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Panel Says Kill Sockeye Program: But Federal and State Officials Want to Expand It to Prevent Extinction of Idaho's Red Fish

Posted on: Wednesday, 14 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Rocky Barker, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Jun. 14--An independent science panel says it is time to end the unique captive breeding-and-rearing program designed to keep Redfish Lake's endangered sockeye salmon from going extinct.

But ending the program, popular with salmon and dam advocates, would doom one of Idaho's wild icons, biologists say. The federal Endangered Species Act requires the federal government to prevent extinction-- unless a little-used, presidentially appointed panel, nicknamed the God Squad, voted to eliminate the species.

That's an unpopular political choice that has proved impossible to carry out in the past. And it's unlikely now. Indeed, federal and state officials advocate continuing and even expanding the $2 million-a-year program based at a hatchery in Eagle.

But the opinion of the 11-member Independent Science Review Panel could force Pacific Northwest leaders to re-examine their approach to saving the most endangered salmon in the region.

The program first drew Idahoans' attention when just one sockeye, nicknamed Lonesome Larry, returned in 1992 to the lake near Stanley.

"This is a safety-net program," said Judi Danielson, an Idaho member of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. "Actually we should be increasing it more."

The council reviews salmon funding by the Bonneville Power Administration, which markets power from Columbia Basin hydroelectric dams.

Only six adults returned to the Stanley Basin in 2005. In 2000, the best year of the program, 257 sockeye made the 900-mile, 6,500-foot-high climb from the Pacific.

Historically, 35,000 sockeye returned annually to Redfish Lake, scientists say.

The panel of nationally recognized salmon-science experts, under contract to the council, say downstream threats like dams, coupled with reduced genetic resiliency in the small sockeye population, make the program ineffective.

"When these things aren't working, it's time to re-evaluate the premise on which a strategy is based, and it seems like it's time to do that for the sockeye salmon," said Eric Loudenslager, chairman of and a biology professor at Humboldt State University in California.

Sockeye raised in the Eagle Hatchery and four other hatcheries have returned at a rate comparable with other hatchery salmon, said Paul Kline, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologist in charge of the program. Expanding the program so more young sockeye leave Redfish and two other Stanley Basin lakes for the Pacific in the spring will increase sockeye returns and make the population more genetically fit, Kline said. The salmon are sorted carefully to prevent inbreeding and other genetic disorders. They also are released at different ages to spread the risk and increase productivity.

The program generates about 160,000 smolts -- migration-ready young salmon -- that are washed in the spring down toward the Pacific. The power council will consider today a $2.75 million proposal to upgrade the Eagle Hatchery and the Oxbow hatchery in Oregon to increase the annual smolt output to 260,000 smolts.

But the science panel is skeptical that more smolts will bring greater returns because of the dams and other downstream factors that led to the sockeye's demise.

"Not only are these limiting conditions not likely to change, the fish themselves are likely to be changing as a result of present intensive propagation and rearing procedures so that their viability even under restored conditions is increasingly in doubt," the panel wrote.

The sockeye have been on the brink before.

In 1910, miners built Sunbeam Dam on the Salmon River east of Stanley, cutting off the sockeye's migration route. They were thought to have gone extinct in the 1920s. But the fish reappeared in 1931 after sportsmen blew a hole in Sunbeam Dam.

By 1955, the sockeye population grew to 1,500 spawning fish. But as more dams were built on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, their numbers dived again. Fish and Game employees actually poisoned them out of Alturas and Pettit lakes near Stanley to encourage trout, which are more popular with anglers.

By the 1980s, the sockeye returns dropped into single digits, and most fisheries managers gave up on the fish.

But not the Shoshone-Bannock tribes. In 1990, the tribes petitioned the federal government to protect Redfish Lake's sockeye salmon under the Endangered Species Act. The fish were listed as endangered in 1991.

Sockeye caught the state's imagination in 1992 when Lonesome Larry was the only sockeye to return to Redfish Lake. In 1995, no sockeye returned.

Today, tribal biologists are fertilizing Redfish Lake with nutrients designed to replicate those left by thousands of dying fish, said Doug Taki, a Sho-Ban tribal biologist. The nutrients are necessary to make the relatively sterile mountain lake sustain sockeye.

Because of the listing, federal officials must go to the Endangered Species Committee, a panel the president would appoint, to ask permission to allow any species to go extinct. The so-called God Squad has been convened rarely, and it has never sent a species into extinction.

A portion of the sockeye population never leaves the lake yet spawns with those fish that make the ocean trip. The return of the salmon after more than 20 years of blocked migration early in the last century suggests these home-bound fish could keep the sockeye from going extinct, Loudenslager said. Moving sockeye from lakes in Washington also is an alternative if the program is ended, the panel wrote.

But moving in fish that migrate only 500 miles to a lower elevation is even more risky than the current program, Fish and Game's Kline said. Without the captive breeding-and-rearing program, the residual sockeye won't be able to sustain the population, Kline said.

An anadromous sockeye -- one that travels to the Pacific and back -- is 26 inches long and holds 3,000 eggs.

A residual sockeye is only 12 inches long and holds 300 eggs. "Without this program sockeye probably would have spiraled down to extinction already," Kline said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Idaho Statesman, Boise

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