LLTK Roundtable | Summer 2010

While I think that, in general, public awareness about these issues is growing, there remains a great need to continue expanding people’s knowledge. I think if we took a survey today asking Hood Canal property owners about their use of nitrogen fertilizer, for example, we’d be surprised to find out how many folks are still using it. We need to change people’s behavior, and education is fundamental to doing that.

I believe our biggest opportunity to save salmon is in preserving the healthy land and water that exists here, as in the Natural Preserve created in Tarboo Bay by the efforts of the Northwest Watershed Institute, The Nature Conservancy, and Jefferson Land Trust, with substantial support from the Jefferson County Commissioners and property owners. We need to work together to protect the Canal from the potential for industrialization, preserve it, and ensure that it is well-stewarded into the future.

We have begun to understand the human influences upon the environment that have contributed to the decline of salmon, and have developed the opportunity to respond with appropriate recovery strategies. We must continue to reinforce that the recovery efforts that have been launched are just the beginning and that every person has the opportunity to contribute to habitat and population restoration efforts in large and small ways that will eventually make a difference.

The same challenges also offer us new and innovative ways to solve these issues. Political forces have changed, at least in the near-term and the groundswell of public opinion is growing. Never have there been more funds available for salmon restoration and supplementation. It is just a little harder to get a hold of, but nonetheless it is there for those willing to work for it.

This need to protect the watershed [also presents an opportunity, in that it] invites lively and productive discussion between disparate interest groups and encourages a seeking of common political ground between what would normally be unlikely cooperators.

A chance for success in recovering Hood Canal salmon means starting with the watershed, estuaries and the migratory paths of wild fish and understanding what habitat changes, including water quality, have occurred in the last two centuries.

Habitat recovery and protection, and the elimination of segregated hatchery plantings, coupled with conservative fisheries management that addresses rebuilding the complete suite of the Viable Salmonid Population parameters (or VSP, defined as adequate abundance, diversity, productivity and distribution) provides the best chance of success for restoring wild steelhead and salmon in Hood Canal rivers.

Decisions about which “dials to turn,” and in what sequence, must be informed by the best available science and designed to test hypotheses about the primary factors limiting wild salmon recovery along Hood Canal.

Too often in the highly politicized world of salmon management, such essential scientific inquiries have not been conducted, or, when they have been conducted, the study results have not been fully expressed in management actions. Such political impediments must be avoided, and the best way to do that is by ensuring a transparent decision-making process in which the stakeholders and managers are engaged together in fact-finding and scientific inquiry.

The challenge, and also the key, to making a lasting recovery will be to evaluate all elements affecting our salmon, including re‐balancing the food chain, refining fisheries and hatchery management practices, rehabilitating in‐stream habitat and redefining our human involvement and engagement.

I was a commercial fisherman for 12 years—from 1972-1984—and at the beginning, a fisherman could do really well here. In the 1970s, the docks were vibrant and alive with people. Fishing was a huge industry. Today, it is difficult to convince many people that salmon recovery is a part of economic development. People have to see this kind of activity again. If they see the fish returning; if they are given more fishing opportunities as a result; and if both the fishermen and all of the ancillary businesses that profit on commercial fishing are making money, then they will understand the link between more salmon and economic recovery.

Certainly we are moving toward this end by working together, collaborating, coordinating and building partnerships based on the best interest of the resource. I feel that our best opportunity to make real strides toward a Hood Canal as a place teeming with life and natural beauty is through forming strong and effective partnerships that have the strength and backing to challenge those who currently are in place that make decisions for us, but not necessarily with us.

Additionally, we should more strongly consider the benefits of salmon population diversity in our recovery and long-term management efforts. For example, regions with salmon populations that exit and return to rivers at various times throughout the year may be less susceptible to ecosystem changes (e.g. to climate, predator or prey abundance, water availability, etc.) than regions with populations that predominantly return at one time of the year. For Hood Canal, restoring spring-run Chinook to some systems could provide a survival hedge against ecosystem changes for the Chinook population as a whole (currently all fall run), and restoring the historic “Christmas chum” or late‐March coho runs could ensure there are an abundance of available nutrients for rearing juveniles of all species.

The salmon restoration community in Hood Canal should also continue to evaluate current approaches to habitat recovery. For example, many rivers in the Canal suffer from accumulations of excess gravel. As sediment laden runoff and gravel has accumulated in the rivers, it prevents salmon from accessing healthy spawning grounds and fills in pools and eliminates riffles salmon need for rearing. This gravel may need to be directly removed in order to restore river health in time to save severely depleted salmon stocks.

Although most Hood Canal Peninsula rivers have escaped some of the destructive anthropogenic forces that have occurred in other Pacific Northwest areas, such as dams and streamside construction, past timber management practices have badly damaged the forest ecosystem, and present logging practices continue that destruction. As global warming increases over this century, those impacts will (be compounded), causing larger winter floods, lower summer and fall stream flows and increased stream temperatures. These conditions will further degrade the productive capacity of Hood Canal rivers. Restoring and protecting the complete array of wild fish habitats and their associated ecosystem components is the only chance we have to prevent extinction of wild salmonids from existing anthromorphic activities and changing environmental conditions.

Possibly the only way to accomplish habitat and ecosystem restoration is to preserve broad corridors along these rivers through one of several governmental acts or private organizations similar to the preservation of wild fish ecosystems along the Queets (National Parks) and Hoh Rivers (The Hoh River Trust).

The Hood Canal Coordinating Council plays an integral role. The council authored the Summer Chum Recovery Plan, which has been adopted by the State and NOAA, and is the regional salmon recovery organization. As the lead entity for salmon recovery, the Council coordinates funding for projects. It created the Community Near Shore Restoration Project and the Marine Riparian Initiative to work with citizens to create habitat-friendly shoreline through indigenous vegetation and soft armoring. The Council is presently in the final stages of writing the Hood Canal Watershed Management Plan. The Hood Canal Coordinating Council also supports the Shorebank Cascadia Septic Loan Program.

State Parks are stepping up to reduce nitrogen input by installing sewage treatment in Potlatch State Park, which will also serve part of the Skokomish needs, as well as designing a system for Dosewallips State Park, which will potentially serve part of Brinnon.

As part of that stewardship, Jefferson County has recently adopted its updated Shoreline Master Plan which is respondent to best available science. The plan is presently being reviewed by the Department of Ecology for their approval.

We need to reinforce to the public that the quality of life that has brought people to this part of the country can only be sustained by a deliberate and committed effort, and that we all have a shared responsibility to maintain, restore, and enhance the natural resources we all treasure.

While we have made much progress, first under Shared Strategy and now under the Puget Sound Partnership, we’re not there yet. Lingering distrust and suspicion threatens the entire salmon recovery enterprise, including the enormous public and private investment in habitat protection and restoration made to date.

At the minimum, we need to be working in effective partnerships to search for all ways to protect our major investments in salmon population and habitat recovery so that sustainability can be achieved.

The Wild Steelhead Coalition envisions a new fisheries management system for Hood Canal Rivers that is conservative and always errs on recovering and maintaining healthy wild stocks. We support this concept in terms of fisheries planning that manages for maximum juvenile production supported by existing habitat for each stock to assure maximum sustaining river and ocean abundances, instead of managing populations down to the knife edge “allowed” by mathematical harvest models.

We believe, with habitat restoration and good management, wild steelhead will return to these waters in numbers that will exceed the combination of hatchery and limited wild stocks that are continually diminished by introgression, ecological competition, and mixed stock fisheries.

Managers and the public must be creative and inventive in both the development and implementation of a recovery plan for Hood Canal. If we succeed, Hood Canal can be an exemplary destination exhibiting a rich history and a vibrant future of recreation, healthy shellfish and timber industries, salmon recovery and fishing. With proper facilitation and cooperation, Hood Canal’s potential economic and environmental viability can help us harmoniously redefine a sustainable future for both people and nature.

For recovery efforts to last in Hood Canal, we must offer continued support, remain committed and stay unified. Thankfully Hood Canal is supported by a passionate and committed community eager and ready to take part in its recovery, myself included.

But there is a larger and less tangible need that must be addressed in order for these results to continue and expand into the future. There needs to be a fundamental change of consciousness about our natural environment. Everyone must understand that humans, the environment, and fish, all function together. If salmon become extinct, it will be a clear indication that our environment has degraded to an even greater extent.

While I do think that this progress is slowly happening, and that all progress is good progress in that regard, I still believe that we have to keep working to elevate people’s awareness around issues related to salmon, and thus to change their behavior so that their individual decisions better support recovery. To do this, education is key; creating and implementing quality education and outreach programs will require ongoing public support.

We need to set aside some wild places as “reference points” if you will, but for the most part, I believe it IS possible to use the land intelligently by minimizing our impacts and asking ourselves a basic question, Did we leave this place as good or better than we found it? Conscious, cooperative commitment is what it will take to make this salmonid recovery last.

Patience and resolve are necessary to maintain our commitment to recovery. Recognize that we enjoy a gift from our creator that is meant to sustain and promote the health of our mind body and spirit, a gift elegantly designed to be perpetual and self-sustaining, provided we also use the wisdom we are blessed with to make choices that respect the tenant that all life is sacred and connected.