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Lead Entity Strategies Workshop Good afternoon. I'm Dr. Jeff Koenings, Director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. It's a pleasure to be here to discuss some very important issues.
I'd like to take several minutes to give you my ideas on where we are with respect to salmon recovery and the role of lead entities.
More specifically, I'd like to talk about what I see as the emerging, expanded role of lead entities as we move into the next, critical phase of salmon recovery, and what my Department's focus will be to make sure you're successful in that role.
While the work you've done these past few years has been extraordinary, I believe we are entering a new phase of salmon recovery - a phase that will require us (lead entities and the Department) to play a larger and key role in regional recovery efforts.
These are, of course, unsettling fiscal times. With a projected state budget deficit next biennium of about $1.0 billion, many state agencies, including mine, and many groups with relationships to those agencies, are wondering what the future holds.
Despite these financial challenges on the state level, which are not going away soon, I want to reassure you that the Department of Fish and Wildlife remains totally committed in its support of lead entities.
In the span of only a few short years, lead entities have literally come from nowhere to become an integral and indispensable part of our state's salmon recovery strategy, and I applaud your efforts. Let there be no doubt that the Department of Fish and Wildlife and lead entities are in this thing together, for the long haul.
Those of you here tonight who have heard me speak before know I am fond of referring to lead entities as the foot soldiers in our state's salmon recovery efforts.
Let me say it another way!
I've always felt that salmon recovery, to be successful, must be carried out at the local level with local representation.
Since House Bill 2496 passed in 1998 and formed the lead entity program, which now covers approximately two-thirds of the state and, with the next round of funding decisions, will have been awarded about $100 million from the Salmon Recovery Funding Board for more than 500 projects throughout Washington.
I believe the reason you have been effective is because of the local knowledge you have brought to selecting salmon recovery projects in your own communities. In my opinion, those who live in the watersheds are in the best position to know what changes can be implemented to recover salmon in the watersheds.
Indeed, this local knowledge has been - and will continue to be - the critical factor in your success. What started a few short years ago as an exercise, for all intents and purposes, in plucking the so-called "low hanging fruit" has in many lead entity locales developed into a highly critical assessment of the biological needs of salmon within Water Resource Inventory Areas. You have been instrumental in contributing to the recovery of specific fish populations with specific watersheds.
But will this be enough as all of us here in this room tonight marshal our forces to move forward with salmon recovery?
I don't think so.
As we enter the next phase of salmon recovery, the role of lead entities, in my view, will evolve. Lead entities, simply stated, will have to up the ante and look beyond their immediate backyards to help in the recovery of multiple fish populations in multiple watersheds. You will have to become increasingly deliberative in your project selection process by tying that process directly into larger, regional recovery planning efforts.
All of you have undoubtedly heard of regional salmon recovery planning efforts, but many of you are probably still wondering how lead entities fit into these efforts.
Specifically, regional salmon recovery planning is underway, or starting up, in the Lower Columbia, Puget Sound, Upper Columbia, Snake Asotin and Yakima regions. Regional planning is focused on Evolutionary Significant Units - or ESU- level planning for hatcheries, habitat, harvest and hydropower - the 4Hs. Regional efforts are focused on recovering the ESU which is made up of the individual watershed populations of salmon that lead entities are trying to recover. The summation of these individual watershed efforts is a recovered ESU.
To be successful, these regional recovery efforts must include and be responsive to the work you are accomplishing in the habitat protection and restoration arenas. How that integration occurs will be developed in coming months among these regional groups, the lead entities, regional fish enhancement groups and the Department of Fish and Wildlife. In the Puget Sound area, for example, the Puget Sound Salmon Forum will bring local, regional and state interests together to define how we all support one another.
In the Upper Columbia, the Snake, and Yakima, groups are forming boards with lead entities and others to guide regional recovery planning. The Lower Columbia has paved the way for integrating watershed groups into regional recovery, and that work will continue. Each of these groups will be developing recovery plans using the Department of Fish and Wildlife's Recovery Plan Model, a model that envisions a high degree of local involvement.
As this integration moves forward, several important things must occur.
I believe this new phase will call for you, for all of us, to subscribe to a shared set of scientific tools that will allow us to gauge our progress collectively and consistently within and across watersheds within an ESU or region.
First, we must have interim recovery goals, or as now termed, salmon recovery targets. The first set of these goals developed by the co-managers for Puget Sound chinook populations are now available and others will follow.
Second, we must agree on a common set of tools to maximize our efficiency in analyzing watershed conditions and facilitate comparative analysis across watersheds within a recovery region.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife believes that one important tool is the Ecosystem Diagnosis and Treatment - or EDT- analytical system, which catalogs existing habitat conditions and also models how habitat changes or results of habitat restoration affect salmon stocks.
Many of you know that EDT has already been used to develop watershed plans in several states, including our own on the Cowlitz, Yakima and Nisqually rivers. We are now using the system to assess salmon recovery strategies for Puget Sound and the lower Columbia River and EDT projects are proposed or ongoing as part of the NWPPC's sub-basin planning, for example in the Upper Columbia salmon recovery region. This tool provides a common scientific framework for prioritizing salmon recovery options in specific habitats.
A third tool that should help us reach our goal for a common currency is the Department's Regional Recovery Plan Model.
This winter, the Department published a well scrubbed model plan that regional entities can use as they develop their recovery plans. The objective of the model is to lay out the framework, define the questions, and establish the relationships needed to achieve salmon recovery.
The model should serve as the standard by which grant deliverables are established for regional groups. Inclusive in this planning is the role of lead entities and watershed groups.
Fourth, my Department will continue to play a major role in the development of these above mentioned tools, and the implementation of a GIS-based fish and aquatic habitat database to provide critical information for recovery planning.
The GIS system created by the co-managers joint Salmon and Steelhead Habitat Inventory and Assessment Project, known by its acronym (SSHIAP) coupled with the Department's Salmon and Steelhead Inventory (SaSI) project, provides a digital representation of streams and rivers in Washington state, including information about stream gradients, blockages and known fish populations.
During the past several years, fish and wildlife data have been collected and assembled for 30 of Washington's 62 WRIAs, with current efforts focused on the lower Columbia River and Puget Sound. SSHIAP data, which is being collected with help from the Department of Transportation, Conservation Commission and the tribes, will be utilized to help identify and prioritize salmon recovery projects across the state.
All of this will become available through our Watershed Stewardship Team.
Watershed Stewardship Team members will continue to help lead entities, as well as Regional Fish Enhancement Groups and other local watershed groups, in a variety of important ways, including the development of habitat restoration strategies; prioritizing projects for funding; and reviewing Limiting Factor Analyses.
The job of the Watershed Stewardship Team is simple: to continue to maximize the effectiveness of transferring the Department's science-based salmon recovery products to lead entities, regional fish enhancement groups and regional recovery boards.
I want to end by saying that I personally, professionally and acting through my office will support salmon recovery done at the local level by the people that will invest the bacon and not just contribute the eggs.
Now, more than ever, it will be important for us to work as a team, to merge our various individual efforts to achieve larger, collective goals: restored habitats and recovered ESUs of salmon.
Thank you.
Remarks prepared by Jeffrey Koenings, Ph.D., WDFW Director
April 3, 2002
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