U.S. to Protect Salmon Along West Coast

In one of the broadest moves ever undertaken to halt the decline of Pacific salmon runs, the federal government will move today to protect chinook salmon stocks along portions of the West Coast from California’s Central Valley to the Canadian border.

The proposals mark the first time the government has moved to extend the full power of the controversial Endangered Species Act in a major metropolitan region, where Seattle and dozens of surrounding cities would face a mandate to protect salmon runs throughout Puget Sound, home to two-thirds of Washington’s 5.5 million people.

In an urban area where dwindling salmon streams push through major industrial zones and rapidly developing suburbs, Washington officials face the prospect of restoring wild fish to the rivers or undergoing a federal clampdown on virtually every big development project in the region.

Every major watershed in Washington could be affected by the proposals, which suggest extending endangered or threatened status to select populations among some two dozen salmon stocks evaluated in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

In California, the proposed listings will include endangered status for at least one salmon stock in the Central Valley, the spring chinook run, said Brian Gorman of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which is expected to detail the proposed listings today. The salmon are found in the Sacramento and American rivers.

“In terms of significance, on a scale of one to 10, it’s about a nine, because it’s so big. The geographic area encompassed by these proposals goes from Central California to the British Columbia border,” NMFS regional director Will Stelle said in an interview. “It is the 800-pound gorilla of these coast-wide status reviews.”

Today’s designations will include some, but not all, of the chinook stocks reviewed--the last in a series of evaluations of salmon stocks conducted over several years throughout the western United States. State and local governments have a year to respond with protection plans before the federal government makes a final determination on Endangered Species Act protection.

“These proposals are based on initial scientific findings. Over the next year, we’ll be looking closely at all information before making our final listing decisions,” said Bill Hogarth, regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Long Beach.

“There must be no mistake about the ultimate intent of our action here today,” he added. “Whether these populations recover due to a ‘listing action’ or implementation of a viable state restoration plan is of no concern to the fish. But I can tell you . . . extinction is not an option.”

The federal government, as part of a systematic review underway since the early 1990s, already has extended some protections for salmon in Idaho’s Snake River, steelhead trout populations in several regions and coho salmon stocks in Northern California.

Oregon staved off federal protection for its coastal coho with a $30-million voluntary restoration plan, based primarily on cutting salmon harvests by 80% or more and working to restore fish habitat.

With salmon stocks throughout the West continuing to plummet, the biggest and toughest political decisions over what to do about hydropower dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers--one of the biggest threats to salmon in the Northwest--and urban development, logging and agriculture in the Puget Sound region are now at hand.

“The challenge is coming home to us front and center in Puget Sound: Can we muster the political will to make the changes that are going to be necessary in order to protect chinook and their habitat?” Stelle said.

“At the end of the day, whether we succeed or fail will turn largely on whether or not we’re going to be able to protect and restore the productivity of their freshwater habitat,” he added. “What that may affect is everything you can imagine that alters the function of streams: forestry, agriculture and urban and suburban development.”

The mighty chinook, the biggest of the salmon species and prized by fishermen, is also the most heavily affected by urban development. It spawns in the gravel of major rivers swept by urban storm runoff, silt from logging, road-building and construction operations and pollutants from pesticides and livestock.

Of 25 stocks of chinook salmon in the Puget Sound area, 22 are in depressed or critical condition, state wildlife officials say.

The Endangered Species Act has been imposed in urban areas before, including Orange County. But it has never been applied on so broad a scale, to a fish that is potentially affected by every drop of water that flows into western Washington’s streams, rivers and ultimately, the Pacific Ocean.

“At the rate we’re going, we’ll have a listed species in every watershed in the state by the time a year or 18 months is over,” said Curt Smitch, Gov. Gary Locke’s advisor on salmon issues.

“What this means is that if we don’t do anything, the federal government would be compelled to come in and examine all of our land use and water management practices. This could mean restrictions on building permits, [on] issuing additional water rights and water permits in certain watersheds. Sixty-five percent of our state’s population sits in this region, and if the federal government has to come in and make determinations on everything, how will that affect how we do business?” Smitch said.

King County Executive Ron Sims, who is heading up a task force of local governments throughout the Puget Sound region appointed to devise a salmon protection strategy, said he estimates King County alone will spend $200 million protecting chinook salmon.

There are 14 counties within the Puget Sound metropolitan area.

“The King County economy is growing at a rate of 5% a year . . . per capita income is up, unemployment is at a historic low. And the Endangered Species Act listing, quite frankly, poses a significant threat to that kind of continued growth,” Sims said.

“We’re going to have to respond very aggressively with a restoration plan, as well as a prevention plan, so that we can increase the viability of the chinook stocks in our area.”

Already, King County has spent more than $20 million buying over 3,000 acres of salmon habitat for protection, some of it in the most rapidly developing areas of the county. Officials also are looking at expensive waste-water treatment facilities that would allow them to divert hundreds of millions of gallons of treated waste water back into the rivers to enhance stream flows.

Washington officials say avoiding tough decisions to improve salmon habitat will only invite protracted lawsuits by environmental groups seeking enforcement of the Endangered Species Act. More than that, said Smitch, the political leadership is committed to proving that wildlife and urban development can coexist.

“We are really heading into a historic and fundamental debate about our quality of life up here. It’s not too late for us. If we act now to address these issues, we do have some hope of maintaining sufficient quality of salmon habitat,” Smitch said.

“We may end up choosing short-term economic interests over the environment. But the majority of our citizens seem to indicate they believe that salmon are part of the Northwest.”