Welcome to all to the great State of Washington. I just returned from Anchorage Alaska where the Governor's of Alaska and Washington met. Fisheries were always a discussion point - be they ground fish or salmon. Both Governors agreed that the sustainability of fish populations was the first and foremost priority. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be with the Governor as Washington hosts a visit from the Prime Minister of British Columbia. I am sure fish populations and salmon negotiations will be a "front burner" issue.

• So what about sustainability of fish populations, of recovery or recovering fish populations? I would like to talk with you about our experience with the latter, in particular the recovery of our salmon populations in Washington State.

• We've long stated that salmon managers must rely on objectively derived scientific knowledge to make management and/or policy decisions. Science doesn't make those decisions, but it does significantly inform those decisions. To be credible to the public our policy decisions not only need to be transparent, but based upon a credible understanding of the system components we are managing.

• Not long ago, perhaps measured in decades, fish populations like Chinook salmon were much more abundant and more robust, productivity wise than at present. In contrast, the human population was very much smaller and we fished 365 days of the year. There was a thought of fishing being a "diminimus` impact" and salmon management was based on a system-wide abundance of fish. Density-dependant harvest management models like the "Ricker-curve" or Beverton-Holt model were developed and used as the primary salmon management tools.

• The environment was viewed as unchanging - habitat conditions were stationary and what drove population dynamics was the number of adult fish occupying those habitats. Habitat conditions were merely the "noise" in the relationship between spawners and the adults they produced. The term - "maximum sustained yield" led to "fixed" escapement goals that managers strive to reach - success was putting a relatively small range of spawning fish into the watersheds. In many cases the return/spawner relationship accounted for less than 10 to 25% of the variation and curves were forced to fit noisy data sets. Why? Because those were the tools at hand and, perhaps decades ago, they served their purpose.

• Fast forward to the present, when people are beginning to vastly out number the fish. Watersheds are no longer functional as spawning or juvenile nursery areas. Whole estuaries are gone! And 80% of the Puget Sound Nearshore Habitat are no longer. Then to add insult to this vast array of injuries, climate change is full upon us.

• Contrary to the more simplistic approach of the past, we have learned that habitat conditions are not stationary and that sustainable salmon populations are not based solely in adult abundance, but diversity and spatial structure contribute equally to population viability.

• Across this state we are at a "tipping point". Habitats are changing, becoming more fragmented and non-functional for fish. A testimony to this is the fact that 70% of Washington's geography is affected by ESA listed fish and some 80% of our population lives within those areas.

• Now literally hundreds of millions of dollars is being spent yearly to protect existing functional habitats and to restore other degraded habitats to a functional condition. We are in a marathon race against time to rebuild our fish populations by de-constructing near shore bulkheads, by blowing up dikes, by tearing down dysfunctional dams and by providing more cool, clean water in our streams. We are literally changing the "face" of Washington.

• We have also reformed the basic concepts of our hatchery operations. Hatcheries must and will be part of the solution. We now know that wild spawning populations must be sustainable without consideration of hatchery origin fish. The genetics of both wild and hatchery populations must be driven by the wild fish in their watersheds.

• To do this we need to know and control the numbers of hatchery origin adults in the spawning grounds; and we have used external and internal marks to acquire the needed separation. New genetic ideas and tools like Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) are being employed to reform hatchery operation so that hatcheries can support the rebuilding of wild populations.

• That brings me full circle back to fish management and its tools: we are now attempting to manage salmon populations that exist in degraded habitats: habitats degraded to the point that density-independent variables drive population abundance. For example, in the Skagit River, just north of here, we have a fixed escapement goal of 15,000 Chinook. Yet the flow of the river determines 90% of the variation in the numbers of smolts the watershed produces. In turn, the number of adult fish account for <20% of the success of the next generation of fish.

• The US/Canada Treaty has provisions built within it to protect weak stocks of fish. Known as the "weak stock gate" it is based upon meeting fixed "biologically based escapement goals". To me, having management and salmon protection built around adult fish dynamics is of concern when quite clearly the habitat conditions in degraded habitats drive the populations. "Fixed escapement " goals are not consistent with rapidly changing habitats be they being actively restored or in further decline.

• I believe, as a manager, that needs to base decisions on scientific knowledge - that as we move toward the 21st Century management of salmon and steelhead, we must develop new analytical tools to improve the basis of management and then integrate our harvest, hatchery and habitat decisions.

• Said another way, harvest management, hatchery operations and habitat restoration no longer can be separate "silos" of disciplines. We have to integrate the disciplines to increase the productivity of our fisheries, but more importantly, we must recognize the one tool like a "Ricker Curve" analysis is not applicable to all conditions facing today's managers.

• In Alaska where salmon habitats are substantially intact, density-dependent harvest management tools and fixed escapement goals make sense and they work.

• However, here in Washington, where many habitats are not functional and are being degraded further over time, other tools need to be developed based upon habitat function. In particular, the relationship between habitat function and fish production requires newer knowledge and research to acquire that knowledge.

• British Columbia not only lies between the states geographically, its lower half is undergoing the Washington experience. In contrast, the upper half of British Columbia lies within the Alaska experience, as habitats are mostly functional.

• To sum up our future directions based on what we have learned:

• Salmon managers must develop new tools or risk irrelevance in a rapidly changing biological, social and policy environment. As I mentioned earlier, I believe the State of Washington is at the "tipping point" of saving threatened or endangered fish populations. Habitat is the key to success; and understanding the relationship between habitat function and fish viability is the science question fully in front of fish managers.

• And the "needs" involved in our future direction are:
  1. Research applied to such critical questions will yield newer management tools and more relevant harvest management models.
  2. Monitoring what we do will also yield powerful information as we can invest in what works and discard what does not, i.e., adaptively manage for success.
  3. Integrating policy decisions relative to salmon harvest management hatchery practices, and habitat restoration is critical to the overall success of salmon management. The days of separate, but equal are over.
  4. Being transparent with the information is an absolute, as the funding required for successful salmon restoration depends on communication. "Is it working" is a constant question from legislators, congressmen, local officials and watershed groups. We need to provide clear, credible answers to these questions.
  5. Science must be relevant to these discussions and for that to happen it must be credible. Objectivity is crucial for science to underlie policy decisions, and without that the quality of policy decisions, in my opinion, suffers greatly. So credible, objective science insures relevancy; and thus the quality of salmon management decisions.

• To insure our place at the decision table, we must be involved in:
  1. Developing new habitat-based harvest management tools through applied research.
  2. Monitoring to engage adaptive management principles.
  3. Integrating policy decisions across disciplines.
  4. Insure transparency to all involved, and
  5. Relevancy of credible science to better management policy decisions.

• As a scientist and a policy maker, I see these 5 points emerging as the "needs" for success in salmon recovery. The "tipping point" is here and we all have our different roles to play in making salmon a sustainable part of our future. It can be done; it needs to be done, it must be done!

Thank you.