Posted on 08/13/2003 1:55:31 PM PDT by bicycle thug
After a decades-long slide toward extinction, coho salmon are returning in torrents to Oregon's coastal rivers. Estimates of the run -- seldom more than 50,000 fish since the 1970s -- last year pushed above 264,000.
This turns out to be very good news at the White House.
President Bush's top environmental advisers see in it the potential for removing Oregon's prized coastal coho and many other animals and plants from protection under the Endangered Species Act -- a sweeping law the Bush administration has deemed overly burdensome and in need of reform.
Their goal: Show how the federal government can turn over to states the responsibility for protecting a species and ensuring its return to healthy abundance.
"Something as visible as coho salmon can capture people's imagination about what can be accomplished," said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and Bush's top environmental adviser, referring to Oregon's 5-year-old plan for restoring coastal coho.
Oregon is a leading state in advocating for its troubled creatures. That's especially so with coho because of coastal habitat restoration carried out under the Oregon Plan, conceived and led by former Gov. John Kitzhaber.
Coho now are finding their way in some watersheds to miles of clear, boulder-strewn streams newly opened by the removal of impassable culverts and dikes. Big, dead trees lowered by helicopter into swift-running waters have restored pockets of deep refuge. Saplings of cedar and spruce, bigleaf maple and willow -- planted by thousands by volunteers and private landowners -- sink roots to halt erosion and extend branches to shade and cool water below.
But the coho's return might have surprisingly little to do with habitat improvements highlighted by the Bush administration. Top scientists say improved ocean conditions are leading the rebound. Some say Oregon's on-the-ground work is too recent to have made much difference.
The U.S. government has never handed off the job of recovering a federally listed species to a state. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, recently forged an agreement with Connaughton and federal fisheries authorities to advance the idea.
That strikes fear, even mistrust, in those who advocate conservationist causes.
"It sets a very bad precedent," said John Kober, who works in the Seattle office of the National Wildlife Federation. "It's abrogating responsibility and punting the problem elsewhere."
Other critics say too many threats, from logging and agriculture to urban development, still darken the prospects for the coastal salmon. They say it is too soon to delist. Others see the hand of developers and industry groups behind the proposal.
"It's all a political fix coming down the line," said Bill Bakke, director of the Native Fish Society, a Portland-based conservation group.
All, however, agree on this: If the U.S. government succeeds in shifting responsibility for coho protection to Oregon, it will significantly reshape federal policy on endangered species for years to come.
In the decades since Congress passed the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966, more than 1,200 plants and animals have won protected status, but few have rebounded.
Just 12 species have been declared "recovered," including gray whales and peregrine falcons. Seven have disappeared and are considered extinct. A dozen others have been delisted because of new information that requires reclassification -- the discovery of previously unknown numbers in the wild, for example.
Environmental advocates characterize these results as failure and blame them on the federal government, which they say commits too few resources and caves in to pressure from industry groups.
"The problem with the Endangered Species Act is it isn't being implemented," said the National Wildlife Federation's Kober.
But Bush administration officials make the case that legal battles among environmentalists, industry groups and landowners have bogged down federal agencies, bleeding them of opportunity and money.
In testimony to Congress earlier this year, Assistant Secretary of the Interior Craig Manson said the budget for the endangered species listing program has been consumed by a "cycle of litigation" that provides little additional protection to listed wildlife.
Connaughton, the White House adviser, said Oregon's salmon recovery efforts are a guide for bypassing conflict: The Oregon Plan relies on voluntary participation by private landowners rather than federal enforcement, it draws bipartisan political support, and it commits millions of dollars annually to fish from lottery revenue.
Oregon's governor agrees.
"We think the Oregon Plan's voluntary program and grass-roots approach is the best way to speed recovery and have it sustainable over the long term," said Tom Byler, an adviser to Kulongoski. He said the governor is seeking assurances for farmers, dairy and cattle ranchers, and other landowners about how they can operate without threat of being sued for violating the Endangered Species Act.
The Oregon Plan was born in 1997, in an effort to avoid federal protection of coastal coho. Kitzhaber argued that the best resource management occurred here, not from within the Beltway.
The National Marine Fisheries Service concurred. But environmental advocates went to court and won a ruling that compelled the fisheries service in 1998 to list the fish as "threatened."
Since then, the Oregon Plan has completed hundreds of restoration projects in coastal watersheds . A state agency, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, distributes the lottery money to local citizen groups, called watershed councils, which in turn partner with soil and water conservation districts, tribes and others. Their aim: Make Oregon's streams as attractive to salmon as they once were.
During the past two years, the removal of roads and other obstructions has given fish easier access to more than 600 miles of streams statewide. Plantings and other restoration measures have improved more than 700 stream miles. The watershed board awarded $31.1 million for projects that received another $74.6 million in matching grants from federal and state agencies and the forest industry.
"What Oregon has pulled together is an infrastructure of real people doing real things -- it's not just a plan," Connaughton said. "We are not in the same place we were five years ago. The science is telling us we are now in a good place, and we want to call everybody's attention to it."
Salmon trends, however, span decades. As good as the fish numbers are, they are a pittance of what they were a century ago.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, close to 1 million coho salmon crowded into Oregon's coastal streams to spawn each year, based on historical records from canneries that have long since closed. Even the largest recent returns amount to about one-fourth the former abundance.
Leading fish biologists say Oregon's on-the-ground effort might not be sufficient to pull coastal coho out of a decline that spans so many decades.
Coho salmon need cold-running streams and rivers and deep-water hideaways to escape summer heat. Decades of logging and farming and the construction of towns and roads have deprived coastal coho of much of their historical freshwater habitat.
In Oregon and Washington, about a third of the coastal wetlands vital to coho have disappeared. Logging alone has altered about 96 percent of Oregon's coastal rainforests, studies show.
The rugged, fog-drenched hills of the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests -- prime spawning areas for coho -- have emerged as the latest battle ground over logging. A coalition of environmental advocacy groups is mounting a campaign to block a state proposal to cut trees on 85 percent of the forests during the next decade.
"It's hard to believe we have a strong recovery plan at a time when we are about to log some of our last good areas for coastal coho," said Guido Rahr, president of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland.
Overfishing also has hurt the coho, whose intense decline came after enormous -- and legal -- commercial and sport harvests in the ocean during the 1970s and 1980s. Hatcheries attempted to compensate, but most biologists now acknowledge that hatcheries worsened the decline by adding poorly adapted fish that competed with wild coho and diluted the wild gene pool.
Regulators have since cut the annual fishing catch to about one-fifth of pre-1994 levels, and hatchery strays have been limited. Forestry officials have proposed an "anchor habitat" strategy to further limit logging on steep slopes and streambanks in forests critical to migrating salmon.
But still, ineffable forces of nature account for most of the surge in coho numbers, experts agree. Strong currents that enrich Northwest coastal waters with organic matter shift on a roughly 20-year cycle. Such a shift occurred in 1998, boosting survival of young salmon entering the ocean.
Because of cycling ocean conditions, coho and other Pacific salmon have shown a pattern of upturn, followed by a plunge, each dip often deeper than the last.
"The key question is "What happens when the next trough comes?' " said Charlie Dewberry, an independent fishery biologist who has spent years monitoring coho on the Oregon coast. "Is it going to be where a lot of these runs go to zero? If it is, then we're hard-pressed to say these fish are on the road to recovery."
Whether Oregon coastal coho are delisted is up to the National Marine Fisheries Service. In its agreement with Kulongoski, the Bush administration committed $250,000 to pay for a scientific review of the adequacy of Oregon's plan for coho recovery.
Any move to delist could wind up in court. Todd True, a Seattle-based lawyer with Earthjustice, said his group will be watching closely.
"If they are trying to create loopholes that aren't there, we'll be there to call them on it," he said.
Bob Lohn, regional administrator for the fisheries service, said the delisting decision will hinge on a scientific assessment of the factors threatening coho and whether the Oregon Plan effectively deals with each factor. He said it will take nine months to a year for the agency to reach an answer.
"We're not prepared to move to delist until we have addressed the fundamental questions," Lohn said. "There are no foregone conclusions."
Joe Rojas-Burke: 503-412-7073; joerojas@news.oregonian.com
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