Idaho Strategy Calls For Weaning Recovery Effort Off Barging Plans To Save Steelhead To Include Improving Habitat

Idaho’s updated strategy for keeping steelhead off the endangered species list focuses on making the Snake and Columbia rivers friendlier for migrating fish while eventually eliminating reliance on barging smolts around dams.

Gov. Phil Batt said Thursday that the state’s comments on the National Marine Fisheries Service’s proposed listing of steelhead “recognize the fact that listing these fish as threatened will do nothing to help see them recovered.”

Idaho Fish and Game Commission and Idaho Steelhead and Salmon Unlimited representatives joined Batt in unveiling the state’s detailed response to the listing that was proposed in August because wild stocks of the fish have declined by nearly 90 percent in just three decades.

A final decision from the Fisheries Service is expected in August. Snake River chinook and sockeye salmon already are on the endangered species list.

The Idaho strategy for saving steelhead without federal protection involves improving habitat, isolating hatchery releases from wild steelhead production areas to avoid genetic deterioration and addressing problems with the harvest of wild fish downstream in the Columbia River.

Batt said he agrees with an Independent Scientific Advisory Board convened by the four Columbia Basin governors that found the river system should be restored to a more “normative” condition, and that barging young steelhead and salmon around federal hydropower dams will not restore lost fish runs.

And while he also agrees that large-scale flow augmentation from upstream sources also is not a viable option in the long term, he is not ready to breach any dams.

“I will not advocate major alterations to the river system until we know exactly what it will cost, and whether society agrees that it is the right direction to move,” the governor said.

However, the plan does call for moving toward a permanent drawdown of the reservoir behind John Day Dam on the Columbia - a change advocated for years by fishery agencies, Indian tribes, sportsmen and conservationists.

In its September report, the Independent Scientific Advisory Board recommended lowering the portion of the Columbia between John Day and McNary dams to natural river level. But a report commissioned by area utilities and irrigators said that would threaten the Northwest’s power supply and eliminate an important flood control measure for the Portland-Vancouver area.

Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Richard Meier of Eagle said consensus behind the state’s strategy, including support from all four members of Idaho’s congressional delegation, was key to solving the problem.

“We now have the scientific data available. It’s just a matter of will and working out the problems to solve this,” he said. “I can’t see that listing of steelhead would be an advantage to us. We’ve had the listing of salmon for a number of years. It has not proven to help the situation. We just have another bureau to work with.”

In fact, Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials fear a federal listing for steelhead would interfere with Idaho’s recovery efforts. Ed Bowles, the department’s anadromous fisheries manager, said habitat measures required by the salmon listings and other state initiatives already have given officials all the tools they need to save the oceangoing trout.

“There’s no need to list them, no need to have that extra layer of bureaucracy and constraint when we’re doing everything we can to get our house in order and help get things in order downriver,” Bowles said.

Steve Huffaker, Fish and Game’s fisheries bureau chief, said the key to a successful recovery effort is getting the migrating fish back to the ocean.

“This next year we will reap the benefits of the plan that we had for the out-migration in 1995. Perhaps we will be able to see our first salmon fishery in a number of years,” Huffaker said. “The centerpiece of this plan is better outmigration conditions.”