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Nooksack Recovery Team Salmon Summit 2001 Thank you for inviting me to speak this morning at the Nooksack Recovery Teams's 2001 Salmon Summit.
I thought I'd use my time to briefly touch on three areas of interest to all of us involved in salmon recovery.
The first area I'd like to comment on is the recent court ruling regarding Oregon coastal coho. In my professional opinion, the decision has spawned a great deal of speculation and spin-doctoring by various camps and I want to add mine to it.
However, if my own interpretation of the ruling is correct, we are not entering a Brave New World with regard to salmon recovery, but simply tweaking the one we are already working in.
The second area I'd like to comment on is the economic downturn we have apparently entered, a downturn that seems to have gone from the merely awful to the truly atrocious and one that surely will impact all of us in some fashion before it's over.
While we still don't know what the ultimate consequences of the downturn will be for folks like us, I'd like to share a few facts with that the Governor recently conveyed to me and other cabinet members. They are not pretty.
Third, I'd like to comment on the Puget Sound shared strategy, a salmon recovery effort that many of us have been laboring over in recent months, relay to you where we are in that process and what you can expect from it in the near future.
What is the shared strategy process intended to do?
I think it's fair to say that without the successful implementation of a shared strategy or an agreed to pathway or glide path, many of our individual efforts to recover wild salmon could amount to nothing more than random acts of kindness and that's not enough to recover sustainable populations of salmon.
Before I go on, let me say again how pleased I am to be here today.
Some of you in the audience may have heard me speak before. If you have, you know how fond I am of referring to the people and groups that collectively make up the Nooksack Recovery Team (NRT) as the foot soldiers in our salmon recovery efforts.
The 22-member organizations supported by the NRT have a track record that should be the envy of everyone, having implemented 500 salmon recovery projects since 1988. You are, quite literally, the "go to" team for salmon recovery in the Nooksack Basin, and my Department, and myself personally, cannot thank you enough for your efforts.
You have borne out another common refrain of mine, namely, that salmon recovery is not going to occur in Olympia or Washington, D.C., but in local communities by local citizen volunteers.
Keep up the good work–you are not unappreciated nor have your collective efforts gone unnoticed.
By now, I'm sure most of you have heard or read about the recent decision handed down in Oregon by federal Judge Michael Hogan.
In a case brought by the Alsea Valley Alliance, a group that included recreational fishing interests, Hogan ruled on Sept. 11 that the National Marine Fisheries Service's (NMFS) 1998 decision to list Oregon coastal coho as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent with the ESA, i.e. NMFS exceeded their statutory authority in their approach to implementing the ESA for Oregon coastal coho.
The court declared the listing unlawful, and remanded the matter to NMFS to make corrections to its actions that would be in-line with his ruling so Oregon coastal coho are now "delisted" under the ESA.
In a nutshell, NMFS had established its initial Evolutionary Significant Unit (ESU) of Oregon coastal coho to include both natural fish and fish from nine hatcheries within the area, primarily because of the local origin of the hatchery broodstock.
However, when the agency made its final protective listing of Oregon coastal coho, only the naturally spawning fish were listed because NMFS argued that even though they were within the ESU they were not essential for recovery. Judge Hogan said you can't list a sub-population or group within an ESU.
So what does Judge Hogan's ruling possibly portend?
My own read is that the ruling is highly procedural and mechanical in nature, and may be able to get fixed without a complete unraveling of what NMFS has done up to now. In fact, I believe what the court didn't say is as important as what it actually said.
The court didn't rule on the merit of listing or not listing hatchery fish.
The court didn't say that NMFS was correct or incorrect in including both hatchery fish and wild fish within the ESU.
The court didn't say that Oregon coastal coho should or shouldn't be listed.
The court didn't say that a fish is a fish is a fish.
The bottom line is that the ruling does not call into question the ESA's basic tenants, it doesn't automatically nullify any Washington state listings completed by NMFS, and it again doesn't make any judgments regarding the value of wild versus hatchery fish. The narrow ruling only applies to Oregon coastal coho. However, the time period for launching a direct challenge to most EUS listings may be open–the period is 6 years from the date of listing.
Now, if Judge Hogan's ruling has some of you wondering what direction we may be headed with salmon recovery, I'm sure the sour economy has done likewise.
Some of you are undoubtedly wondering, along with myself, what potential funding cuts we could face in the months ahead. And while we don't know the answer to that question right now, we are expecting to have to make sacrifices.
Consider these sobering facts recently supplied by the Governor's Office.
Sales taxes, or taxes collected when consumers consume, represent that largest piece of the state's operating budget. Right behind sales taxes are taxes on business gross receipts, monies collected from the Boeing's and Microsoft's of the world.
According to state financial experts, a moderate national recession -which it looks like we are already in- coupled with significant Boeing lay offs-which the company recently announced would take place-would result in a revenue loss of about $650 to $900 million.
In a severe recession, that figure would climb.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that something has to give when a revenue loss to the state's general fund of this magnitude occurs. Unfortunately for natural resource agencies and some other state agencies that receive general fund dollars, the misery cannot be spread equally across the board.
Why? Well, for starters, nearly 50 percent of the state's operating budget is earmarked for K-12 education and cannot be touched.
Another 25 percent is slated to go towards social services, and is protected by agreements with the federal government.
And another 5 to 6 percent is obligated for bond retirement.
If the dreary revenue forecasts we are now seeing do in fact materialize in coming weeks, I expect the Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with other agencies, to be asked to identify potential reductions. And even though I can't tell you what the outcome of this exercise might be, I can tell you my Department will continue to aggressively pursue other sources of monies.
In fact, I'm very proud that the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced that through a highly competitive process, that nine Washington conservation projects have been chosen to receive federal grants totaling $3.7 million.
The grants are the first to be awarded under the Section 6 provision of the ESA, and Washington state received more than half of the $7.2 million awarded to states in the Pacific region, which included Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii.
Two of the grants are designed to help my agency and partnering conservation programs purchase properties that offer prime habitat for various species, including cutthroat trout.
The remaining seven grants will help counties, conservation districts and non-governmental organizations develop Habitat Conservation Plans to guide protection of sensitive areas stretching from the Skykomish River to the Walla Walla Basin.
Besides aggressively seeking new funds, I can also tell you the Department expects to continue issuing grants to local groups involved in salmon recovery. For example, the Department currently grants $1.6 million per year to support lead entities for local salmon recovery project development work. There are now 26 "lead" entities in Washington, the newest being the Yakima River Basin Salmon Recovery Board.
In addition, the 2001 Legislature allocated $1 million of pass-through funding to the Department for development of salmon recovery plans at the local or regional level. The idea is to support the development and coordination of recovery plans that not only serve local needs, but state and federal requirements. The cities represent established efforts at the regional level.
To effectively manage these funds, my Department is developing a new Salmon Recovery Planning Grant Program, which will be reviewed by local recovery groups. Another purpose of the budget proviso is for the Department to create a model for local and regional recovery plans, as well as to develop eligibility and evaluation criteria for distributing funds and administering grant contracts.
As I mentioned at the outset of my remarks, all of you in this room have been doing tremendously good work. But the question we have to ask ourselves is this:
Are these destined to be just piecemeal efforts, the random acts of kindness I referred to earlier, or will they, over time, add up to real recovery throughout Puget Sound?
Here are examples of what we have been collectively doing -- processes and products -- as we work toward healthy watersheds and reversed salmon populations. We need population specific recovery goals to tell us where we're going and give us an idea of the entire scope of the effort needed to recover all listed populations.
Developing these Puget Sound-wide goals has been the driving force behind the region-wide Shared Strategy effort now underway by individuals from local government, tribal governments, federal and state agencies, state legislators, watershed councils, lead entities, business and environmental groups and many others.
Most recently, these individuals have thrown their support behind the work of a number of scientific experts, including the NMFS Technical Recovery Team and co-manager fisheries experts - the tribes and the department. These scientists have been charged to develop specific interim recovery planning goals to deliver to watersheds.
By all accounts, this process is an arduous one. It's simply very hard work! But scientists have already defined, for three pilot fish stocks (Nisqually, North Fork Stilliguamish, upper Cascade River), the population abundance, productivity and growth rates needed to insure the persistence of populations over time.
In coming weeks, the scientists' work will expand to include all populations in Puget Sound watersheds and that information, in turn, will be delivered to local groups such as your own, perhaps as early as December or January. Target interim recovery goals for populations that are consistent with the ESA will be identified for watersheds, and you will be asked to evaluate what it will take to achieve these goals.
Needless to say, the goals will be designed to bring each individual population back to a healthy status, and that can only happen within the context of a healthy ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem is important to the overall health of the river or stream and to all species we are trying to protect. Two such populations are in the north and south forks of the Nooksack River.
Shared Strategy started out as a collaborative effort where federal and state agencies and tribal governments agreed to harness their collective roles and responsibilities to recovery salmon populations. That collaborative approach was named "the Shared Strategy."
All of us here today need to continue to support the Shared Strategy and its broad goal. We have newly welcomed Pete Kremen into the Shared Strategy Development Committee, a sign I hope of even greater participation by the Nooksack Recovery Team in region-wide recovery activities.
In coming months, it will be important for all of us to remain introspective as we evaluate what further actions need to occur within respective watersheds to meet recovery goals. After that, the shared strategy effort will be especially helpful to us as we come together and determine how individual watershed efforts are adding up to recovery for the entire Puget Sound ESU.
There's a lot of work to do, and it makes me very happy to see all of you here today, committed to proceed with all the difficult tasks ahead despite the uncertainties and hardships that may lie ahead. You have my pledge that the Department of Fish and Wildlife will continue to do whatever we can to support you.
Remarks by Jeffrey Koenings, Ph.D., WDFW Director
Oct. 12, 2001
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