living and thriving on and around the Nisqually River that threads it way south from the Puget Sound between Tacoma and Olympia in Washington State for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. Then as Bill Frank's father Willie Frank, born in 1879, put it, The white man came over the hill with a Bible in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. President Pierce appointed Isaac Stevens as governor of the territories in 1853 to negotiate with tribes in the region, and the inevitable power struggle began. The Indian people spoke Salish and knew virtually no English, and, more importantly, they had never thought of land as a commodity to be owned or sold. Fishing rights did not exist as a concept. It will be no surprise to any reader that after the negotiations, Stevens' treaty, confirmed by the Senate, allowed that most of the Puget Sound - 2.5 million acres - belonged to the government, free and clear.

COOPERATIVE MANAGEMENT OF THE DUNGENESS WATERSHED TO PROTECT SALMON IN WASHINGTON STATE1

ABSTRACT: Over the last decade, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe has formed partnerships with their neighboring county government, irrigation districts, property owners, and state and federal agencies in an effort to save the dwindling runs of Dungeness River salmon. Although considerable progress has been made to begin the recovery process, the watershed is included in recent listings of Pacific Northwest salmon under the Endangered Species Act. Under the coordination of an active watershed council, significant improvements have been made in water conservation and the protection of instream flows. Cooperation between the Tribe, irrigation districts and the Washington Department of Ecology resulted in a trust water rights agreement and the reduction of late summer water withdrawals by one‐third.

Human and Habitat Needs in Disaster Relief for Pacific Northwest Salmon Fisheries

Abstract Since 1994, federal disaster relief programs have been implemented for New England, Pacific Coast, and Gulf Coast fisheries. The Pacific Northwest coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) fishery serves as a case study for results of a disaster relief program. To help salmon fishers, the U.S. government declared an ecological disaster and provided $37 million in relief over 3 years. Relief efforts included an emergency program that provided limited, one-year assistance to an estimated two-thirds of the salmon gillnetters and trollers in Oregon, Washington, and California. A multi-year Northwest Emergency Assistance Program (NEAP) sought to reverse harmful habitat and capacity conditions and helped a quarter of the salmon gillnetters and trollers. NEAP was an important catalyst for programs to restore habitat, one of the primary causes of salmon stock decline. Interview, survey, and documentary data suggest that disaster relief helped commercial fishers continue fishing but did not adequately meet many ...

Commentary: The Savvy Salmon Technocrat: Life's Little Rules

For over a century, salmon technocrats (fisheries scientists and kindred technical experts) have played an important role in Pacific Northwest salmon policy, but their involvement has caused them and others discomfort. The discomfort is summarized by the following observations: (1) the public, apparently, supports maintaining wild salmon runs, (2) there are competing societal priorities, many of which are partially or wholly mutually exclusive, (3) increasing numbers of people in the Pacific Northwest create additional pressures on all ecological resources (including wild salmon), (4) policy positions in the salmon policy debate are entrenched, (5) society expects salmon technocrats to help solve the salmon problem, (6) each of the many sides of the policy debate attempts to utilize salmon technocrats to bolster its argument, (7) it has proved nearly impossible for salmon technocrats to avoid being categorized as supporting a particular policy position, and (8) many policy advocates frame their policy views in scientific terms rather than value-based preferences. Involvement with salmon policy can be the professional undoing of a salmon technocrat unless his proper role is understood. From a technocrat's perspective, and in order to survive professionally, I propose several rules: (1) be honest, (2) focus on science, (3) accept that politicians covet legitimacy, (4) recognize that framing the policy question largely defines the analytical outcome, (5) avoid the allure of junk science and policy babble, (6) concede that societal values and priorities evolve, and (7) avoid technical and scientific hubris