It's a pleasure to be here today and thank you for the opportunity for this dialog.

Nine years ago, when the legislature asked the department to help author the state's Salmon Recovery Act, we understood that:

-Recovery could not be accomplished from Washington, DC or from Olympia. It could only be accomplished "on the ground", AND it was defined to deliver "healthy and harvestable" populations of recovered salmon.

We also understood that:

-Recovery could not be accomplished by any single authority or jurisdiction. It would require new forums and new ways of working that brought together federal, state, tribal, and local governments, academia and the public to sit at a "common place".

The problem statement that idea created was that the "common place" didn't exist especially at the ESU or Regional level.

• I was one of the original founders of Shared Strategy with Bill Ruckleshaus, Billy Frank, Ron Sims and others: and it was to be the "common place" to deal with the ESU for Chinook salmon in Puget Sound. As Bill stated: nobody is going to give up their respective authorities, we are asking you as a group to "focus" or "harness" those authorities to recover the salmon.

• As co-managers of salmon populations, the state and Tribes knew that no one group or organization had the capacity, knowledge or authority to take all the actions necessary to recover Puget Sound Chinook. We knew that because of the existing shared authorities we had over salmon harvest and production hatcheries.

• The Shared Strategy process is a process grounded in local partnership and ownership in the development of scientifically based recovery goals and strategies to achieve them.

BUT we knew that:

• Recovery could not wait until we had all the answers or the science to answer all questions. It required that we act on what we knew-in this case perfection was the enemy of the good.

• Recovery could not be accomplished if we didn't learn, and communicate that knowledge. It required that we invest in science, inventories, assessments, data, research, and monitoring. As Bill knows, monitoring in particular remains an elusive hole in our recovery strategy.

I supported this collaborative approach to developing recovery plans and actions in and with the local watersheds to the extent that I restructured the Department of Fish and Wildlife at the beginning of the process so we would have staff resources in support of every watershed as well as be part of the scientific work at the regional scale. Thus, the Watershed Steward Program was created.

The salmon recovery approach developed in Puget Sound, augmented on-going programs like lead entities, estuary and nearshore restoration, forest and fish agreements and hatchery reform to immediately begin addressing common sense, "low hanging fruit" items. This occurred as the science was developed and organizations gained the knowledge and tools needed to develop projects and initiatives to address higher-level actions that have increased complexity, certainty, and benefit to salmon recovery and a broader ecosystem value.

We continue to see the importance in this collaborative approach - Governor Gregoire calls this the "Washington Way"-involving state agencies in the local processes to develop and all-H management approach, and a verification and accountability system that enables all of us to review our progress as well as adaptively manage salmon recovery implementation. WDFW is paralleling this effort with an internal effort - 21st Century Salmon and Steelhead to address our internal "H" silos to enable us to successfully manage in an all-H approach rather than just harvest or just hatchery management and doing so without the context of the habitat of the watershed.

--And finally lets not forget how we've defined success: meeting recovery goals sufficient to provide for healthy and harvestable stocks.

Shared Strategy is our "common place" that created the space in which Salmon Recovery could occur. And Shared Strategy deserves much of the credit for why they have occurred. That's why I supported Shared Strategy then, and why I support it now. We need a "common place" as it has become the "Washington Way" of solving complex problems.

Thank you.