[env-trinity] One Fish, Two Fish- Ancient DNA and new technology help rewrite the life story of spring Chinook

[Glase, Jay]

Ok, it's been a while, but I still try to keep up on things now and then.
This one was pretty interesting, but I'm curious about this line from the
article,

*Meanwhile, conventional wisdom of federal fisheries management has been
that some fall run Chinook would simply adjust to the springers' schedule
if that run were to vanish. *

Has this *really* been the conventional wisdom?  And if so, when did that
all get started? Doesn't this conventional wisdom run contrary to this
statement I found on a state of California website,

*Due to the small number of non-hybridized populations remaining and low
population sizes, Central Valley spring-run were listed as threatened under
both the state and federal endangered species acts in 1999.*

Under this conventional wisdom, wouldn't the Central Valley Fall or Late
Fall runs just be expected to fill the void?

Ok, I know, I shouldn't bring these things up.  I'll go away again for a
while.
Thanks in advance for all of your comments.

cheers,
jay

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 5:11 PM, Tom Stokely <tstokely at att.net> wrote:

> https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/one-fish-two-
> fish/Content?mode=print&oid=5809400
> One Fish, Two Fish Ancient DNA and new technology help rewrite the life
> story of spring ChinookBY KIMBERLY WEAR
> <https://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/ArticleArchives?author=3886599>
>  KIM at NORTHCOASTJOURNAL.COM <kim at northcoastjournal.com> @KIMBERLY_WEAR
> <https://twitter.com/kimberly_wear>
>
> <https://media2.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/original/5809133/news2-magnum.jpg>
> click to flip through (2) [image: PHOTO BY NATHANIEL PENNINGTON - A
> spring run Chinook in the Salmon River.]
> <https://media1.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/zoom/5809134/news2-1.jpg>
>
>    - PHOTO BY NATHANIEL PENNINGTON
>    - A spring run Chinook in the Salmon River.
>
>   <https://media2.fdncms.com/northcoast/imager/u/zoom/5809135/news2-2.jpg>
> Tribal fishermen used the cave nestled in the Upper Klamath Basin for
> untold generations.
> Now the spring run Chinook bones they left behind — some dating back 5,000
> years — are providing a vital link between past and present in a race
> against time to save the fish that has disappeared from those rivers.
> Only two wild spring runs remain lower down in the basin and those contain
> just a fraction of the hundreds of thousands that once swam in the
> sprawling network of Klamath waterways that cover an expanse the size of
> New England.
> Standing in the way are a series of dams put up a century ago that block
> the so-called "springers" from their historic range in the far-flung
> reaches, where pools of cool, deep water provided the refuge they needed to
> reach maturity.
> These long-discarded caches of bones are not only giving modern scientists
> a glimpse into the salmon's past but, coupled with breakthrough advances in
> technology, they could help rewrite the evolutionary life story of a fish
> teetering on the brink of extinction.
> In a paper published Aug. 16 in the journal *Science Advances*, a team of
> University of California Davis scientists say they have found a genetic
> marker that shows the springers are what's known as an "evolutionary
> distinct unit" from their fall counterparts — akin to a separate species
> for conservation efforts — and warrant individual protections.
> The discovery of a genetic mutation in spring Chinook as well as summer
> steelhead that coincides with the fishes' earlier return to the rivers
> could have far-reaching implications for fisheries management up and down
> the West Coast.
> "It's only been in the last few years where we've had the technological
> power to study the genetic and evolutionary basis of important traits like
> migration type and explore how significant the loss of important genetic
> variants can be," says Tasha Thompson, a PhD candidate and one of the
> paper's co-authors.
> "Current conservation policies have not incorporated this newly-available
> information, and they're also insufficient to protect the kind of important
> genetic variation we identify in our study," she adds. "We hope our
> findings spur policymakers to come together and improve existing policy in
> a way that can account for this new information as it becomes available in
> salmon and other species."
> Based on the findings, the Karuk Tribe and the Salmon River Restoration
> Council have begun the process for adding the Klamath River's spring
> chinook to the Endangered Species List.
> "It's the only hammer the tribe has available to it," says Karuk Tribal
> Councilmember Josh Saxon. "We have an inherent right to these places and
> these fish, and with that inherent right means a responsibility to them."
> Just 110 spring run Chinook were found on the Salmon River, a tributary of
> the Klamath River, during a recent annual count, the second lowest number
> in more than 20 years of surveys.
> "They're hanging on by a thread," says Nathaniel Pennington, a spring
> Chinook specialist for the council and a Klamath Riverkeeper boardmember.
> Fall runs, while also compromised, are healthier in comparison.
> The issue is not that people are eating Chinook but that the dams impede
> the springers from reaching the upper basin. Gold mining, agricultural
> diversion and poor forestry management practices have also degraded the
> watersheds.
> "You could have no fishing allowed and that wouldn't solve the problem,"
> says Craig Tucker, a natural resources policy advocate for the Karuk Tribe.
> Still, an Endangered Species Act listing for the spring run would likely
> send reverberations up and down an already ailing salmon industry.
> "The data is, in some ways, an inconvenient truth," Tucker says. "This is
> just the reality. ... The alternative is just to watch them disappear."
> A previous bid by environmental groups for the separate listings was
> denied in 2011.
> Tucker says the new data provides what federal reviewers described at the
> time as the missing link — evidence of an "evolutionary event that is
> unlikely to re-evolve" in a realistic timeframe that produced reproductive
> isolation between the two runs.
> "I don't see how they can reject this petition," Tucker says.
> To the novice, the two runs may seem indiscernible. But the spring Chinook
> returns earlier and sexually matures in the river — traditionally
> journeying farther into the upper basin on the swollen waters of snow-fed
> rivers — while the fall run comes in months later ready to reproduce.
> Springers also have about 30 percent more body fat — likely to support
> that longer swim — which ties back to the UC Davis team's findings on the
> mutation in a gene called Greb1L, shown to play a role in regulating
> metabolism.
> The research indicates the variant occurred in a single evolutionary event
> — some 15 million years ago — that appears to be connected to the spring
> run's "premature migration."
> Long story short, a biological phenomenon not only seems to have brought
> the springers in earlier and provided the fat needed to travel farther up
> in the watershed but the move also gave both runs an evolutionary advantage
> with more room to roam.
> Meanwhile, conventional wisdom of federal fisheries management has been
> that some fall run Chinook would simply adjust to the springers' schedule
> if that run were to vanish.
> Now, the UC Davis scientists are saying it's simply not in their DNA.
> "Contrary to what was previously thought, if we lose spring Chinook and
> summer steelhead in the present, we can't expect them to reappear from fall
> Chinook and winter steelhead in the foreseeable future (it may take
> millions of years)," Thompson writes in an email to the *Journal*.
> For members of the Karuk Tribe, the findings come as no surprise.
> "The previous thought of, 'No problem, the fish fall run will repopulate,'
> is nonsense and we've known it was nonsense," Saxon says.
> Native American tribes that have lived in the Klamath basin for millennia
> have long known that spring run Chinook stood apart from their fall
> brethren and called the fish by separate names.
> "Western scientists are having an epiphany," Tucker says. "The Native
> Americans are saying, 'We've been telling you this all along.'"
> So do the bones found in the cave above the Klamath dams.
> While the results are preliminary and the project is still underway,
> initial findings indicate the same gene mutation in age-old spring runs —
> some from historic times of 1860 to the early 1900s. Others date back 5,000
> years.
> "We found both springers and falls up there, but the majority of samples
> we tested were springers, including the 5,000-year-old sample," Thompsons
> writes.
> She says the results validate "the excellent research that's been done on
> historical accounts of spring Chinook above the dam sites and agrees with
> the traditional knowledge of the local indigenous peoples."
> There's a good possibility, she says, the fish were up there even longer.
> "On the Klamath, spring Chinook were blocked from the upper basin by the
> first dam a little before 1920 — to a lot of people, that might seem like
> Chinook have been gone from the upper basin for a long time," Thompson
> writes.
> "But it's really only a blink of an eye in terms of how long Chinook were
> up there before. I hope this research will provide a useful measuring stick
> to help people understand the real depth of time those fish were up there
> before the dams were built."
> The hope now is to preserve the fish until the Klamath dams can be
> removed, allowing the spring run to return to those upper basin pools for
> the first time in a century.
> The monumental undertaking, believed to be the largest project of its kind
> in the world, is currently slated to begin in 2020.
> Saxon says the ESA listing will play a critical role in bringing back the
> once dominant run to the Klamath basin. Imagine, he asks, what would happen
> to the local economy if those fish numbered well into the thousands in the
> future.
> "We're going to need the community support just as much as we need the
> science," he says. "We're going to need people to be supportive of a change
> in mentality in how we conserve our fish resources."
> The fish are not just a source of sustenance but an important facet of
> native cultures whose traditions are integrally linked with the ebbs and
> flow of nature.
> The ultimate goal, Saxon says, is restoring the spring run population so
> everyone can enjoy the fish.
> "That was the deal that was struck: Humans were going to take care of this
> place and this place was going to take of humans," Saxon says.
>
> Kimberly Wear is the assistant editor and a staff writer at the Journal.
> Reach her at 441-1400, extension 323, or kim at northcoastjournal.com.
> Follow her on Twitter @kimberly_wear.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> env-trinity mailing list
> env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/env-trinity
>
>


-- 

Jay Glase
Midwest Regional Fishery Biologist
National Park Service
2800 Lake Shore Drive East
Ashland, WI  54806

jay_glase at nps.gov
Phone 402-661-1512


“The world’s poor, though least responsible for climate change, are most
vulnerable and already suffering its impact” - Pope Francis
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/env-trinity/attachments/20170822/fcc0775b/attachment.html>