A Forty-Year Spending Spree Failed to Move the Wild Salmon Needle

A recent study on recovery of salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River basin revealed that despite investing $9 billion in restoration actions spanning four decades, there was no discernible increase in the abundance of wild salmon and steelhead passing through Bonneville Dam.

Taking a step back, it's stunning to consider the immensity of the endeavor. Columbia River wild salmon and steelhead have been the target of the largest, most expensive animal recovery project in the world's history. A forty-year-long experiment played out in front of multiple generations of people from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

The results aren't a surprise to those of us intimately familiar with salmon and steelhead recovery in the Columbia River Basin, and the rest of the Pacific Northwest. Agencies have invested vast sums of money into salmon and steelhead recovery in the Lower 48, and almost universally, stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) remain threatened with extinction and are ill-prepared for a rapidly changing climate.

Truth be told, the failures of federal and state agencies to stop the continued demise of wild salmon and steelhead is one reason The Conservation Angler (TCA) exists. It's imperative to hold managers accountable for violating laws, ignoring the best available scientific information, and failing to meet their conservation mandates. We also believe it is necessary to force them to formulate alternative, science-based actions rather than continue forging ahead with strategies that have proven to be failures to the fish and fishers.

Let's be honest: if a business generated such a poor return on investment over a 40-year period, or a sports franchise lost for 40 consecutive years, no one would be chomping at the bit to repeat the process. TCA sees this as a prime opportunity to learn from trial and error. As Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'til it's over."

How Success Was Evaluated, and Money Was Allocated

The study by Jaeger and Scheuerell offers a unique opportunity for a 40-year retrospective analysis of recovery spending in relation to the status of wild salmon and steelhead stocks. In 1987, the Northwest Power and Conservation Council set a goal of increasing total salmon and steelhead abundance in the Columbia basin to 5 million by 2025. Annual adult returns at Bonneville Dam averaged less than 1.5 million in the 2010s.

Funding was not equally allocated among species, and not all of it went directly to restore, protect, or reconnect habitat. Over the past forty years (ending in 2017), 43% and 27% of the $9 billion was for BPA and USACE programs, respectively. From 1997 to 2017, BPA allocated 36% of its money to research, monitoring, and evaluation, compared to 21% for planning and coordination and just 24% for habitat restoration. So, almost half the $9 billion was spent by dam and power managers, and 57% of BPA's budget went to monitoring, evaluation, planning, and coordination.

The study did not seek to parse out effects for specific stocks of fish, and frankly, the authors shouldn't have to. Small victories are nice, but more was expected from $9 billion.

Why Hasn't Recovery Succeeded?

Although some populations have fared better than others, we are a long way from 5 million adult salmon and steelhead passing Bonneville Dam by 2025. TCA poses our top five hypotheses for why recovery spending has not achieved its goals.

Hypothesis 1We've underestimated human impacts locally and climate × hatchery impacts in the North Pacific Ocean.

The human population in the Pacific Northwest has dramatically increased since salmon and steelhead were first listed in the 1990s. This population boom coincided with intensified effects from climate change, including hotter, more extreme summers and reduced snowpack. At the same time, hatchery releases of pink and chum salmon escalated, resulting in an estimated 5.5 billion salmon now inhabiting the North Pacific. A warming ocean and the sheer volume of hatchery salmon have likely contributed to declines in the survival, growth, and size of many salmon stocks. These adverse changes may have effectively canceled out the benefits that might have been realized through habitat restoration efforts.

Hypothesis 2We've overestimated the efficacy of, and potential for, habitat restoration alone to significantly increase returns of adult salmon and steelhead.

While restoring entire watersheds would be amazing, in practice, real-world restoration often focuses on instream habitat that represents a fraction of the total salmon-bearing stream miles. Those actions may improve the productivity of fish living in the restored reach, but the rest of the stream system remains degraded. A study in 2008 reviewed the effectiveness of 345 stream rehabilitation projects. They found some projects increased local fish abundance, but overall, many failed to meet their objectives. This isn't to say habitat restoration is wasteful. Rather, restoration alone cannot necessarily be presumed to always be effective in increasing overall abundance of salmonids.

Federal managers estimate they have reopened or improved salmonid access to over 2,200 miles of rivers and streams in the Columbia River Basin alone. More broadly, the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund has reportedly reestablished access to 11,800 stream miles. If the estimates are accurate, how is it possible that restoration and small barrier removal has not translated into improved production of salmon and steelhead?

Hypothesis 3We've underestimated the impacts and durability of large releases of hatchery salmon and steelhead.

In the Columbia River Basin, 82 federal, state, and tribal hatcheries release approximately 140 million salmon and steelhead per year. Despite releasing billions of hatchery fish and reopening enough stream miles to span a large watershed, the number of adults passing Bonneville Dam did not significantly increase over the forty-year period. Hatcheries are not inherently bad and underpin many harvest fisheries, but the weight of evidence suggests they more commonly harm than help wild salmonids.

A recent global synthesis of peer-reviewed science found that 83% of 206 studies on hatchery salmonids reported some type of adverse effect on wild salmonids. Moreover, a 43-year-long study on 22 populations of Chinook salmon in Idaho found that any increase in spawners associated with hatchery fish disappeared once releases were ceased.

The wild coho salmon population viability in the Salmon River, Oregon, increased after hatchery cessation. Once hatchery releases ended, the abundance and productivity of wild coho salmon improved, spawn timing shifted to more closely resemble the historical timing, and juveniles increasingly displayed an alternative, estuarine strategy. The estuarine life-history strategy contributed an average of 70% of the spawners in all but one year of the study.

Hypothesis 4We've underestimated the effects of harvest on Chinook salmon.

Chinook salmon returning to the Columbia River Basin upstream of Bonneville Dam are harvested by commercial, recreational, and tribal fishers, with recent estimates suggesting annual total ocean exploitation rates ranging from 30–60%. Chinook salmon are also maturing at younger ages and smaller sizes. A publication by Ricker in 1980 found that body size of Chinook salmon in the PNW decreased by 50% from 1920 to the mid-1970s, with an additional 16% decrease in egg production and 28% reduction in nutrient transport continuing since the 1990s.

The level of ocean exploitation undermines the sacrifice, compromise, and habitat investments in the Columbia River. High ocean harvest rates were a problem for Oregon coho salmon. Ocean harvest was reduced from over 80% down to generally less than 15%, which was considered a principal factor contributing to the improvement of ESA-listed coho.

Hypothesis 5We've underestimated the importance of removing the four lower Snake River dams.

Significant amounts of high-quality habitat remain in the Snake River Basin and millions have been spent to restore and reconnect more degraded areas. Despite these efforts, wild steelhead and spring/summer Chinook salmon in the Snake River basin remain threatened with extinction and are worse off than when the listings began in the 1990s.

According to the most prominent experts, "the weight of scientific evidence demonstrates there is no chance of restoring abundant, healthy and harvestable Snake River salmon and steelhead with the lower Snake River dams in place." Dam removal would not just benefit migrating adults and juveniles; free-flowing rivers, particularly large mainstem channels, have remarkable production potential in their own right.

Learning from History for Tomorrow's Generations

The study should be a collective wake-up call. Despite spending $9 billion over forty years, not much has changed since Nehlsen et al. penned their seminal paper in 1991, Wild Salmon and Steelhead at a Crossroads.

If granted rulership for a day, TCA would start by closing mixed-stock ocean fisheries that have the greatest impact on immature Chinook salmon, allowing them to rebuild age and size at maturity. We would focus fisheries on terminal areas in freshwater where returning fish are mature and harvest is more simply managed. This would immediately provide greater and more consistent fishing opportunity for Native American tribes and recreational anglers in the Columbia River basin, while also increasing the size and number of adults on the spawning grounds.

Next, we would greatly reduce pink salmon hatchery production in Alaska, many of which were originally established to mitigate adverse impacts from the Exxon Valdez. Instead, those hatchery fish replaced the wild stocks and have contributed to a myriad of density-dependent effects on organisms from plankton to birds, whales, and salmonids — including biennial patterns in abundance of populations of Columbia River Chinook salmon and B-run steelhead.

TCA would also remove the four lower Snake River dams, period. They were a mistake in the first place.

Last, TCA would significantly reduce the production of hatchery fish in the Columbia River basin to ensure their total ecological and genetic footprint is not so overwhelming to ESA-listed wild salmonids.

Big changes would require a short-term sacrifice. The unfortunate reality is that we are now in this together, and while recovery of salmon and steelhead may seem impossible, history offers examples of hope.

Over 100 years ago, Roosevelt Elk on the Olympic Peninsula were on the verge of extinction due to over-hunting. Washington state enacted a hunting moratorium, and President Roosevelt permanently protected 615,000 acres of their habitat. The elk recovered.

We know from history that rebuilding animal populations requires strong alignment between harvest, habitat restoration, and — where necessary — captive breeding. What humans have attempted in the Columbia River basin is quite different, and we aren't aware of any instances where it has worked.

For recreational anglers, Oregon historically implemented conservative regulations that many would scoff at today. In 1959, for instance, the state closed nine rivers to boat fishing to curtail catch where salmon were too vulnerable, and closed fishing at several river mouths to protect adult salmon. The Oregon Fish Commission argued that "many special regulations are necessary if proper management of this magnificent resource is to be sustained in the face of increased use." We agree.

Climate change isn't waiting for those in charge to figure it out. Time is of the essence if we are serious about recovering salmon and steelhead. It's the least we can do for animals that have given us so much — and our responsibility for the generations to come.