THE OSPREY · THE OSPREY Contributing Editors John Sager • Pete Soverel Bill Redman • Stan Young Norm Ploss Contributors Peter W. Soverel • Steve Raymond Bill Bakke • Bill

For the Love of Wild Steelhead

by Steve Raymond— Whidbey Island, Washington —

Noted angling author Steve Raymondgave this talk at a Wild SteelheadCoalition benefit function onNovember 19, 2005.

Steve Raymond has written ninebooks on fly fishing, most recentlyNervous Water: Variations on aTheme of Fly Fishing. He was alsoeditor of two angling magazines, TheFlyfisher and Fly Fishing in SaltWaters, and has written for manyothers, including Sports Illustrated,Fly Fisherman and FlyFishing. Hewas also an editor at The SeattleTimes for 30 years. He now lives onWhidbey Island in Puget Sound.

It seems only yesterday that Ilast spoke to this group,although it was actually ninemonths ago. But I’m glad to behere again, and I want to

thank you for inviting me back; forsome reason, that doesn’t seem tohappen very often. And I’m especial-ly glad you invited me to jointonight’s celebration of the miracleof wild steelhead.

Author Pete Soverel is a member ofThe Osprey editorial committee andfounder of The Wild Salmon Center.

Says Soverel: “Much of the data citedin what follows is based upon archivalresearch conducted by Bill McMillanand Nick Gayeski in a project fundedby the Wild Salmon Center to deter-mine historic levels of steelhead abun-dance in Washington State based uponcommercial and sports catch recordsdating back to the early 1890s. Thiswork will soon be published by the Wild

Salmon Center. What follows herein aremy conclusions about the managementimplications that arise from the state’sfailure to make use of this data andhow that failure imperils steelheadmanagement and recovery plans. TheWild Salmon Center and I, not to men-tion the few remaining steelhead, areindebted to Bill and Nick for their pio-neering work.”

That steelhead are in serioustrouble from the mid-Canadian coast to the south-ern limit of their range is, ofcourse, an established fact.

Virtually all stocks in this vast, onceproductive, region are either at elevat-ed risk of near-term extinction or arealready extinct. Even stocks deemed“healthy”, as we shall see below, are atlevels of only one to six percent of his-toric abundance that stretches the def-inition of “healthy” beyond credibility.

As the region struggles to developcomprehensive management regimesto restore or, in the case of “healthy”stocks, maintain current levels of

THE OSPREYA Newsletter Published by the Steelhead Committee

Federation of Fly Fishers

Dedicated to the Preservation of Wild Steelhead • Issue No. 54 • MAY 2006

HISTORICSTEELHEAD— PAGE 1 —

STEELHEAD LOVE

— PAGE 1 —

“RETURN TO THERIVER” REVIEW

— PAGE 11 —

KALAMA RIVER DAM?— PAGE 14 —

ALAMEDA CREEKSTEELHEAD

— PAGE 16 —

Continued on Page 8Continued on Page 4

Historic Steelhead AbundanceThe Appropriate Baseline

by Peter W. Soverel— Wild Salmon Center & Steelhead Committee —

Incredibly, there is acontinuing debate by

the agencies onwhether abundance

targets should beincluded in steelhead

recovery plans.

IN THISISSUE:

THE OSPREY

Contributing EditorsJohn Sager • Pete SoverelBill Redman • Stan Young

Norm Ploss

ContributorsPeter W. Soverel • Steve Raymond

Bill Bakke • Bill Redman Patrick Trotter • Jeff Miller

Norm Ploss

LayoutJ. Yuskavitch Resources

Letters To The EditorThe Osprey welcomes submissions

and letters to the editor. Submissions may be

made electronically or by mail.

The OspreyP.O. Box 1228

Sisters, OR [email protected]

(541) 549-8914

The Osprey is a publication of TheFederation of Fly Fishers and is pub-lished three times a year. All materialsare copy protected and require permis-sion prior to reprinting or other use.

The Osprey © 2006

THE OSPREY IS PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPERUSING SOY INK

The Federation of Fly Fishers is aunique non-profit organization con-

cerned with sport fishing and fisheriesThe Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) supports con-

servation of all fish in all waters.FFF has a long standing commit-ment to solving fisheries problems atthe grass roots. By charter and inclina-tion, FFF is organized from the bottomup; each of its 360+ clubs, all overNorth America and the world, is aunique and self-directed group. Thegrass roots focus reflects the realitythat most fisheries solutions must comeat that local level.

ChairmanBill Redman

EditorJim Yuskavitch

FROM THE PERCH — EDITOR’S MESSAGE

2 MAY 2006 THE OSPREY • ISSUE NO. 54

History, the Fifth ‘H’by Jim Yuskavitch

Letters to the EditorDear Editor:

I wanted to thank you for the latestedition of The Osprey. I always devourit as soon as it arrives. At least thereare a few things going more right forthe fish than at some times in the past.

Keep up the good work. Best fishes.

John Rogersvia e-mail

Just how many fish our rivers can hold is at the core of the debate that hasraged over steelhead and salmon management in the Pacific Northwestand beyond for decades now. The usual suspects take their familiar posi-tions. For some, producing steelhead and salmon in hatcheries is themethod of choice for keeping those species in our streams and rivers

over the long term. Others, myself included, say that healthy, viable populationsof wild fish are our only hope for sustaining these wonderful creatures along withthe economic, social and cultural benefits they provide to society. Readers of TheOsprey are more than familiar with the debate.

One of the primary arguments for proponents of hatcheries over wild fish is thesupposition that rivers and streams in steelhead country simply cannot supportfish in large numbers. Indeed, a few years ago I sat in on a meeting of salmon andsteelhead anglers on the Oregon coast where a number of attendees flatly pro-claimed that hatcheries were necessary because wild fish were doomed to extinc-tion in the not-too-distant future. The reason? The coastal rivers of Oregon, intheir view, simply will never support fishable numbers of wild salmon and steel-head. Notably, all the people in the room have lived and fished in the period ofsteelhead and angling history when a majority of our fish are hatchery-bred.

This brings us back to the “how many” question. In this issue’s cover story,Historic Steelhead Abundance, Pete Soverel, Steelhead Committee member andfounder of The Wild Salmon Center, takes us back in time for a hard look at howmany steelhead historically populated the rivers of Washington and finds that farmore wild fish swam in the those waters in the past than many people often real-ize. In fact, steelhead, generally assumed to be the least historically abundant ofthe salmon tribe, returned in much greater numbers than you might havethought. In addition, old records show that they brought a higher price at marketthan even the famed Chinook salmon and thus were a more valuable commodity.

Even more importantly, Soverel points out that fisheries managers seem toignore historical abundance when setting baseline goals for wild fish recoveryand instead typically aim for recovery levels that are just a fraction of what agiven river may, in fact, be capable of producing.

History has always been one of my favorite subjects, along with the admoni-tion that those who ignore it are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps, for steelhead andsalmon, there is an opposite corollary: Those who ignore the past’s lessons of suc-cess are doomed never to repeat them.

It was David Montgomery who, in his book, King of Fish: The Thousand-YearRun of Salmon, broached the idea of history as the fifth ‘H’ along with hatcheries,harvest, hydro and habitat. Soverel’s article only further confirms the wisdomand value of that idea.

Sorry About That!Loyal reader of The Osprey, John Rogers,

donated $50 to the cause in 2005.Unfortunately, we neglected to mentionhim in our 2005 Honors List published inthe January 2006 issue of The Osprey.

We do our best to recognize our valuedcontributors, but on occasion, we inadver-tently leave someone out. Our apologies toJohn along with a heartfelt thank you tohim and all the rest of you whose donationskeep us going in the cause of wild fish.

This is the first of a two-part article onUpper Columbia Steelhead. TheSeptember 2006 issue of The Ospreywill conclude with a brief discussion ofsome of the science related to localbroodstock hatchery reform (heavilyused with Upper Columbia Steelhead)and a review of some alternativestrategies for recovery.

The Upper ColumbiaSteelhead “DistinctPopulation Segment” hasbeen defined by NOAAFisheries as the steelhead

whose natal waters are the mainstemColumbia and its tributaries above themouth of the Yakima upstream to theimpassible Chief Joseph Dam. In prac-tical terms this means the Wenatchee,Okanogan/Similkameen, Entiat, andMethow watersheds in North CentralWashington.

History

Fifty years ago, only two or three ofthe mainstem Columbia dams belowGrand Coulee were in place and thesteelhead runs were entirely wild fish.Fishing was very good but little known.As the rest of the staircase of ninedams and reservoirs between ChiefJoseph and salt water was completed,mostly in the 1960s and early 70s, theywere accompanied by “mitigation” inthe form of massive infusions of hatch-ery fish, mostly from distant water-sheds.

By the 1980s, steelhead returns werea mix of wild and hatchery fish, oceanconditions were good, and hatcherysteelhead returns were profiting fromheavy stocking without some of thelonger term consequences of hatcheryprograms. Fishing was good.

By the early 1990s, ocean conditionsbecame much less favorable; the inces-sant attrition of the hydrosystem onthe migrating fish accumulated, espe-cially on downstream migratingsmolts; and steelhead returns, both

wild and hatchery, plummeted. In 1996 and shortly thereafter, ten of

the 15 groups of steelhead stocks in thelower 48 states were listed asEndangered or Threatened under theEndangered Species Act. In the PacificNorthwest, only the Upper ColumbiaSteelhead were listed as Endangered,the category closest to extinction,because of extremely low wild fishreturns. All sport fishing in these onceoutstanding streams was terminatedshortly after the Endangered listingwas finalized.

Prior to about 2000, all hatcherysteelhead were stocked with their adi-pose fins removed to distinguish themfrom wild steelhead. In about 2000, theColumbia treaty tribes brought legalaction in U. S. District Court. Theyrequested that large numbers of hatch-ery steelhead smolts be released withtheir adipose fins intact, thus requiringrelease as “wild fish” by non-tribalcommercial and sport fishers. Thetribes argued that they were not get-ting their 50 percent share of the steel-head harvest. Federal District CourtJudge Malcolm Marsh ruled in theirfavor. Now in the Upper Columbia trib-utaries, half of all hatchery steelhead

are stocked with adipose fins in place,making them indistinguishable fromtrue wild steelhead to the averageobserver.

In about 1999 or 2000, the oceanturned favorable again, and adultreturns improved. For the last severalyears, a limited sport fishery has beenallowed on the Methow, which is man-aged primarily as a hatchery produc-tion stream, with catch and release of“wild” fish (adipose fins in place) andharvest of fin clipped hatchery fish.

There are indications now that theocean has become hostile again, andthe outlook for steelhead is clouded.

Against overwhelming scientific evi-dence, NOAA Fisheries late in 2005finalized its new hatchery policy, whichputs wild and hatchery fish on an equalfooting for ESA protection if they aregenetically similar.

As mentioned briefly in the January2006 issue of The Osprey, NOAAFisheries at the same time downlistedUpper Columbia Steelhead fromEndangered to Threatened based ongood numbers of hatchery steelhead,even though wild steelhead popula-tions continue to be extremely weak.

There is no question that the damsand reservoirs of the Columbiahydrosystem continue to be the prima-ry cause of the decline of all interiorstocks of sea-run salmonids in the sys-tem. Until effective steps are taken toimprove mainstem fish passage, espe-cially downstream passage, the out-look will not be bright.

But I think there is something elsegoing on with the Upper ColumbiaSteelhead. It is an overemphasis onhatchery supplementation and a lackof emphasis on protection of wild steel-head and their spawning and freshwater rearing habitat. This strikes usas a serious mistake, a “give up on wildfish” strategy at both the federal(NOAA Fisheries) and state(Washington Department of Fish andWildlife) levels.

THE OSPREY • ISSUE NO. 54 MAY 2006 3

Upper Columbia Steelhead Lack Protectionby Bill Redman

— Steelhead Committee —

Continued on page 19

CHAIR’S CORNER

The emphasis on hatchery

supplementation over protecting wildsteelhead habitat

strikes us as a “giveup on the wild fish”

strategy by the agencies.

abundance, one cannot help but bestruck by the general absence of his-torical context. Surely, if we aim torecover salmon and steelhead popula-tions, we must have some quantitativenotions of what recovery looks like. Itis not difficult to establish quantifiablemetrics: overall abundance, life histo-ry and genetic diversity, run andspawn timing, adult and juvenilemigration requirements and timing,and how/when and under what condi-tions steelhead, in all phases of theirlives, utilize specific riverine habitats,and so on. The obvious metrics in anyother science or management portfolioinclude such quantifiable indices. Evenin wildlife agencies, such indices areused in game management. Elk herds— even healthy and abundant herds —are managed to keep certain popula-tion goals in mind: total abundance;ratio of mature males to breeding agefemales; summer and winter rangecarrying capacity; natural mortality;and so on, which are then used to sethunter harvest quotas. In the case ofdepressed populations such asCalifornia bighorn sheep, even greatercaution is exercised, with careful pop-ulation surveys to determine overallabundance, age structure, and so on.This data is then used to set quotas,usually very low quotas, for harvest. I,for one, am mystified why such basicmanagement techniques are almostuniversally absent from modern steel-head management.

For example, state and federalauthorities, pestered by the public andordered by the federal court, have yetto develop a recovery plan that haspassed the test of the law for listedColumbia River basin stocks.Incredibly, there is continuing debateamong those responsible for develop-ing a recovery plan as to whether actu-al abundance targets should be incor-porated into the plan. Huh? A recoveryplan that does not, even in the mostgeneral terms, describe what recoverylooks like? As an old Vietnam era war-rior, I am reminded of the failed U.S.strategy there. Since we had almost noidea what we were trying to do, anycourse of action was suitable. Our mea-sure of success (body count) wasunconnected to any policy objective.

Of course, none of the various strate-gies worked because none of them pre-vented our enemy from achieving hisobjective. No surprise then that we lostthe war.

At its heart, fisheries science is aboutnumbers. How many? This questioncan be posed in a variety of ways: howmany adults returned last year; howmany fish could use a particular reachof the river for spawning; how manyreturning adults result from how manyeyed eggs; how many juveniles can atributary over-winter; how manysmolts can a system produce; howmany adults result from those smolts;are there differential rates of returnsbetween rivers and among differentriver populations; how does currentproductivity compare to historic pro-

ductivity; what accounts for changes,over time, in system productivity; arethere connections between salmon andsteelhead abundance; and when andwhere does mortality occur? These arejust a few examples of the wide arrayof how the “how many” question can beposed.

Fisheries scientists are trained toseek answers to such questions relyingon field data collected by trained biolo-gists. On the surface, this approachsounds reasonable enough. However,in practice, this approach has not beeneffective, at least regarding manage-ment of West Coast anadromousstocks, because frequently such data islargely unavailable in the traditionalsense: it was never collected; it wascollected sporadically using differentmethodologies; it has been lost or his-torical (archival) data has, either pur-posely or through ignorance, beenexcluded. Management agencies andbiologists alike have failed to make use

of historical data to establish manage-ment baseline and abundance goals.There are many sources for such work:U.S. Fish Commission data from the19th century; cannery records fromthe 19th and early 20th centuries; earlysports-harvest data from the 1940s and1950s prior to hatchery introductions;Indian catch data; anecdotalreports/diaries from early settlers andIndians; etc. All of these are valuableassets that facilitate assessments ofcurrent steelhead (and salmon) health,the causes of declines and reasonablemanagement goals for the future.

In the case of Washington, theDepartment of Fish & Wildlife(WDFW), when formulating steelheadmanagement plans for both Boldttreaty and non-treaty rivers as well aswhen conducting stock inventories —called the Salmon and Steelhead StockInventory (SASSI) — ignored this goldmine of historical data and even ruledout their own steelhead catch datafrom the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, whichpre-dated hatchery introductions.

Ignoring historical data has beenespecially harmful because, withoutsuch data and analysis, the state hasgrossly underestimated the very greatrisk of near-term extirpation of localsteelhead stocks, because the manage-ment plans were predicated on theassumption that then current levels ofabundance represented the appropri-ate management baselines. Nothingcould have been further from the truesituation. In the late 1970s when thesemanagement/harvest regimes weredeveloped, wild steelhead abundancein most systems was at one to five per-cent of historic abundance and only sixto 10 percent of abundance as recentlyas the late 1950s, as will be illustratedbelow. Secondly, the population struc-ture of wild steelhead stocks had beenradically altered by the mid-1970sbecause of: wide-spread hatcheryintroductions; harvest regimes thattargeted early returning wild stocksthat were co-mingled with the intro-duced stocks; harvest models(Maximum Sustained Yield) that pre-vented stocks from recovering.Explicit in the WDFW approach were

the assumptions that steelhead repre-sented minority salmonid populationsin our river systems, they could man-age differential harvest of wild and


HHiissttoorriicc SStteeeellhheeaadd AAbbuunnddaannccee,, CCoonnttiinnuueedd ffrroomm ppaaggee 11

Continued on next page

Setting escapement atone to six percent of historic levels andaccepting them as

management goals isridiculous.

hatchery stocks, and hatcheries wouldnot harm wild stocks. Each assumptionwas wrong. Let’s consider a few exam-ples that illustrate the consequences ofsuch approaches.

In the period 1890-1925 steelheadwere an important commercialspecies. They were incredibly abun-dant and returned in great numbers inboth the winter and summer. Steelheadwere canned and, more importantly,shipped as fresh fish because theyretained their quality longer thanother salmonid stocks. Fresh steelheadbrought $0.03/pound, while Chinooksalmon only brought $0.02/lb, whichconfirms the commercial value ofsteelhead. The commercial catchrecords from this period are largelyconfined to canned fish, although thereare records indicating that several mil-lion pounds were shipped fresh.

Puget Sound

In 1895, by which time the runs ofsteelhead according to the U.S. FishCommission had already been severelydepleted, cannery records indicate thecanned catch of Puget Sound steelheadwas in the range of 200,000 fish annual-ly. Converting this catch into total runinvolves several assumptions:

1. Wastage (head, guts, fish dumped atthe cannery and so on): Jim Myers ofNOAA Fisheries suggests the appro-priate figure at 70 percent, which mayactually be conservative since fisher-men were often required to simplydump their catch if the cannery hadalready met its quota;

2. Catch rate: Meyers suggests a catchrate of 30 to 50 percent of total. Thismight be conservative given the rapiddepletion of wild stocks from 1890 to1925. However, we know from SitukRiver, Alaska data (discussed later)that harvest rates as low as 30 percentprevent steelhead from recovering thepopulations. Herein I have assumed a50 percent catch rate.

Using those two parameters (70 per-cent wastage and 50 percent catchrate) gives a total Puget Sound steel-head population of 1.3 million. Evenassuming no wastage, the total popula-tion was at least 400,000. In either

case, these are almost certainly con-servative estimates since commercialfishing was generally restricted to thelarger rivers. Many of the smallerrivers were left unfished and con-tributed significantly to the overallpopulation total. The most recent ten-year (1995-2004) Puget Sound steel-head run size averaged 13,083 (NOAAand WDFW data) or between .9 percentand three percent of historic abun-dance.

It is worth noting that the 1992WDFW Salmon and Steelhead StockInventory (SASSI – 1994)) classifiedmost Puget Sound steelhead stocks as“healthy.” Think of it, three percent ofhistoric abundance and the stockswere considered healthy!

Stillaguamish River

The U.S. Fish Commission reportedthat 20 citizens, netting the lower sixmiles of the Stillaguamish, landed180,000 pounds of winter steelhead in1895. Further, the Commission notedthat at least that number of fish wascaught by citizens upstream. In otherwords, the catch from this small riverwas about 360,000 pounds of steelheador, at 8 pounds/fish, about 45,000 steel-head landed with a total run of about90,000. Note that these landings are notincluded in the commercial cannerytotals tallied above and do not includeany wastage. The current WDFWescapement goal for the Stillaguamish— that is the escapement level that willinsure long-term health and productiv-ity of the stock — is 1,800: two percentof historic. I wonder what would con-stitute depressed?

It is also worth noting that theescapement goal has only been real-ized once in the past twenty years andthat was twenty years ago (1985). Theten-year average run size is 840 steel-head, or less than one percent of his-toric abundance. Furthermore, thetrend is sharply downward. Even morealarming, the total run was less than500 fish for several of those years, orless than four tenths of one percent ofhistorical levels. These figuresnotwithstanding, WDFW classified theStillaguamish population as “healthy”in the 1992 SASSI, downgraded to“depressed” in the 2002 SASSI.Depressed! The most recent runs wereless than one percent of historic abun-

dance. How about on the verge ofextinction?

It is also worth noting that, followingthe pattern of the past two decades,none of the management agenciesthought any of these Puget Sound pop-ulations warranted listing under theEndangered Species Act. Instead, citi-zens had to petition for protection.WDFW hopes to avoid listing thesestocks.

The patterns described above applyto Washington as a whole including thePacific Northwest coast, perhaps espe-cially to the coast, where much of thehabitat is in pristine condition insideOlympic National Park, where oneshould reasonably conclude that thoseriver systems should be capable ofproducing at something approximatinghistorical levels. Instead, from theQuinault to the Quileute, steelhead andsalmon runs are one to five percent ofhistoric abundance.

Not only has overall steelhead abun-dance been grossly depleted, stockdiversity has also been severely com-promised. Wild steelhead typically dis-play great diversity in terms of runtiming, which insures their ability tofully utilize the greatest amount ofriverine habitat, from small headwaterrivulets to the first runs above tidewa-ter. Historically, wild winter-run steel-head entered the rivers in very largenumbers in the period late Novemberthrough February, with the runs taper-ing off in March, April and May.Summer runs, which were present insignificant numbers in most systems,started building in June/July and typi-cally peaked in September/October.The Quileute, Hoh, Queets, Quinault,Nisqually, Snohomish, Stillaguamish,Skagit and Nooksak all had substantialruns of summer runs. Most of theseruns are now virtually extinct.

These patterns of natural run timingsare completely at odds with the WDFWmanagement/harvest regimes whichare based on the assertion that hatch-ery steelhead are temporally separat-ed from wild stocks. This is simplynonsense and is not supported by thehistorical record. For example, theQueets harvest totals over the period1934-1979 (i.e. prior to widespreadhatchery introductions into that sys-tem) show that only 11 percent of thetotal catch occurred in March/April


Continued from previous page


with all the rest caught betweenNovember and February. In fact, it isinteresting to note that the Novemberlandings exceed the total landings forMarch/April by six percent. Yet thecurrent WDFW management/harvestplans are based on the false premisethat wild stocks are concentrated inMarch and April, which, historicallywas the smallest component of the nat-ural run. The current managementregimes and hatchery practices haveprovided no effective protection fornaturally occurring, wild summerstocks, which have largely been extir-pated.

The fish themselves have demon-strated that they are capable ofremarkably rapid recoveries. Duringthat rapacious commercial fishingperiod of 1890 to 1925, steelhead stockswere reduced to almost current levelsof depletion. When the state closedcommercial fishing for steelhead(marine waters in 1925, all waters1934), steelhead began to rapidlyrecover. By the late 1940s (i.e. 20years), they had rebounded dramati-cally, with many Puget Sound riverssupporting individual runs of 13,000-25,000 (Skagit, Green, Puyallup,

Snohomish, Nisqually, Nooksak) con-sisting of 100 percent wild steelhead.Habitat conditions were far from idealand the fish remained exposed to sig-nificant harvest oriented sports andtribal fisheries.

A similar pattern occurred onAlaska’s Situk River, about which BillMcMillan has written previously.Steelhead stocks were reduced to per-haps as low as a few hundred by 1934,but in less than two decades the fishhad rebuilt themselves into veryrobust runs of 15,000 to 20,000. In 1952,the weir count was an incredible25,000-30,000 steelhead kelts — fishknown to have spawned and survivedthe winter from a river with a drainageof only 11 percent of the Stillaguamish.

I personally witnessed a similarrecovery on the Kamchatka Peninsulaof the Russian Far East. When I firstvisited the Kvachina and Utkholokrivers in 1994/1995, their steelheadstocks had been dramatically depletedby commercial poaching. The WildSalmon Center/Moscow StateUniversity presence on those riversended the poaching. In ten years, thepopulations had returned to historiclife-history patterns and their overallabundance had skyrocketed. Closer to

home in a physical sense, consider thecase of Snoqualmie wild coho salmon.While not steelhead, their tale isinstructive. Through the rest of PugetSound, WDFW plants large numbers ofcoho. The Snoqualmie on the otherhand is managed for wild coho produc-tion. Currently, about 100,000 wildcoho return annually, which is by farthe largest run of wild coho in PugetSound.

In each instance, it is important tonote that recovery was not aided (morecorrectly not impeded) by hatcherysupplementation or other artificialinterventions. Indeed, we can concludebased upon the evidence that the fishwere able to recover themselves pre-cisely because they were not exposedto interactions with hatchery fish:

1. The fish did it themselves.

2. Harvest was constrained.

3. There were no hatchery introduc-tions.

I find it particularly distressing thatour fish management agencies persistwith practices that are known to be




River/Region Drainage Area(in square miles)

Historic Date Historic SteelheadNumbers

Most Recent Estimate

Hoh River 299 19531948-1961

Summer 507 - 837Winter 7,938 -13,230

100 (1994-05)4,501(5-yr. av.)

Puget Sound N/A 1895 327,592-818,980 13,083 (10-yr. av.)

Stillaguamish R. 684 1895 60,000 - 90,000 593 (5-yr. av.)

Queets River 450 19531923

Summer 1,204-2,007Winter 48,980-81,633

100 (10-yr. est.)6,188 (10-yr. av.)

Quileute River 629 19721948-1961

Summer 1,236 - 2,060Winter 17,614 avg.

100 - 150 (02-05)14,568 (1962-05)

Quinault River 434 19531952

Summer 1,268 - 2,113Winter 19,000

<50 (2005 survey)4,892 (5-yr. av.)

Situk River 77 1952 25,000 - 30,000 12,368 (04 - 05)

Comparison of steelhead histories in Puget Sound, and the Stillaguamish, Hoh, Queets,Quileute, Quinault rivers in Washington and the Situk River in Alaska.

Source: The Wild Salmon Center

harmful, especially the continued uti-lization of industrial grade hatcheries.Our steelhead stocks cannot recover ifwe do not permit each local populationto express each of the life history pat-terns best suited to their environment.Our current WDFW director, Jeffrey P.Koenings, knows this firsthand fromhis own work on sockeye salmonrecovery on Alaska’s Karluk River sys-tem. He and fellow investigators con-cluded that recovery depended uponinsuring the continued wide diversityin run timing and juvenile migrationpatterns, which facilitate full utiliza-tion of habitat. I find it strange thatthese conclusions are not applied with-in the agency that he directs.

The current practices (over harvestof early returning winter fish, hatch-ery introductions, elimination of sum-mer-runs, etc.) prevent steelhead fromexpressing those levels of diversitythat are so critical to their long-termabundance, indeed, even survival.

We can all agree that current habitatconditions are not pristine and are, inmost cases, a far cry from historic con-ditions. We can even agree that it is notlikely that many of our steelhead runscan return to historic levels of abun-dance. However, I suggest that we setour sights far too low when we estab-lish escapement goals in the range ofone to six percent of historic abun-dance. Surely, in West Coast OlympicPeninsula streams, with much, evenmost of the habitat protected inOlympic National Park, we shouldexpect steelhead runs to represent asubstantial percentage of historicabundance. Similarly, most of theSkagit watershed is in commercial tim-ber production or protected in theGlacier Peak Wilderness Area, NorthCascades National Park and rivers des-ignated under the Wild & ScenicRivers Act. The Skykomish is a statewild and scenic river with much of itsupper watershed protected in theAlpine Lakes Wilderness Area. Each ofthese systems historically supportedextremely abundant and diverse steel-head populations. They should now.

In almost all cases, the reproductivepotential of our rivers is far greaterthan one to three percent of historicabundance. Setting escapement/runsize goals at one to six percent of his-torical levels and accepting them as

the management goals for the future isridiculous. We have every right toexpect management and recoveryregimes to set abundance goals thatare representative of the each sys-tem’s reproductive potential, ratherthan accepting current, depleted levelsof abundance as future goals.

Works consulted for this article:

Busby, P.J., et. al. 1996. Status reviewof West Coast steelhead fromWashington, Idaho, Oregon, andCalifornia. NOAA Tech. Memo. NMFS-NWFSC-27. SeattleChilcote, M.W., Leider, S.A., and Loch,J.J. 1986. Differential reproductive suc-cess of hatchery and wild summer-runsteelhead under natural conditions.Trans. of the American FisheriesSociety 115: 726-735.Lichatowich, James A. 1999. SalmonWithout Rivers: A History of the PacificSalmon Crisis. Island Press.Washington, DC.Meyers, J. 2005. Historical abundance

estimates. (Unpublished report ofPuget Sound steelhead numbers anddistribution.) NOAA Fisheries,Northwest Fisheries Science Center,Seattle, WA.McMillan, B. 2004. Comparisons ofSteelhead Abundance in Alaska’s SitukRiver with Washington’s Skagit River.Wild Steelhead Coalition, Seattle, WAreportRoyal, L.A. 1972. An examination of theanadromous trout program of theWashington State Game Department.Washington Department of Game.Olympia(SASSI). 1994. 1992 Washington StateSalmon and Steelhead Stock Inventory.Washington Department of Fish andWildlife and Western WashingtonTreaty Indian Tribes, Olympia, WA. (SaSI). 2003. 2002 Washington StateSalmonid Stock Inventory. WashingtonDepartment of Fish and Wildlife,Olympia, WA.


Continued from previous page Percent of Present Steelhead Population Size Compared to aKnown Historic Population Size for the Puget Sound ESU andthe Stillaguamish, Hoh, Queets, Quileute, Quinault rivers inWashington and the Situk River, Alaska.

Source: The Wild Salmon Center

River/Race/Historic Date Percent of Present Population to Historic Population

Hoh R./Summer/1953 11.9 - 19.7

Hoh R./Winter/1948-1961 34 - 56

Puget Sound/Winter/1895 1.6 - 4

Stillaguamish/Winter/1895 0.7 - 0.9

Queets R./Summer/1953 5.0 - 8.3

Queets R./Winter/1923 7.6 - 12.6

Quileute R./Summer/1972 4.9 - 12.1

Quileute R./Winter/1948-1961 82.7

Quinault/Summer/1953 3.9

Quinault/Winter/1952 25.7

Situk R./Fall & Spring/1952 49.5-41.2 (3.3-6, historic low)

For that, as I perceive it, is the rea-son we are here. We come from manydifferent walks of life and a greatdiversity of backgrounds, but a lovefor wild steelhead is the one thing weall have in common. It has given us thisopportunity to visit with old friends,hear some outrageous fish stories,share a good dinner, try our luck in theraffle and risk our fortunes in the auc-tion, all to benefit the cause of preserv-ing wild steelhead.

And that’s as it should be. But I thinkthere’s a bit more going on here thanthat. The love we all share for wildsteelhead is a complex and mysteriousthing that defies easy explanation oranalysis. After all, what else couldcompel us to stand for countless hoursin cold rivers, often under rain, castingendlessly in the single-minded hopethat perhaps the very next cast willresult in the thing we most desire: Theshock of a heavy strike or the thrillingsight of a graceful rise.

Not very many people understandthis. To be charitable about it, mostpeople think we’re crazy. And if you’rehonest about it, you’d probably have toadmit there have been times when youthought so yourself. The truth of thematter is that we don’t really under-stand our own behavior very well.

But I don’t think insanity is theanswer. I think there are some perfect-ly rational reasons why wild steelheadhave such a magnetic hold over us,why they command us to pursue themwith dogged devotion even under thevery worst of conditions. And thosereasons are what I propose to talkabout this evening.

Before venturing any opinions of myown, however, I thought it would beprudent to see what others have had tosay about this subject. So I began witha review of the literature of steelheadand steelhead fishing. This didn’t takevery long because, sadly, there aren’tmany books about steelhead. In fact, ifyou compare what has been writtenabout steelhead with what has beenwritten about Atlantic salmon, youquickly find a great disparity. Whyshould there be such a great differ-ence?

Well, one obvious reason is that thehistory of fishing for Atlantic salmon

goes back much further than the histo-ry of steelhead fishing. People havebeen fishing for steelhead only a littlemore than a hundred years while theroots of Atlantic salmon fishing dateback well before the founding of therepublic. So the Atlantic salmon fisher-men have had a lot more time to writebooks than we have.

Another reason is that in the earlydays of steelhead fishing there wasgreat confusion over the differencebetween steelhead and Pacific salmon,and those who wrote about it often saidthey were catching salmon when actu-ally they were probably catching steel-head.

But those aren’t the only reasons; theangling historian Paul Schullery hasoffered a couple of other interestingexplanations. He notes that “fishing-book publishing was essentially anEastern industry; publishers knew theEastern market and rarely showedinterest in the Western market.Something like that may be self-per-petuating; fishermen who grow up withno books about their fishing may wellnot learn to see fishing as a reader’ssport.”

Another reason, he says, is that “ifyou look at the . . . biographies offamous pioneer steelheaders . . . you’llnotice that a great many of them wereblue-collar workers; this was a differ-ent social group than the one that gath-ered along the shores of the exclusivesalmon rivers of Eastern Canada, andit was a group much less likely to havethe leisure and inclination to writebooks, especially books of gracious,companionable prose.”

I think Schullery is probably right inhis assessments, which suggest thatsteelhead fishermen have always occu-

pied a lower rung on the social ladderthan East Coast salmon fishermen. ButI don’t think we have any reason to feelbadly about that; on the contrary, ourWestern tradition of public waters hasmade steelhead fishing available tojust about everybody, and ours hasbecome a truly egalitarian sport—which is much more than you can sayabout Atlantic salmon fishing. If theprice we’ve had to pay for that is fewerbooks about steelhead fishing, then Istill believe we’ve gotten the betterend of the bargain.

But let’s take a look at some of thosebooks and see what they say about theappeal of wild steelhead. The shortanswer is: Not much. This is especiallytrue in the early days. Most of the firstwriters on the sport were preoccupieddescribing the appearance and habitsof steelhead and their legendary fight-ing qualities. For example, Zane Grey,the famous Western novelist, providedthis description of the first steelheadhe ever saw, captured by anotherangler on a visit to Deer Creek in 1918:

“It was a strikingly beautiful fish,graceful, symmetrical, powerfullybuilt, with great broad tail and blunt,pugnacious nose. The faint pinkishcolor, almost a glow, shone from abackground of silver and green.” Thefish weighed only 4 pounds, but theman who caught it said “‘you nevercould have made me believe he didn’tweigh twice’” as much.

Grey, like most other early writers,seems to have assumed the steelhead’sappearance and game qualities werethe reasons why people fished forthem. Neither he nor they bothered toinquire any further.

In The Western Angler, published in1939, Roderick Haig-Brown providedan even better description of the steel-head, but his focus, too, was mainly onits appearance and habits, not on itsemotional appeal to anglers.

Another Canadian writer, Francis C.Whitehouse, praised the fighting quali-ties of wild steelhead in his 1945 book,Sport Fishes of Western Canada. “Thesteelhead is an instinctive leaper, andon a fly it will put up an amazing per-formance,” he wrote. “The wild rushes,as if to leave the pool downstream,however, are usually ‘bluff;’ but if [thefish] actually does so, in some of ourrivers, it is just too bad!”



The love we all sharefor wild steelhead is a complex and

mysterious thing thatdefies easy explanation

or analysis.

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For Whitehouse, as for other writers,the fight was the thing, and he didn’toffer any other explanation for hisregard for steelhead. But a year later,in 1946, Roderick Haig-Brownreturned to the scene with his mar-velous book, A River Never Sleeps,which almost single-handedly made upfor all the previous void in steelheadliterature. This book gives us morequotable passages about steelheadthan I think can be found in all earlierbooks put together.

Here’s one of my favorites: “Thesteelhead, with the brightness of thesea still on him, is livest of all theriver’s life. When you have made yourcast for him, you are no longer a care-less observer. As you mend the castand work your fly well down to himthrough the cold water, your wholemind is with it, picturing its drift, guid-ing its swing, holding it where youknow he will lie. And when the shockof his take jars through you to yourforearms and you lift the rod to itsbend, you know that in a moment thestrength of his leaping body will shat-ter the water to brilliance, howeverdark the day.”

Nobody ever said it better. But eventhat vivid description begs the ques-tion: What is it, besides the way theylook and the way they fight, that welove so much about wild steelhead?

John Atherton, better known as Jack,was an artist and angler who publisheda highly praised book called The Flyand the Fish in 1951. Atherton isremembered mostly as an East Coastangler, but he lived for a time on thePacific Coast and devoted a chapter ofhis book to steelhead. And he had thisto say about them: “It has alwaysseemed to me that the best fish is theone I am fishing for at the time. But ifI could invariably have my choice oflocality, river and type of fishing, I aminclined to believe that my favoritewould be a fresh-run steelhead in aclear, fast stream. For sheer highexplosives on the rod they can hardlybe surpassed, and if one eventuallybeaches this streamlined dynamo, it ismainly due to the grace of the goodLord and a strong wrist.”

Again, it was the steelhead’s fight thatimpressed Atherton, and he had littleto say about the other qualities ofsteelhead.

Enos Bradner, my old friend andmentor, was usually more concernedwith the nuts and bolts of steelheadfishing than he was with the contem-plative aspects of the sport. As outdooreditor of the Seattle Times, he had tobe. But in 1960, when he received a let-ter from a teenage boy named Tim,asking for advice on how to become asteelhead fly fisherman, Bradner wrotea reply in which he came as close as heever did to describing what it feels liketo fish for wild steelhead. Here’s whathe said:

“Everything connected with thissport tugs at the heart . . . You get outright at dawn, walking up a gravel barto the riffle you hope holds a fish.Anticipation builds up as you step intothe water and start working out yoursinking fly line . . . The river pushesyour waders tight against the body asyou work chest-deep into the current.You are alone with and become part ofthe stream.

“But, Tim, you must have a mountainof patience . . . You must be willing totake long hours of fruitless casting.Perhaps days will go by without theslightest nibble. But then, someenchanted morning, or perhaps even atmidday, there will come with startlingabruptness a jolt that almost jerks therod out of your hand. Your reel startsscreaming as the steelhead streaksdownstream faster than any othergame fish can swim. You becomealive in every fiber of your system,with adrenaline coursing through yourarteries.

“If you are lucky, you finally lead thefish into the shallows and onto thegravel. It lies there, a silver form withmaybe a touch of red, as fine a trout asever was created.”

I think that passage captures theessence of steelhead fishing as well asanything ever written. But even in thiscase I believe some of the real reasonswe fish for steelhead are left unsaid.

Trey Combs, in his fine bookSteelhead Fly Fishing, tells of catchinga steelhead and asking it: “‘Where haveyou been?’ . . . What collaboration ofinstincts, what fusion of natural forcessends a hundred smolts to sea andreturns to me this single adult? Beyondher own good fortune, what specialtraits for survival has she broughtback for the next generation? Herocean world is alien to me, and she car-

ries few messages hinting of her past.But these have grown into the smallunderstandings that fill me with admi-ration for her spirit and wanderingways—characteristics at the core ofmy romance with this gamefish, andwhy I am jubilant on this dreary win-ter day.” So, perhaps without realizingit, when Combs asked “where” he real-ly came up with an answer that hadmore to do with “why” he fishes forsteelhead.

But again it was Haig-Brown whofirst really addressed that questionsquarely, and his answer left us withone of the most familiar quotations inall of angling literature: “I don’t knowwhy I fish or why other men fish,except that we like it and it makes usthink and feel. But I do know that if itwere not for the strong, quick life ofrivers, for their sparkle in the sun-shine, for the cold grayness of themunder rain and the feel of them aboutmy legs as I set my feet hard down onrocks or sand or gravel, I should fishless often. A river is never quite silent;it can never, of its very nature, be quitestill; it is never quite the same fromone day to the next. It has its own lifeand its own beauty, and the creatures itnourishes are alive and beautiful also.Perhaps fishing is, for me, only anexcuse to be near rivers. If so, I’m gladI thought of it.”

That paragraph, I think, goes a longway toward explaining what motivatesus as anglers, and we all share Haig-Brown’s excuse: Fishing gives us a rea-son to be near rivers, and we love wild


Continued on next page �

Author Steve Raymond wading in afavorite steelhead stream. Photo cour-tesy Steve Raymond.


steelhead because they come to us inrivers.

But even as hypnotic and attractiveas they are, I don’t think rivers are thesole explanation for our passion. If itweren’t for wild steelhead, I’m sure wewould all spend less time aroundrivers. There’s something moreinvolved here, some other reason whythese fish have such a powerful attrac-tion for us. What is it that we find socompelling about them?

Most of the writers I have quotedremarked on the beauty and fightingqualities of wild steelhead, which areobvious things. But there are otherthings about steelhead, less obvious,that I think appeal to us on a deeper,perhaps even subconscious level. Oneof them, I believe, is that we intuitive-ly realize steelhead are the most hon-est and uncompromising creatures wewill ever meet, and we can meet themonly on their terms. No steelhead hasever been indicted, and I daresay nonewill ever be. If only we could say asmuch for the members of our ownspecies.

Yet there’s even more to it than that,some other quality about these fish thatmakes them almost irresistible to us. Ihave thought deeply about this, tryingto figure out the nature of this power-ful attraction, and I think for theanswer we must ultimately look to our-selves, not to the fish. And if we dothat, I think we will find that deepdown, at some primal level of ourbeing, we share a powerful emotionallink with wild steelhead.

How could this be? How can we, asintelligent, warm-blooded, air-breath-ing beings, have some sort of deep-seated connection with an instinctive,cold-blooded creature that dwells in aworld completely different from ourown? The answer is that wild steelheadpossess the very qualities we mostdeeply admire among ourselves:Perseverance, courage, and lonely sur-vival against great odds.

Consider: A steelhead born of theriver, who lives long enough to escapeto the sea, who makes his way a thou-sand miles or more across the track-less ocean, stalked by predators everyinch of the way, who survives to returnand find the river of his birth, and whothen fights his way upstream againstthe relentless weight of water that

opposes every millimeter of hisprogress, and who finally spawns andfulfills the purpose of his life—such acreature is a hero, an inspiration, amodel for us all. Small wonder that weshould admire it so, or seek, even sub-consciously, to emulate its virtues.Small wonder that we should marvel atits achievements, especially during atime in our history when wild steel-head are threatened over so much oftheir native range.

So that, I think, is what really bringsus together here tonight: Our commondevotion to a fish whose virtues we notonly admire but wish we shared. Andthat devotion, I believe, is what drivesour efforts to preserve wild steelhead,the noble purpose to which this organi-zation has dedicated itself.

I need not tell you that the task ofpreservation will be difficult, becausewe who love wild steelhead representthe very smallest minority of society.We face the hostility of all who woulddestroy steelhead habitat for personalgain, plus the vast apathy and indiffer-ence of the great majority of our fel-low citizens, people who have neverknown the excitement or experiencedthe emotional voltage of a connectionwith wild steelhead.

Yet that’s no cause for discourage-ment; instead, we should feel grateful,for we are among the few who havebeen fortunate enough to catch a wildsteelhead, to experience one of life’sgreatest thrills, one that most peoplewill never know. It would be well toremember that on those occasionswhen it seems as if all the world isindifferent or opposed to us.

And there will be such occasions. Theroad ahead will offer defeats as well asvictories, and defeat often bringsdespair. But this organization cannotafford the luxury of despair, becausethere is only one way the battle to pre-serve wild steelhead will ever end —and that is if you surrender.

So let the steelhead be your example.When things get tough, when the situa-tion seems hopeless, remember thequalities we most admire about wildsteelhead: Perseverance, courage, andlonely survival against great odds.

Without such an inspiration, you can-not succeed; with it, you cannot fail.


Continued from previous pageJJuuddggee DDeeccllaarreess 22000055 BBiiOOpp VViioollaatteess EESSAA

A coalition of fishing businessesand conservation groups won amajor victory for Pacific Northwestsalmon recovery efforts on May 24when federal district court JudgeJames A. Redden declared illegal afederal plan for operating Bureau ofReclamation water storage projectsin the Snake River basin in Idaho.

In his ruling, Judge Reddendeclared that the federal govern-ment’s 2005 NOAA FisheriesBiological Opinion of the Bureau’sUpper Snake projects violates theEndangered Species Act and reliesheavily on the illegal 2004 FederalColumbia River Power System Plan(FCRPS), which governs federal damoperations on the Columbia andlower Snake rivers.

Last May, the same court ruled the2004 FCRPS plan to be illegal, citingits failure to adequately addressrecovery of ESA-listed Snake Riverfish, while treating dams as animmutable part of the natural envi-ronment. It is currently beingredrafted.

Noting that there must be “a com-prehensive evaluation of the effectsof water use in the upper SnakeRiver and the down-river dam opera-tions,” and that a “combined consul-tation will be more likely to achievethe comprehensive analysis requiredby the ESA,” Judge Redden orderedthe remand of the 2005 Upper SnakeBiOp to be joined with the remand ofthe 2004 BiOp.

As the court observed, “Rebuildingsalmon to healthy, harvestable levelswill come in large part from address-ing the impacts of the down-riverdam operations that do the mostharm to salmon. Even so, the waterof the upper Snake projects and itsuses must be an integral part of theanalysis.”

In his ruling, the Judge left it to thediscretion of the action agencieswhether to produce this is as one bio-logical opinion or two. He did man-date that any analysis must examinethe cumulative effects of any federalactions on salmon in the upper andlower Snake and Columbia Rivers.


Return to the RiverBy Bill Bakke

— The Native Fish Society —

Bill Bakke, executive director of TheNative Fish Society, reviewed Returnto the River for The Osprey. Edited byRichard N. Williams, Ph.D., Return tothe River is published by ElesvierAcademic Press, 2006.

Grasping the idea of salmonrequires perspective, acontext within which wecan place our personalexperience.

On April 23 of this year 487 springChinook had surmounted BonnevilleDam, the first of eight they must passbefore reaching their spawninggrounds in the Snake River. The ten-year average for this time of year is70,998 spring chinook. In 1883 morethan 40 million pounds (about threemillion fish) of salmon were commer-cially harvested in the lower Columbia,and most of these were spring-run fish.Since Lewis and Clark traveled up theColumbia in 1806, the river has beenemptied of its salmon. In terms oftime, this is a dramatic “accomplish-ment” for the Northwest, and we havespent more than $6 billion to reversethis trend. So something more thanthrowing money at the problem iscalled for.

The recently published book, ReturnTo The River, documents this remark-able “accomplishment” and makessuggestions about how we couldchange our ways to actually recoversalmon now listed under theEndangered Species Act.

This book is not just your insightfulconcern for the salmon; it is an intelli-gent assessment by a group of scien-tists who have studied the problemsand recommend a completely newapproach. It is clearly written and eas-ily absorbed. It is the history and theperspective we need to shift the futureto one safe for wild salmon in what wasonce the greatest salmon stream in theworld.

Rick Williams is a geneticist workingout of Boise, Idaho, and is the leadwriter and editor of Return To TheRiver. He said, “I realized that most ofmy work on Columbia River salmon

issues had a short shelf-life and a bookwas needed to make a long term con-tribution to the history of this greatriver and its salmon and steelhead.Reports disappear and are not widelydistributed due to politics, so it wastime to create a complete, independentassessment.”

The book updates previous scientificreports submitted to the NorthwestPower and Conservation Council(NPCC) by independent scientific pan-els. There were opponents who wantedto bury those reports and this book.

Since few are willing to read technicalreports and especially those publishedon the Internet, Rick believed it wastime for a book and the lasting power abook provides. It is an informing histo-ry and a call for action.

Williams is a veteran of fish scienceand knows the difficulty of informingthe politics of management. He says,“There is a certain reluctance to imple-ment what the scientists say and thatcannot be overcome by the scientists,it can only be effective when the pub-lic embraces the message and worksfor institutional change.” Return ToThe River creates the record; it is notjust a history, but a fertile ground ofideas with a scientific basis that canshape the future in the hands of a pub-lic that is willing to use it.

“We can’t accomplish anything by

just publishing in professional jour-nals,” Rick says. The journal publica-tions can advance one’s career, butworking for social and political changeon behalf of salmon requires more.With regard to Return To The River,Rick said, “It felt like my dissertationdone right.”

The Decline

The Columbia River is the 18th largestriver in the world in terms of flow andthe second largest river in the UnitedStates. The river is said to drain abasin the size of France with a water-shed of 258,000 square miles includingmost of Oregon, Washington and Idaho,a major portion of British Columbia,western Montana and small parts ofNevada, Utah, and Wyoming.

The Columbia River once producedthe world’s largest Chinook salmonruns, as well as significant runs of cohosalmon, sockeye, and steelhead. In thelower river, below Celilo Falls, therewere large populations of chumsalmon and a few pink salmon popula-tions.

It is believed that the abundance ofsalmon was composed of more than200 distinct populations, and overallnumbers were seven to 30 million fish.However, present conditions are not sobright. Most chum, pink and coho pop-ulations are extinct. For example, wildcoho were once abundant in the SnakeRiver but went extinct in 1986 andwere once also abundant in tributariesof the upper Columbia in Washingtonstate. The only two wild populations ofany size are now found in the lowerColumbia River basin in the Sandy andClackamas rivers.

Most wild populations of salmon andsteelhead in the Columbia Basin arenow listed under the EndangeredSpecies Act and are vulnerable toextinction. By the late 1990s only ninesalmon and steelhead stocks were con-sidered healthy and in 1995 only750,000 fish returned. Except for abrief improvement in abundance (pri-


marily hatchery fish) due to improvedocean productivity in 2001-2003, thewild runs continue to decline. Thisrapid loss of salmon biological diversi-ty and the threat of extinction beganwhen European-Americans settled thebasin in the mid-1800s. In about 160years this once great biological com-plex has collapsed under the weight of“civilization.”

The Response To Decline

There have been many efforts to miti-gate for the lack of salmon. The firstand favorite is to construct hatcheriesin the attempt to mitigate for habitatdamage and over-harvest. Maintainingthe supply of salmon was the unreal-ized goal. If those advocating hatch-eries had kept their promise, would thesalmon runs still be 30 million fishstrong? The first hatchery was createdby salmon canners in the lowerColumbia on the Clackamas River in1878 and later run by the state ofOregon. This worked out so well as aploy to counter the destruction ofsalmon runs that we now have hun-dreds of hatcheries releasing 235 mil-lion juvenile salmon and steelheadeach year. But these are not the wildsalmon listed under the ESA, so theNational Marine Fisheries Serviceadopted a policy to include hatcheryfish so they count not only towardrecovery of wild salmon, but can beused to determine whether a salmonrun should even be listed. The hatch-ery has become the politically popularway to replace habitat and cover upexcessive killing. It requires gobs ofpublic money, enhancing agency bud-gets, and politicians are given a wayout of the habitat protection controver-sy.

This response to salmon and steel-head decline is the old paradigm, and itpersists even though the salmon donot. It persists because it is a cozy fitin our cultural view (i.e. convertingsalmon to a commodity). Return ToThe River would change that culturalview, describing a new path.

The New Conceptual Framework

“This book presents a review ofsalmon and steelhead management inthe Columbia Basin and suggests a new

conceptual foundation for salmon man-agement in the 21st century. Theregion’s failure to halt the decline insalmon populations is the result ofnumerous social, economic, and scien-tific issues, most of which are general-ly recognized and have been discussedextensively (e.g. National ResearchCouncil 1996). What is less recognizedis the lack of an explicit and scientifi-cally based conceptual foundation andthe consequences of this on salmonmanagement and recovery actions. Aconceptual foundation or ‘world view’(Costanza 2000) is fundamental to howwe interpret the “facts” garnered fromobservation or scientific investigation,and in turn, to how we manage humansinteractions with the environment.The commodities-driven conceptualfoundation that guided much of 20thcentury fishery management wasbased first on the belief in nearly inex-haustible resources and later on faithin technology to replace natural func-tions lost as a result of human actions(Bottom 1997). The decline of salmonin the Columbia Basin over the courseof the 20th century, despite massiveinfusions of money and technology,proves the failure of the old paradigmand the need for a new conceptualfoundation for salmon management.On the basis of our review of existingsalmon restoration efforts in theColumbia Basin, we present a concep-tual foundation for 21st centurysalmon management that stresses therole of the environment — with all itsvariability and complexity — in shap-ing species performance and persis-tence. This foundation is based less onthe notion of engineering nature to fitthe needs of human society and moreon the idea that human activities canbe managed to facilitate naturalprocesses that shape the environmentand ensure resiliency of species.”

The conceptual foundation providedabove is based on the independent sci-entific review of the Northwest Powerand Conservation Council’s (NPCC)fish and wildlife program for theColumbia River. The scientists review-ing the program became “convinced ofthe need to develop an explicit concep-tual foundation that could be criticallyexamined, and one that incorporatedcontemporary scientific thought onspecies and their environment.” Thiswas and is a major step ahead for

reconstructing salmon managementand research into a rational exercise.Prior to independent scientific reviewof measures to restore the salmonruns, the money was doled out to thestate, federal and tribal agencies basedon their own selection process. Therewas considerable grumbling aboutinserting scientific standards beforethis superfund of salmon money couldbe allocated because getting it meantthat projects had to have explicit andmeasurable goals and could actually beevaluated. The NPCC program andBonneville Power Administrationfunds are the golden goose to agencies($240 million a year) that are facedwith shrinking budgets, and withoutthis chest of ratepayer gold, theywould have little ability to solve prob-lems in the basin. By adding scientificrigor to this process, the salmon recov-ery program is both strengthened andpotentially self-correcting.

The fresh approach taken by the sci-entists in this project for restoringsalmonids in the Columbia River isbased on the conclusion that “efforts toapply technology to sustain salmonproduction in the absence of ecologicalfunctions (i.e. engineer substitutes forecological functions) have generallyproven unsuccessful, largely becausethe efforts have failed to understandand incorporate the ecologicalprocesses they wished to replace.Instead, they often created somethingtotally artificial.” Technology mustoperate within the context of restoringand maintaining necessary ecosystemfunctions; it must mimic natural condi-tions rather than interrupt and runcounter to them. This vision is beingincorporated into the salmon recoveryprocess conducted by state, federaland tribal agencies. It is a great exper-iment dependent upon compliance,goal setting, evaluation, and correc-tion. To the extent that compliance isweak, the funding for salmon recoverydevolves to its original politically dri-ven condition where agencies derivethe monetary benefit rather thansalmon. This experiment is vulnerablebecause the public is largely unin-volved in this process — a process thatis difficult in which to becomeinvolved. And although it is funded byratepayer dollars, the public has littleoversight. This major weakness may




corrupt the process, allowing thestates, tribes and federal agencies toreturn to the comfortable good olddays where science has little tractionover what gets funding. But thenagain the public has many goals andnot all of them support salmon recov-ery. It is important, however, thatthose for whom it is important to havestrong, healthy wild salmon and steel-head in their home waters be engagedin this experiment.

The authors of the book state: “In ouropinion, failure to adopt an ecological-ly based conceptual foundation and tochange the approach to salmonrestoration in the basin will lead tomore listings of salmon and otherspecies under the Endangered SpeciesAct, continued expenditures, and littleprogress toward the Council’s rebuild-ing goals. Temporary increases insome populations may occur inresponse to fluctuations in ocean andclimatic conditions, but the overalldownward trend in returns…will likelycontinue. To us, the continued failureof restoration to date calls for theregion to question the basic premise ofits fish and wildlife recovery effort andto consider alternatives.”

The “conceptual foundation”advanced by the scientists contribut-ing to the book recognizes two impor-tant factors: 1) The Columbia River isa natural-cultural system affected byhuman development, and the conse-quences of that development are anintegral part of the ecosystem; and 2)The natural biophysical processes ofthe river are integral to the creationand maintenance of healthy salmonhabitat and fulfillment of salmon andsteelhead life history functions. It iscritical for salmonid recovery to bebased on maintaining the complexityand the interconnected habitats so thatthe full expression of salmonid life his-tory diversity is possible. This allowsthe affected species to spread the riskof mortality in constantly changingenvironments. In this way the salmonand steelhead can become sustainable.

Of major concern is the altered stateof the mainstem Columbia caused byhydro-dam construction. The authorsstate, “The ecological and biophysicalattributes of the pre-developmentriver represent the norms or standardsunder which salmon…evolved.

Management actions that restore orimprove these attributes will alsoimprove ecological conditions forsalmon and aid in their restoration.”

Recommendations

Below I have summarized the actionsrecommended by Return to the River:

1. A conceptual foundation must beadopted by the Power Planning andConservation Council and the fish andwildlife agencies. A rigorous programof evaluation, monitoring, researchand adaptive management derivedfrom this conceptual foundation isrequired.

2. The region has to explicitly recog-nize the importance of maintaining theexisting biological diversity ofsalmonids.

3. Freshwater habitats that support alllife history stages must be protectedand restored. This work includes re-regulating flows to restore spring high-water peaks and floods, stabilizingdaily flow fluctuations and protectingand restoring riparian habitat onspawning and rearing streams.

4. Reduce the sources of mortality atmainstem dams. Rather than use flowto flush fish downstream, use the nat-ural flows and spill rates to pass bothadults and juveniles. Reduce gas bub-ble disease. Transport juvenile salmononly if it is determined that habitats inthe mainstem cannot be restored andonly when all life history types areincluded. Restore mainstem floodplainand estuary habitats to natural condi-tions.

5. Improve the effectiveness of mitiga-tion actions associated with habitatrestoration, hatcheries, and harvestmanagement to control inadvertentbut negative impacts on salmonids.This means there must be a higher pri-ority given to monitoring and evalua-tion and more money spent on it.

6. Habitat restoration in the mainstemand in the tributaries must be given amuch higher priority.

7. Hatcheries must be viewed as anexperiment rather than assumed to be

a proven technology for supplying fishfor harvest or recovery of wild popula-tions. Monitoring and evaluation ofhatcheries, the authors say, “Has beenavoided too long.”

8. Harvest must be controlled, and afull accounting is necessary to supportrecovery and deliver nutrients towatersheds.

9. Estuary and ocean productivity isnow recognized as a major factor insalmon survival and productivity.Maintaining biological diversity is keyto salmon and steelhead survival inconstantly changing environments,including the marine habitat. Pollutionimpacts on salmon survival in the estu-ary and ocean are of critical concern.Releases of hatchery salmonids shouldbe curtailed during periods of lowocean productivity. Researchingsalmonid use of the estuary and preda-tion is a major investment need.

10. Establishing salmonid reserves inthe basin by focusing on core popula-tions and habitats is essential tosalmon and steelhead recovery.Application in tributaries to maintainviable populations is important, andthe authors say “We believe priorityshould be given to…the confluence ofthe Snake and Columbia rivers and theHanford Reach as reserveareas.”Roadless areas should be pro-tected in the basin.”

I have presented here a sketch ofReturn To The River and its recom-mendations for reforming salmon andhabitat management in the basin. Thisbook contains a powerful message thatis scientifically based and illuminating.I hope you will take the time to readthis book and learn from it. The scien-tists involved have made a statementthat we all ignore at our own peril. Thedetail and supporting evidence areenlightening. They have made the pro-posal. Now it is up to us to give it lifeand apply it in each watershed. Theirmessage is ecologically based buttoday’s salmonid management and ourcultural approach to salmon are not.This book contains the scientific ratio-nale for a new vision of salmon recov-ery, but it is up to us to give societyreasons to embrace it.



Seattle resident Patrick Trotter is aconsulting fisheries biologist who spe-cializes in the conservation biology ofrare, threatened, and endangered cold-water fishes. His articles haveappeared in Fly Fisherman, Fly Tyer,and Flyfishing magazines. He is authorof Cutthroat: Native Trout of the West,and a co-author of Fly Fishing forPacific Salmon. He was honored by theWashington Council of FFF as itsFederator of the Year in 1991.

Earlier this year, with littlefanfare, the WashingtonDepartment of Ecologyissued a 180-page reporttitled Columbia River

Mainstem Storage Options,Washington, Off-Channel StorageAssessment Pre-Appraisal Report.

With a title like that, it’s little wonderthat this report slipped under the radarscreens of the region’s sport fishingand fish conservation groups. To myknowledge, only one such organizationtook any notice, and that was thePortland, Oregon-based Native FishSociety, whose executive director, BillBakke, sounded an initial alarm in hisJanuary, 2006 Conservation Report.

But everybody with an interest in thestatus and plight of our wild nativesteelhead, salmon, and trout popula-tions should scrutinize this report thor-oughly and carefully, for what it doesis identify viable sites for new damsand water storage reservoirs onWashington tributaries of theColumbia River. Undertaken at thedirection of our former governor, GaryLocke, to address how future demandsfor Columbia River water could bemet, the report states: “As the demandfor both consumptive and non-con-sumptive uses of Columbia Riverwater increases and the supplyremains static or, as in recent years,decreases, it becomes more importantto understand both the needs and thebest beneficial uses of the availablesupply in order to satisfy the econom-ic, environmental and social require-ments of the region.” Alas, however,

as Bill Bakke pointed out, wild steel-head, salmon, and trout have nevercompeted well under western waterlaw for the so-called “beneficial uses ofthe available water supply.”

Of the many new dam and reservoirsites identified in this report, the onethat disturbs me most is a site pro-posed for the Kalama River in south-west Washington. As I read thedescription of this storage reservoirand comprehended just how much andwhat portion of the Kalama Riverdrainage would be affected, a flood ofmemories came rushingback to me.

I remembered my firsttrip into that country, abackpacking expedition, anexciting adventure indeedfor a 12 year old, with myBoy Scout buddies back in1947. The first part of thattrip was relatively easy. Wewere driven in a car cara-van up the old county roadto its end at PigeonSprings, where the statemaintained a ranger stationand an old resort had occu-pied a site on the south sideof the river. But fromthere it was “shank’smare.” We hoisted ourpacks and with grim determinationand much anticipation, set out up thetrail. Our ultimate destination was theupper Kalama Falls, but on the way inand then out again, we camped alongthe way at a couple of places whereaccess could be had to tributaries thatone of the adults accompanying ourparty had told us were particularlygood fishing for native cutthroat andrainbow trout. Elk Creek was one ofthose tributaries, I remember, andWolf Creek was another. Our campsitenear Wolf Creek was across the riverfrom the Wolf Creek confluence andnot far from another state rangercabin that was set near the riverbank.I also remember the deep tracts of old-growth forest we hiked through andcrossing a couple of rather deep tribu-

tary gullies on rough bridges hewn outof large logs that had fallen across.Crude wooden hand rails that some-body had nailed onto the sides steadiedour crossing.

It was also up here that I got a quickglimpse of the one and only cougar Ihave ever seen in the wild. It was flat-tened on its belly atop a low rock out-cropping at the water’s edge on theopposite side of the river from ourovernight camp, overlooking a small,sandy beach where animals couldcome down to the water to drink. Nice

place for an ambush. When I steppedout of the trees on my side of the riverthat morning and glanced across, therethe big cat was, looking back at me.We made eye contact—and in a flash, itwas gone.

I didn’t know it at the time, of course,but by 1947 the waters of the upperKalama River were already legendaryfor the fishing they afforded for wild,native summer-run steelhead.Portlander and later Seattleite MikeKennedy, one of steelhead fly fishing’spioneer anglers, fished these waterswith great success in the 1930s andearly 1940s, and in doing so, popular-ized the Kalama Special steelhead fly, ayellow-bodied white bucktail patternwith a palmered badger hackle and red



A Kalama River Dam?By Patrick Trotter

— Seattle, Washington —

The Kalama River at the beginning of the fly-onlywater near the mouth of Summers Creek. Photo byPatrick Trotter.

tail originally tied by MoochAbraham, another legendaryPortland area fly fisher. It was MikeKennedy who christened the holdingpools and runs immediately down-stream from Pigeon Springs as theHoly Water, a name well-known toKalama River steelheaders to thisday. Noted steelhead fly fishers fromthe Puget Sound region, men whopioneered the sport on theStillaguamish, the Skykomish, andthe Skagit, also visited the HolyWater and its environs frequently,including Walt Johnson, Rick Miller,and Ralph Wahl. Another Seattleite,Enos Bradner, in his book, NorthwestAngling, first published in 1950 andrepublished in 1969, called theKalama River “a wonderful steel-head stream with a fine winter runand one of the best runs of summerfish in the state” (emphasis added).

In recent years, that fabulous runof Kalama River summer steelheadhas dwindled to a whisper, along withall of the other wild steelhead popu-lations comprising the LowerColumbia River EvolutionarilySignificant Unit for steelhead, whichis listed as threatened under the fed-eral Endangered Species Act.Construction of a new water storagereservoir on the Kalama River, asproposed in the Columbia RiverMainstem Storage Options report,would, in my view, all but doom anychance for recovery of the KalamaRiver wild population.

According to the report, the pro-posed dam would be sited at rivermile 13.3, which would place it about2.5 river miles upstream from thelower Kalama Falls and theWashington State fish hatchery locat-ed just above. Back in the “good olddays,” prior to the fish hatchery andconstruction of a fishway, lowerKalama Falls marked the upstreamlimit of winter steelhead distributionin the Kalama River. Seasonal flowswere such that the Kalama Falls waspassable only by the summer-run fishthat then held in the deep, clear poolsand runs of the waters upstream ofthe falls for the next several monthsuntil they spawned. With the open-ing of the fishway, winter fish couldalso occupy these waters.

At the site of the proposed dam, the

terrain pinches in sufficiently to makeit feasible to impound a reservoir witha full-pool surface elevation of 800 ft.Using my mapping software, I printedout and matched up a set of maps ofthe upper Kalama River drainage. Ithen traced out the 800-foot contourand colored in the proposed reservoir.I was even more disturbed by whatthat revealed. At full pool, the reser-voir would extend up the mainstemKalama as far as river mile 29.1, orjust under 16 river miles, to just aboutthe place where my Boy Scout partyhad camped below the Wolf Creek con-fluence back in 1947. Submerged com-pletely would be the present fly fishing-only water from Summers Creekupstream to the closure just above

Pigeon Springs, including MikeKennedy’s fabled Holy Water wheresteelhead fly fishing on the Kalama hadits beginning. Pigeon Springs itselfwould be submerged, as would the siteof Weyerhaeuser’s old Camp Kalamalogging camp a few miles furtherupstream.

In addition to the almost 16 miles ofprime summer steelhead holdingwater and spawning riffles in the main-stem, several tributary streams impor-tant for spawning and early rearingwould be flooded as well, including: 3.3miles of the Little Kalama River; thelower 1.5 miles each of SummersCreek and Knowlton Creek; 2.8 milesof Wild Horse Creek; 4.4 miles ofGobar Creek, including the rearingpond where the WashingtonDepartment of Fish and Wildlife nowrears winter steelhead and spring chi-nook salmon (also listed under theEndangered Species Act as threat-ened); and the lower 2.3 miles ofArnold Creek.

Further, the confluences of numerousother tributaries would also be flooded,including those of Jacks Creek, LostCreek, and Elk Creek (where we fishedfor summer trout).

To be sure, summer-run steelhead doutilize more of the Kalama River thanjust the segment that would beimpounded. A state fisheries biologistonce told me that a few fish swim upthe North Fork Kalama, which joinsthe mainstem at about river mile 34.3,a little more than five river milesabove the head of the proposed reser-voir, and I have personally seen sum-mer steelhead as far upriver as rivermile 36.3, where Weyerhaeuser andlater the University of Washingtonoperated a fishery research station.For reference, the upper Kalama Falls,our destination in 1947 and a beautifulspot I have returned to many timessince, is located at about river mile36.8. But the waters that comprise theheart of Kalama River summer steel-heading, and provide by far the majorportion of the river’s alreadydepressed wild summer steelhead pro-duction, would be flooded out by theproposed reservoir.

Will this water storage reservoiractually be built? That remains to beseen. Political and policy debate hasevidently not yet started on this or anyother candidate site listed in thereport. But a few more dry winterssuch as we had in 2004-2005, and whoknows? The time to voice concernsabout what stands to be lost is now.

The Columbia River MainstemStorage Options report lists manyother tributary sites as candidates forwater storage reservoirs in addition tothe Kalama River. I’m sure readerswill find others that will upset them asmuch or more than this Kalama Riverproposal disturbs me. You can down-load your own copy off the internet;you’ll find it listed in pdf format on theWashington Department of Ecologyweb site at www.ecy.wa.gov/pro-grams/wr/cwp/cwphome.html. Bewarned, however, that it’s a monsterfile at 7.4 MB. If that’s too much tohandle, I’m sure you can request apaper copy by contacting theWashington Department of Ecology at(360) 407-6000.



At full pool, the reservoir would extend16 river miles to justabout where my Boy

Scout party hadcamped back in 1947.

Author Jeff Miller is director of theAlameda Creek Alliance. Based inCanyon City, California this organiza-tion has been on the forefront of wildsteelhead recovery in the SanFrancisco Bay area.

An eleven-pound steelheadhas a way of commandingyour attention, respect andawe, especially when youhave just netted it from a

seemingly unlikely location, say thesomewhat sterile flood control channelof your local urban creek. The power-ful 31-inch steelie thrashing aboutin my net, an impressive male welater named “Brutus”, was one ofdozens of wild steelhead spottedby our volunteers this winter inthe lower Alameda Creek floodcontrol channel in Fremont,California, attempting to migrateupstream to spawn. Brutus andfive other adult steelhead blockedby a migration barrier ten milesfrom San Francisco Bay werecaught in March and movedupstream (under state and feder-al permits) to more suitablespawning and rearing habitat inthe Niles Canyon reach of thecreek. A largely symbolic ges-ture dramatizing the need for fishpassage at this barrier, these fishrescues have taken place in lowerAlameda Creek for the past nine win-ters, documenting at least 100 to 150wild adult steelhead since 1998, butonly resulting in 27 fish successfullycaught and moved upstream.Nevertheless, the presence and persis-tence of these fish offer a glimmer ofhope and have galvanized public sup-port for restoring Alameda Creek andits native fishes.

When Central California Coast steel-head were listed as a threatenedspecies under the Endangered SpeciesAct in 1997, I cast about for a localstream where steelhead could berestored, and the obvious choice ofAlameda Creek slapped me in the facelike a wet fish tail. Alameda Creek is a

remarkable gem, an urban creek in itslower reaches and above the SunolValley a remote foothill stream thatoffers probably the best opportunityfor restoring anadromous fish in theSan Francisco Bay Area. The 680-square-mile watershed drains two-thirds of the East Bay, from the south-ern slopes of Mount Diablo to the occa-sionally snow-dusted peaks of MountHamilton, east to Altamont Pass.Though the creek is not perennial andwater is reduced to isolated pools inthe scorching heat of the Diablo Rangeduring summer and fall, impressive

flows can rip through after winterstorms; 18,000 cubic feet/second ofrunoff came through the flood controlchannel during the epic New Year’sstorm this winter.

The lower creek is highly modifiedand constrained in a flood control chan-nel surrounded by urban Fremont,Union City and Newark. UpperAlameda Creek holds the promise forcoldwater fish, since it contains longreaches of relatively intact stream andriparian habitat surrounded by pro-tected land in public ownership orremote ranch lands. The SanFrancisco Public Utilities Commission(SFPUC) manages 36,000 acres ofupper Alameda Creek watershed landsfor drinking water supply, and the East

Bay Regional Park District protectsland within Sunol and Ohlone RegionalWilderness. Alameda Creek still har-bors at least a dozen kinds of nativewarm water and coldwater fish, includ-ing resident rainbow trout and theanadromous and under-appreciatedPacific lamprey. More importantly, theSFPUC’s Calaveras and San Antonioreservoirs southeast of Sunol both con-tain landlocked populations of steel-head trout above the dams, descen-dants of the creek’s original steelheadrun. The good news is these land-locked trout appear to still be anadro-

mous; recent fish trapping stud-ies show that some fish are smolt-ing and appear capable of migrat-ing to saltwater to complete theirlife cycle as steelhead. These fishare the potential gene pool forsupplementing a restored nativesteelhead population below thedams.

Historical photos, reports andreminisces from local fishermenoffer evidence that steelheadwere once plentiful in the water-shed and that Alameda Creekalso had a population of cohosalmon. The completion ofCalaveras Dam in 1916 cut offaccess for migratory fish to thebest habitat and altered thehydrology of Alameda Creek. SanAntonio and Del Valle reservoirs

followed, capturing the entire runoffof the sub-watersheds and also block-ing access to ocean-run fish. The usuallitany of stream abuses, includingother barriers, numerous water diver-sions, urban development with itsattendant stream channelization, pollu-tion, and urban runoff took their toll onnative fish, particularly steelhead andsalmon. Although the CaliforniaDepartment of Fish and Game infor-mally concluded that the steelheadfishery in Alameda Creek was nolonger viable in the 1950s, remnantannual steelhead and silver (coho)salmon runs persisted at least until1964.



Alameda Creek Steelhead Recovery

“Brutus” the eleven-pound Alameda Creek steelheadwas captured by researchers in March 2006. Photocourtesy Alameda Creek Alliance.

By Jeff Miller— Alameda Creek Alliance —

With regulatory agencies not requir-ing fish passage for instream projects,flood control and water supply projectsin the 1960s and 1970s put the final nailin the coffin for the creek’s steelheadand salmon runs. The 12-foot-highsloping cement drop structure thatblocked Brutus and other steelheadfrom heading upstream is known local-ly as the “BART weir”, a grade stabi-lization structure that protects BayArea Rapid Transit and railroad trackscrossing the creek and an absolutemigration barrier for steelhead. It wasinstalled as part of a U.S. Army Corpsof Engineers flood control project com-pleted in 1972 that straightened andchannelized lower Alameda Creek.Three inflatable rubber dams werealso installed in the channel in the1970s and 1980s by the AlamedaCounty Water District (ACWD) todivert water into adjacent quarry pitsfor groundwater recharge. Interest inthe fishery never died, with local fish-ermen organized in the 1980s as“friends of Alameda Creek” occasion-ally moving fish past barriers in thelower creek and advocating for steel-head restoration. In 1980 theCalifornia Department of WaterResources identified Alameda Creek asthe top priority stream in the state forurban stream restoration, due to itspopularity for recreation, the threat offuture development, and potentialresources for stream flow augmenta-tion to enhance habitat.

After years of inaction, I formed theAlameda Creek Alliance (ACA) in 1997,with the goal of restoring viable runsof steelhead and salmon to AlamedaCreek. The first task was confirmingthe fish stories told by local flyfishersthat steelhead were trying to spawn inthe creek, and proving that they werenative to the area, if not the creek.Wild adult steelhead have been pho-tographed or captured at the BARTweir during attempted spawningmigrations every winter for the pastnine years. Genetic tests of fin clipstaken from these fish demonstratedthey are wild steelhead and part of thefederally listed threatened population.A multi-agency assessment completedin 2000 estimated that up to 25 miles ofsuitable spawning and rearing habitatin the watershed could be made avail-able to steelhead if fish passage barri-

ers were removed or modified.Finally, years of organizing within

the watershed and advocacy with thewater agencies have paid off. TheAlameda Creek Alliance now has morethan 750 members and 70-plus localand regional fishing and conservationgroups supporting our steelheadrestoration goals. Restoration ofAlameda Creek’s fisheries is gainingsteam with more than a dozen local,state and federal agencies workingcooperatively on planned fish passageprojects and a draft restoration plan.Our first dam removals began in 2001with two small swim dams removedfrom upper Alameda Creek in SunolRegional Wilderness. Three moredams are scheduled to come down thisyear, including one of the ACWD rub-ber dams and two abandoned SFPUCdams in Niles Canyon. A stakeholdergroup is pursuing funding for severalother fish passage projects, including

fish ladders at the BART weir and theACWD’s upper rubber dam and instal-lation of fish screens at all water diver-sions. The Northern CaliforniaCouncil of the Federation of FlyFishers and the Golden West Women’sFly Fishers are pursuing modificationof a barrier at a U.S. Geological Surveygauging station. Our first two fish lad-ders were built in 2003 in the ArroyoMocho tributary in Livermore by Zone7 Water Agency. Zone 7 is contemplat-ing removal or modification of a dozensmaller instream barriers and struc-tures in Pleasanton and Livermore,restoration of stream channels, andreplanting of native riparian vegeta-tion as part of stream managementplan, to allow steelhead the potential tomigrate to habitat in the Arroyo MochoGorge southeast of Livermore.

Recent National Marine FisheriesService status assessments concludedthat Alameda Creek has the potentialto contribute significantly to restoringsteelhead populations in South Baystreams and in the greater CentralCalifornia Coast region. The future forfish in Fremont would look downrightrosy were it not for one of the West’smost contentious issues: water. Thebiggest unanswered question in therestoration is whether sufficient waterwill be kept in the stream or madeavailable to provide suitable habitat,water temperatures, and out-migrationflows to sustain a viable steelhead run.Adequate stream flows are required bylaw and are needed to allow steelheadto again thrive in the creek, particular-ly late-summer cold water rearingflows and flows for out-migration ofsteelhead smolts to reach the bay.Eighty-six percent of the stream flowsof upper Alameda Creek above theSunol Valley are currently diverted forwater supply demand, and neither ofthe SFPUC reservoirs releases anyminimum flows for fish and otheraquatic wildlife. With efforts to pro-vide fish passage underway, much ofthe hope for restoring AlamedaCreek’s anadromous fish runs nowhinges on the City of San Francisco’sproject to replace the seismically chal-lenged Calaveras Dam.

Last year 68 Bay Area conservationgroups, joined by fishing groups suchas California Sport Fishing ProtectionAlliance, CalTrout, NorthernCalifornia Council of the Federation ofFly Fishers, Trout Unlimited and fivelocal flyfishing clubs, called on theSFPUC to restore steelhead inAlameda Creek by providing instream




The biggest unanswered

restoration question iswhether sufficient

water will be kept inthe stream for habitat

and flow.

Workmen building Calaveras Dam in the1920s pose with steelhead caught duringa lunch break. Photo courtesy SFPUC.


flows below their reservoirs, restoringstream and riparian habitat, andremoving the Alameda Diversion Dam,a 32-foot concrete plug and finalupstream barrier that, if removed inconjunction with other fish passageefforts, would open Alameda Creek forfish migration from the Bay to its head-waters. The SFPUC intends to replaceCalaveras Dam by 2011, providing anopportunity to release minimum flowsthroughout important fisheries reachesof upper Alameda Creek and to recon-nect fish populations in the reservoirswith steelhead below the dams. TheACA, other conservation groups, andstate and federal regulatory agenciesare calling for restoration of a self-sus-taining steelhead run below the dam aspart of the mitigations for the project.

Discussions and negotiations havebegun over required water flows andpotential habitat restoration andenhancement projects in the water-shed. All of the watershed stakehold-ers recently agreed to jointly fund andconduct flow studies to estimate therange, magnitude, timing, duration,frequency and location of flows neces-sary to restore steelhead, while alsoconsidering other native fishes andriparian communities in the AlamedaCreek watershed. Water for fish rear-ing and out-migration flows will have tobe balanced with the water supplyoperations of three water agencieswithin the watershed, and will likelyconsist of water releases that vary dur-ing normal, dry and critically dryyears.

The potential for Alameda Creeksteelhead restoration has captured theimagination of East Bay residents,involved hundreds of people in water-shed protection and restorationefforts, and changed agency attitudesabout Alameda Creek. With your help,Alameda Creek can become one of thesuccess stories in urban streamrestoration. Volunteers are needed tomonitor fish populations, rescue steel-head and participate in small scalehabitat restoration projects.

For more information visit theAlameda Creek Alliance web site atwww.alamedacreek.org, or contact theACA: phone (510) 499-1985, [email protected].

NNoorrtthheerrnn CCaalliiffoorrnniiaa CCoouunncciill FFeeddeerraattiioonn ooff FFllyyFFiisshheerrss FFiisshh PPaassssaaggee PPrroojjeecctt oonn AAllaammeeddaa CCrreeeekk

BByy NNoorrmm PPlloossssNorthern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers

In 2003 the Northern California Council Federation of Fly Fishers(NCCFFF) Steelhead Committee began participating extensively in fish pas-sage barrier removal in California. The Committee received an initial grantfrom the national Federation of Fly Fishers. Central to the grant is develop-ment of a “model project” for fish passage and finding partners and addi-tional funds to complete the project. Later grants include one from theGolden West Women’s Fly Fishers and another from the NCCFFF. Other com-ponents of the grants include engaging in discussion and commentary of theCalifornia State Coastal Conservancy Fish Passage Data Base Project.

The model project is located on Alameda Creek in Alameda County,California in the San Francisco Bay region. The project includes a land sur-vey by a civil engineer, fish passage assessment, development of anAutoCAD base map, and preparation of a concept plan to resolve the high,moderate and low flow passage of steelhead at the concrete weir on AlamedaCreek.

The main impediments to restoring steelhead and salmon runs in AlamedaCreek are fish passage barriers that prevent adult fish from movingupstream to suitable spawning habitat in the upper watershed. Some of thesebarriers also pose problems for juvenile fish attempting to complete theirlife cycle by moving from freshwater rearing habitat downstream to SanFrancisco Bay.

The concrete apron drop structure near the U.S. Geological SurveyGauging Station A is the sixth upstream barrier on Alameda Creek.Upstream and downstream barriers have been identified by the AlamedaCreek Fisheries Restoration Workgroup, comprised of 15 governmentalagencies and stakeholder groups, as higher priority largely because theowner is a public entity and the high cost of modification or removal.Gauging Station A is the last barrier, and therefore needed a “champion” topursue its modification. The concrete weir and apron near the gauging sta-tion was initially considered to be a barrier to juvenile and adult steelheadmigration at moderate and low flows. A fish passage assessment indicatedthe weir is a barrier at all flows. It is a project that is perfect for a non-gov-ernmental organization to demonstrate its capabilities.


U.S. Geological Survey Gauging Station A on AlamedaCreek. Photo courtesy Northern California Council FFF.

Confronting the Government

Now the battle has been joined bylegal action. In April of this year,Trout Unlimited, the Wild SteelheadCoalition, American Rivers, PacificRivers Council, the Native FishSociety, and the Sierra Club filed suitagainst NOAA Fisheries under theEndangered Species Act to overturnthe downlisting of the Upper ColumbiaSteelhead from Endangered toThreatened and, with it, the NOAAHatchery Policy. The Federation ofFly Fishers will be added as a plaintiffat about the time this issue of TheOsprey is mailed.

We recommended that FFF become aplaintiff in this suit for five reasons:

1. Since this downlisting is basedentirely on hatchery steelhead num-bers, the suit will provide a way tochallenge the new NOAA HatcheryPolicy in a specific “DistinctPopulation Segment,” the UpperColumbia Steelhead.

2. The wild steelhead populations inthis Evolutionarily Significant Unit arevery weak, and need to be protected inthe highest classification of the ESA,Endangered. A majority of NOAA'sBiological Review Team recommendedthe Endangered classification,although the team was divided. It wasNOAA management that decided todownlist, not the scientists.

3. In this ESU, an unclipped adipose findoesn't necessarily mean a wild fish.Half of the hatchery steelhead smoltsreleased in this area have intact adi-pose fins as a result of the court deci-sion described earlier. However, thesefish give a false impression of largenumbers of wild fish.

4. Endangered status offers more pro-tection than Threatened. NOAA canspecify exceptions to the prohibitionagainst "take" of Threatened fish underthe 4d Rule of the ESA, whereas underEndangered status, there are intendedto be no exceptions to the "take" prohi-bition.

5. The ESA is intended to "provide ameans whereby ecosystems upon

which endangered species and threat-ened species depend may be con-served." Counting hatchery fish in thisESU allows a way to boost stocks, atleast temporarily, without doing athing about improving habitat, whichis necessary for the long term recov-ery of wild steelhead stocks.

Unfortunately for anglers, it is moredifficult to justify a sport fishing sea-son with “Endangered” than“Threatened” classification. UnderThreatened, sport fishing seasons withsingle, barbless hooked artificial luresand flies, with catch and release of wild(unmarked) fish and harvest of hatch-ery fish, are routinely allowed. UnderEndangered (e.g., the Methow),every year has been a new battleto allow sport fishing with thesame rules as regularly allowedunder Threatened. There is nosport fishing allowed in theWenatchee and the Entiat. Ingeneral, there is likely to be lesssport fishing opportunity withEndangered than Threatened.We support sport fishing seasonsbecause they offer two advan-

tages in wild fish protection: (1) lesspoaching due to anglers on stream; and(2) continued angler interest in cham-pioning the recovery of these riversand their steelhead.

Ultimately, we need to ask ourselvesa fundamental question: Is our conser-vation mission to protect the fish or thesport fisheries? If we decide it’s thesport fisheries, we may end up fightingwith the commercial fishers and thetribes over the last fish. If we can pro-tect and recover the fish, the sport fish-ing will follow.

CChhaaiirr’’ss CCoorrnneerrCCoonnttiinnuueedd ffrroomm ppaaggee 33


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THE OSPREY · THE OSPREY Contributing Editors John Sager • Pete Soverel Bill Redman • Stan Young Norm Ploss Contributors Peter W. Soverel • Steve Raymond Bill Bakke • Bill