[env-trinity] Redding.com- Coho salmon face lofty recovery goals; Siskiyou County calls rates 'unfair, unrealistic'

[Tom Stokely]

http://www.redding.com/news/2012/jan/25/salmon-face-lofty-recovery-goals/?print=1 
Coho salmon face lofty recovery goals; Siskiyou County calls rates 'unfair, unrealistic'
By Ryan Sabalow

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Federal fisheries biologists say threatened coho salmon need to return to the Scott River in Siskiyou County at rates more than four times higher than ever recorded.

The federal fisheries goals, released this month in a draft plan that calls for sweeping coho habitat restoration efforts in two states, have drawn condemnation from Siskiyou County officials and the leaders of the county's resources conservation groups.

They say the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coho recovery models create "unfair and unrealistic" standards that could be used to place even more restrictions on farmers' irrigation use in a region already embroiled in a bitter dispute with regulators and environmental groups over the state- and federally protected fish.

Ric Costales, Siskiyou County's natural resource policy specialist, said the lofty coho recovery goals will force already tense and frustrated farmers to completely balk at participating in any more voluntary habitat restoration efforts.

"This is just completely unrealistic," Costales said. "When you set a range like that, why should anyone even try? Why should a rancher even go to meetings any more? Nobody's going to do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. It's killing the (coho) restoration efforts."

Irma Lagomarsino, NOAA's fisheries services supervisor for Northern California, said the draft recovery plan for coho in Northern California and southern Oregon was based on peer-reviewed scientific analysis and study.

"Yes, we realize it's an ambitious goal, but it has a scientific foundation for it," Lagomarsino said. "It's the best (model) we can get."

The coho recovery plan identifies agriculture as a "very high" threat to threatened coho salmon on the Scott and Shasta rivers.

The plan calls for cutbacks on Scott and Shasta farmers' stream water use as well as establishing statewide groundwater permitting programs. There's also litany of habitat restoration efforts including planting more trees along streams, adding gravel to the streambeds to improve salmon spawning areas, limiting road run off and removing barriers for passing fish.

On the Shasta, the plan also calls for finding ways to increase the amount of cool water coming from below Dwinnell Dam, the barrier that blocks the river and forms Lake Shastina north of Weed.

But at least two people involved in coho habitat restoration in Siskiyou County say the science behind the plan is suspect.

Sari Sommarstrom, executive director of the Scott River Water Trust, a nonprofit group that reimburses farmers for not using stream water to irrigation, said the models NOAA use don't make sense.

She said the plan says the Scott and the Shasta River have higher coho-rearing potential than cooler, colder streams closer to the Pacific.

Sommarstrom said it's "unfair and unrealistic" to assume warmer inland streams would be able to rear more fish. She said the numbers NOAA hopes to have return to the Scott also are unattainable. NOAA says 8,800 fish should return to the Scott in order to have a viable coho population not threatened with extinction.

But Sommarstrom say the most fish recorded on the river was in the 1960s when state biologists estimated some 2,000 had returned from the Pacific Ocean to spawn.

In 2008, the coho run on the Scott reached abysmally low numbers, when a mere 62 adult coho returned. The year before, some 1,622 had returned.

Similarly, NOAA's scientists say 8,700 coho should return to the Shasta to ensure that stream's coho are no longer threatened.

Adriane Garayalde, district administrator for the Shasta Valley Resource Conservation District, said 400 was the largest number of coho return to that stream in recent years. She declined to provide estimates on historical numbers, saying the figures weren't reliable.

Sommarstrom, Garayalde and Costales say the problem lies in how NOAA classified potential coho habitat. The scientists described much of the region's small seasonal tributaries as "intrinsic potential habitat," or areas that could potentially host numbers of spawning fish.

"It's all the blue lines out even to places where there's no running water," Garayalde said, referring to the blue-shaded salmon habitat on NOAA's maps. "That's the biggest concern. We're trying to get a better handle on how the model was made."

Lagomarsino said the 25-year recovery plan is a draft and even if implemented in its current form, it could change over time as more information becomes available. She called it a "living document." The public is invited to attend a meeting next month in Yreka to voice their concerns about the plan. They can also submit comments on NOAA's website.

She said the recovery plan also isn't a binding legal document for enforcement or regulatory efforts, though the scientific analysis could be used in the future to draft regulations.

"The plan sort of sets the stage and provides the context of the work" that needs to be done to improve coho runs, she said. "It can be intimidating, the recovery plan, but it is voluntary."


  © 2012 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online
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