Fisheries Service Cuts Back Chinook Salmon Recovery Plan

The National Marine Fisheries Service got the go-ahead from other federal agencies Wednesday to scale back its plans to boost the flow of water during the final weeks of migration for endangered Snake River fall chinook salmon.

The agency also is going ahead with plans to stop the release of water through spillways at John Day and The Dalles dams on the Columbia River on Aug. 15, even though some of the endangered run hasn’t made it past those dams yet.

The recovery plan for the endangered fall chinook run applies through the end of August, when fisheries service biologists say nearly all the run will have reached Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River.

However, the agency said new information likely would reverse an earlier decision to cut off the release of water into the lower Snake River from a reservoir in North Idaho.

The fisheries service had come under intense criticism from Indian tribes and the state of Oregon for the cutback proposals. At the center of their criticism is a deal reached last weekend with Montana.

Montana Gov. Marc Racicot had threatened to sue the fisheries service if the agency went ahead with plans last Saturday to increase the amount of water released through Libby Dam from 16,000 cubic feet per second to 20,000 cubic feet per second.

The fisheries service agreed not to increase the flow and said it would decrease it to 9,000 cubic feet per second as of Aug. 15.

The Montana deal was approved Wednesday by the river’s management team, made up of the fisheries service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration.

While the four agencies must agree on any action, they generally follow whatever the fisheries service recommends.

“The deal that NMFS cut with Montana puts water skiers in Montana ahead of salmon restoration,” said Rick Taylor, spokesman for the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The commission represents Indian tribes that have treaty rights to Columbia River fish.

Oregon’s director of fisheries, Doug DeHart, also was critical of the Montana ruling. He said it indicated the fisheries service was willing to stray from its own salmon recovery plan because of political and legal pressure.

Michael Newsom, hydrologist for the fisheries service, said Wednesday evening that new information had led his agency to conclude that it probably won’t cut off the release of 13,000 cubic feet of water per second from Dworshak Reservoir, as had been earlier planned.