[Water_news] 3. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATERSHEDS - 5/27/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

May 27, 2008

 

3. Watersheds –

 

 

Aid on its way to salmon industry

Fishermen aren't the only ones who can benefit from $170 million fund

Seattle Post Intelligencer

 

Salmon resurgence in Butte County

San Francisco Chronicle

 

Bush Eyes Unprecedented Conservation Program

NPR

 

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Aid on its way to salmon industry

Fishermen aren't the only ones who can benefit from $170 million fund

Seattle Post Intelligencer – 5/27/08

By Jennifer Dlouhy

 

WASHINGTON -- Fisherman Doug Fricke has been catching salmon off the coasts of Oregon and Washington for more than three decades -- but he's bracing for his worst year ever.

 

Because sharp declines in the number of salmon returning to spawn in the Columbia and Sacramento rivers have devastated the West Coast fishing industry, federal fishery managers have drastically cut commercial salmon fishing in the coastal waters, at the same time that soaring fuel costs have led to higher boat expenses for many fishermen.

 

Fricke, of Westport, says he's "pretty lucky" because he can dip into his savings to stay afloat this year. But newer fishermen still paying off hefty loans on their boats are unlikely to fare so well, Fricke predicts.

 

"A lot of folks, particularly the younger guys who are new into the fishery and haven't had a lifetime on the ocean to put some assets away," will be hurting, Fricke said. Many of them "will probably lose their boats if they don't get some help."

 

Cue the federal government.

 

Congress last week approved $170 million federal aid to fishermen and businesses hurt by the salmon failure. The money was part of the nearly $300 billion farm bill that became law Thursday over a veto by President Bush.

 

An additional $75 million in aid for fishery disasters around the country could be included in an emergency war spending bill pending in Congress.

In both bills, the salmon money is an "earmark" -- spending that is targeted to a specific program and is unrelated to the overall measure.

 

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who pushed for the $170 million aid package, said the money should bolster "commercial and recreational fishing industries (that) are facing closures because of record-low salmon populations."

 

She noted that the fishing industry is "critical" to the "overall economic health" of Washington state and communities up and down the West Coast.

 

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., another advocate for the emergency aid, said the money is essential relief for fishermen who are "still staggering" from a smaller salmon catch in 2006. "Getting funding quickly to these communities will help fishing families pay bills and keep food on the table," Smith said.

 

The federal government will distribute the money among California, Oregon and Washington based on a formula designed by their governors.

 

Randy Fisher, executive director of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, which will take a lead role in divvying up the funding, said the expected breakdown is 72 percent for California, 16 percent for Oregon and 12 percent for Washington.

 

Virtually any business that can prove they are losing money -- from icehouses and charter boat operations to restaurants and commercial fishermen -- are eligible.

The last time federal authorities doled out funding for salmon fishermen -- in 2007 because of a fishery failure in the Klamath River in 2006 -- the first checks were written three months after Congress signed off on the spending.

 

Fricke, who is the president of the Washington Trollers Association, a group that advocates for salmon fishermen, said more than 150 vessels were moored in Westport in recent years. But "now, we're down to about 30 vessels."

 

Fricke said the near-total shutdown of salmon fishing this year will have a ripple effect felt throughout the region. When fishermen go out of business -- so do the icehouses, processors and gear suppliers that support the industry.

 

The reasons for the failure are varied and include lower water levels and pollution in both the Columbia and Sacramento rivers, which together supply most of the salmon off the West Coast. In the Columbia, the fish have been hurt by runoff from farming operations and dams along the Snake River, a tributary.

 

Along the California coast, major changes in the movement and acidity of ocean water are blamed for some of the devastation. Scientists say there hasn't been enough upward movement of water that normally carries plankton and other nutrients from the ocean floor to marine life that feeds on it higher up. That has repercussions throughout the food chain, including on the chinook.#

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/364655_salmon27.html

 

Salmon resurgence in Butte County

San Francisco chronicle – 5/26/08

By Peter Fimrite, staff writer

 

Butte County -- The salmon looked like shadows gliding silently beneath the surface of a pool between the foaming rapids of rugged Butte Creek.

Suddenly, with a splash, a big glittering fish leaped out of the water, then another and another. The spring-run chinook were jumping this past week in the remote, forested gorge outside Chico.

 

"This is the last best run of wild salmon in California," said Allen Harthorn, 56, the executive director of Friends of Butte Creek, who has been fighting for more than a decade to save the historic - and once sacred - spring run of chinook in this untamed tributary of the Sacramento River.

 

The fast-flowing creek now holds the largest population of wild spring-run chinook, or king salmon, in the Sacramento River system.

 

"It's the only place that gives me hope," Harthorn said from an observation deck he built on a cliff-side five years ago.

 

It was clear from Harthorn's deck as the morning sun peaked over the volcanic cliffs surrounding Butte Creek Canyon that, despite the almost complete collapse of the salmon fishery in California, there are still healthy salmon where there is healthy habitat.

 

The number of spawning fish returning from the ocean to Butte Creek increased 10 percent from 2006 to 2007, Harthorn said. By the look of things, he said, even more fish are returning this year.

 

But the most dramatic resurgence occurred over the past 10 years, when an average of almost 10,000 salmon a year swam back up the creek, according to Harthorn, who co-founded Friends of Butte Creek in 1999 after years battling farming interests and Pacific Gas and Electric over its DeSabla-Centerville plant.

 

It is a minor miracle that there are any salmon at all wriggling their way up Butte Creek, given that only 14 fish returned to spawn in 1987.

The dismal return outraged environmentalists and prompted a desperate effort to save the fish. About $30 million was spent by the state on a variety of projects over the years, including the removal of six small dams, the building of fish ladders and the insertion of numerous screens to keep salmon out of water diversion pipes.

 

Healthy runs

The effort finally paid off in 1998, when 20,000 spring-run salmon were counted in Butte Creek. The runs in 2006 and 2007 were slightly below the average, but still healthy compared with the rest of the Sacramento system.

 

"The restoration there I think has clearly had a measurable response," said Rob Titus, a senior Department of Fish and Game environmental scientist. "Butte Creek is a good example in the respect that the removal of diversion dams, migration barriers, hydroelectric dams can make a difference. It's a thing you'd really like to see on the really big systems."

 

The sight of leaping, wriggling salmon - once as reliable as the seasons in almost every river and tributary in California - is increasingly rare. The shocking collapse of the fall run of salmon in the Sacramento River prompted federal officials to shut down all ocean fishing this year in a desperate attempt to save California's last viable population of the iconic pink fish.

 

It is a problem up and down the Pacific Coast, where salmon populations are steadily declining. Every one of the Sacramento's seasonal runs has plummeted - and the winter and spring runs are listed by the federal Endangered Species Act.

 

The collapse is particularly troubling because fishermen all along the West Coast depend on Sacramento River fish, most of which come from hatcheries. Some believe the species itself is in danger of becoming extinct in California.

 

Success story

Curiously, the current crisis has had little to no effect on Butte Creek.

"The spring run in Butte Creek is doing exceptionally well," said Harry Morse, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. "For the fish, it's a success story, no two ways about it."

 

The wild salmon in Butte Creek go back thousands of years to a time when the spring run was so large that Native Americans patterned their lives around it. Back then tribal leaders or a shaman would watch the fish and decide the best time to start fishing. A big ceremony would be held after the first catch.

 

Butte Creek was just one of many tributaries in the Central Valley river system, which included the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The spring run was the largest of four genetically distinct populations that returned to their native streams in the spring, fall, late fall and winter.

 

The spring fish were bigger, Harthorn said, because they would store up fat for epic upriver journeys, traveling against the current in March, April and May, and not stopping until they reached a natural barrier, sometimes 7,000 feet up in the high Sierra and Cascade ranges.

 

The spring-run fish would stay in water chilled by melting snow throughout the summer and spawn in late September and October.

 

There were once so many spring-run fish that pioneers and old timers remembered seeing thousands of them wriggling on top of one another in the waterways. There was such an abundance that some farmers remembered plucking them out and using them as fertilizer.

 

Dams and diversion

The construction of Shasta Dam on the Sacramento, Friant Dam on the San Joaquin, Folsom Dam on the American and Oroville Dam on the Feather River over the past century cut off huge sections of river, wiping out much of the spring run.

 

Numerous smaller dams were built on the various creeks that fed the rivers. Diversions of freshwater to cities and farms, pumping operations and exposure to pollutants all contributed to the reduction of the once-mighty salmon runs.

 

Fisheries experts and environmentalists throughout the Sacramento River system would like to duplicate the restoration work done on Butte Creek, but finding the money and navigating through the bureaucracy is always a problem, especially with so many competing interests, like PG&E and the various water contractors.

There has been limited success removing migration obstacles on smaller tributaries, but there is very little hope that any of the big dams will ever be removed and bypassing them would cost a fortune, according to state fisheries experts.

 

Spawning naturally

The problems elsewhere make the successes on Butte Creek all the more remarkable. Harthorn said there are still water temperature issues caused by the hydro-electric dam upstream at DeSabla, but overall conditions have dramatically improved. It helps, he said, that all of Butte's fish spawn naturally instead of in hatcheries.

"There really are almost no wild fall-run fish left in the Sacramento River system," Harthorn said, referring to a recent genetic study by the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, showing that 90 percent of the fall run fish caught in the ocean were born in hatcheries.

 

"The fish in Butte Creek are spawned naturally," he said. "They seem to have the wherewithal when it comes to surviving in the ocean. When conditions are adverse, wild fish do better."

Tracy McReynolds, a Fish and Game biologist for the Chico region, said it is impossible to draw any conclusions about hatchery or wild fish because both are dying.

"We don't know exactly why the Butte fish seem to be holding stable, but there are other populations of wild spring-run salmon whose numbers are low," McReynolds said. "We do have an idea that the ocean food source is affecting fish runs."

Whatever the reason for the decline elsewhere, Harthorn believes Butte Creek could be used as an incubator for the rest of the Sacramento system and a model for fisheries restoration. The cost, he said, would more than be offset by the money coming in from a healthy fishery.

"We need to do everything we can to restore these rivers and give these fish every opportunity to survive and help repopulate the rest of the system," he said. "Focusing our restoration efforts on naturally spawning spring-run fish is a good idea because they are adapted to the conditions." #

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/25/MNTT10MAQ8.DTL&tsp=1

 

Bush Eyes Unprecedented Conservation Program

NPR – 5/23/08

by John Nielsen and David Malakoff

Click for profiles of sites on the White House short list.

 

 

 

The Highs and Lows of the Antiquities Act

  
Presidents' unilateral power to create national monuments has led to fierce political brawls.

 

 

The Bush administration is considering launching one of the biggest conservation programs in U.S. history.

 

If implemented, President George W. Bush could, with the stroke of a pen, protect vast stretches of U.S. territorial waters from fishing, oil exploration and other forms of commercial development. The initiative could also create some of the largest marine reserves in the world — far larger than national parks like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon.

 

The White House is thinking about taking "big steps, not small ones," says Jack Sobel, a senior scientist at the Washington-based Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group.

 

A spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality confirmed that the administration is considering the initiative but declined to discuss details, saying they are still under review.

 

The idea is drawing strong support from conservationists who typically have been harshly critical of the Bush administration's overall environmental record. But some of the possible reserves are already attracting opposition from local leaders and industry groups and from some members of Congress.

 

National Monuments in the Sea

 

Conservationists say that CEQ officials last year invited a small number of ocean advocates to an unusual, closed-door meeting to discuss the idea. The White House asked them to help identify potential reserves in waters within the United States' "exclusive economic zone," which extends 200 nautical miles out from the mainland and U.S.-owned islands around the world.

 

The idea, says Sobel, was to highlight areas where President Bush could create "marine monuments" under the Antiquities Act of 1906. This law gives the president broad powers to protect areas of "historic or scientific interest" without congressional approval.

 

Administration officials said they wanted things they could do before they left office, says Sobel. "They [also] wanted things that they could do without tremendous political blow back … [but] would have a conservation impact."

 

The groups took the invitation seriously, in part because Bush, in 2006, used the Antiquities Act to create one of the world's largest marine reserves, around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

 

The groups — along with government agencies and other interested parties – ultimately developed a "wish list" that included about 30 potential marine monuments. They ranged from small reserves in U.S. coastal waters to vast swaths around U.S. territories in the distant Central Pacific. The candidates stretched "from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Dutch Harbor, Alaska" and beyond, says Jay Nelson of the Washington-based Pew Environment Group.

 

On the Short List

 

The White House has now shortened that list to about five finalists, say scientists involved in the process. The list hasn't been released to the public, and a CEQ spokesman says changes are still possible. But conservation groups have identified some of the leading nominees.

By far the most ambitious proposal is to protect more than 600,000 square miles around a number of small, mostly uninhabited islands in the Central Pacific. The islands — including Palmyra, Howland and Baker — are surrounded by biologically rich coral reefs and are home to huge seabird colonies. If implemented, the reserve would be among the largest in the world and about three times as large as the Hawaiian monument.

 

Another proposal calls for protecting more than 100,000 square miles of notoriously rough waters around the Northern Mariana Islands, in the Western Pacific. The area includes the 36,000-foot-deep Marianas Trench.

 

"It's the deepest point in the world," says Nelson. "If you dropped Mt. Everest in it, there would be a mile of water above the mountain."

 

Another proposal is to place a 500-square-mile reserve around Rose Atoll in the South Pacific east of Australia.

 

Nelson says it's important to protect these areas before fishing or energy companies begin to exploit them. The same argument is being made in favor of two other potential monuments closer to the U.S. mainland. One would protect a massive network of deep-water corals off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The other would protect coral reefs and ridges found mostly in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

"Once somebody's fishing there it will be a difficult and contentious fight," says Mike Hirschfeld of the nonprofit group Oceana. "It's simpler to set these areas aside when there isn't a problem rather than wait for one to develop."

 

A 'Blue Legacy' for President Bush

 

An array of ocean advocates — both Democrats and Republicans — are urging the White House to forge ahead with the proposals, saying it would enable President Bush to build a "blue legacy" that would make him a major figure in conservation history.

 

"These would all be terrific additions to what is already President Bush's greatest environmental legacy," the Hawaiian monument, says James Greenwood, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, who now heads the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Greenwood, who has close ties to the White House, says that he has been lobbying Bush for years to take major action on ocean conservation.

 

Bush could become the "Teddy Roosevelt of the seas," conservationists say. President Theodore Roosevelt protected about 230 million acres in new parks and forests, notes Elliott Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Washington. Bush has the chance "to protect more," he says.

Typically, creating marine reserves requires the approval of Congress and an extensive public comment process. By using the Antiquities Act, the White House can sidestep those requirements. President Bill Clinton, for instance, used the law to unilaterally protect a huge chunk of Utah, angering many state and local politicians. But a CEQ spokesman said that if the current initiative moves forward, it will very likely include some kind of public comment process.

 

Local Hurdles

 

There is already opposition to several of the potential reserves. This month, Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana said he didn't like the plan to protect corals in the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that the economic consequences are "potentially grave," particularly for the fishing industry. Members of Congress from states along the Gulf also floated, and then withdrew, legislative language that would have prevented the government from spending money to establish the monument.

Out in the Pacific, local politicians and commercial interests also are voicing opposition to a Marianas Trench monument.

 

"We don't even have a voting member in Congress, and we've got the president of the U.S., who basically could slam the door on any future potential that is there," says John Gourley, an environmental consultant on the island of Saipan, who has worked for the fishing industry. "[We] should be able to use these resources in an environmentally sensitive manner."

A decision on the initiative could come within a month.#

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90771601&ft=1&f=1025