Take Action NOW to Help Breach the Snake River dams
Requirements and availability of prey for northeastern pacific southern resident killer whales
Fanny Couture, Greig Oldford, Villy Christensen, Lance Barrett-Lennard, Carl Walters. June 27, 2022
Abstract:
The salmon-eating Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW) (Orcinus orca) population currently comprises only 73 individuals, and is listed as ‘endangered’ under the Species at Risk Act in Canada. Recent evidence suggests that the growth of this population may be limited by food resources, especially Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). We present spatio-temporal bioenergetics model for SRKW in the Salish Sea and the West Coast of Vancouver Island from 1979–2020 with the objective of evaluating how changes in the abundance, age-structure, and length-at-age of Chinook salmon populations has influenced the daily food consumption of the SRKW population. Our model showed that the SRKW population has been in energetic deficit for six of the last 40 years. Our results also suggested that the abundance of age-4 and age-5 Chinook salmon are significant predictors of energy intake for SRKW. We estimated that the annual consumption (April-October) of Chinook salmon by the whales between 1979 and 2020 ranged from 166,000 216,300. Over the past 40 years, the model estimated that the contribution in the predicted SRKW diet of Chinook salmon originating from the Columbia River has increased by about 34%, and decreased by about 15% for Chinook salmon stocks originating from Puget Sound. Overall, our study provides an overview of the requirements and availability of prey for SRKW over the last 40 years, while supporting the hypothesis that SRKW were limited by prey abundance in the study period.
Washington Democrats make dam removal a platform plank
Updated March 2021
This is urgent: A far-reaching and deeply rooted alliance of environmentalists and tribes are making their voices heard to restore the Snake River and remove the dams sooner rather than later.
The CEO of the Washington Environmental Council and the co-chair of the Gov’s Orca Recovery Task Force say it’s time to restore the Snake River now. No time to waste.
"Alyssa Macy, CEO of the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters, encouraged continued pressure on elected officials to find solutions that would enable removing dams on the Snake River to restore salmon habitat.
Siam’elwit and husband Sit ki kadem of Lummi Nation lead the audience in a prayer during Saturday’s vigil. “Salmon are crucial to the environment,” noted Siam’elwit."
The concept of breaching those 4 dams to restore salmon
Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson has proposed a plan that includes breaching the four lower Snake River dams. Simpson’s proposal calls for breaching the four Snake River dams to restore the river, the salmon, and 5,500 miles of wilderness spawning streams. Breaching would also replenish about a million currently missing Chinook salmon to Southern Resident orca habitat along the Washington coast.
Send a Message to Washington State Elected Officials
Among the most effective forms of advocacy is to physically mail letters to elected officials. Below is one specifically for WA Senator Patty Murray as well as one that can be used for any elected official. Please take a moment to print, sign (with your name and address or at least city so they know you are a voter in their district) and mail to as many officials as possible — addresses and contact info below.
PDF Letter to Print for WA Sen Murray
PDF Letter to Print for Any Official
Reach Out to Elected Officials Online
Here is sample text for you to copy, paste, sign with your name and address (or at least city) to use when contacting WA state elected officials over email or social media — feel free to edit and make the text your own.
Copy and paste sample for email or contact forms:
Thank you for your service to the people of Washington. You fill a special role in the hopes of Tribes, fishers, outdoor lovers, salmon and orca lovers. You hold the key to unlock our hopes by backing Rep. Simpson’s plan for Snake River restoration. Please do. The Columbia basin has been in conflict over salmon for decades, but the status quo on the Snake River will result in extinct salmon, expensive energy, and starvation for Southern Resident orcas. Please work with Rep. Simpson and his proposal to resolve the conflict and unite the region.
Copy and paste sample for Twitter:
Please @PattyMurray support @CongMikeSimpson ‘s plan for Snake River restoration. The Columbia basin has been in conflict over salmon for decades, but the status quo on the Snake River will result in extinct salmon, expensive energy, and starvation for Southern Resident orcas.
Key WA Elected Officials Contact Info
Find Your Representative
Use your address to find the WA representatives for your district: app.leg.wa.gov/DistrictFinder/
Governor Jay Inslee
governor.wa.gov/contact/contact/send-gov-inslee-e-message
Twitter: @GovInslee
Governor Jay Inslee
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
360-902-4111
Senator Patty Murray
murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contactme
Twitter: @PattyMurray
Senator Patty Murray
2988 Jackson Federal Building
915 2nd Ave
Seattle, WA98174
206-553-5545
Senator Maria Cantwell
cantwell.senate.gov/contact/email/form
Twitter: @SenatorCantwell
Senator Maria Cantwell
915 Second Avenue, #3206
Seattle, WA 98174
206-220-6400
For a complete list of relevant federal and state elected leaders and government officials with contact information, please see the
Southern Resident Killer Chinook Salmon Initiative (SRKWCSI) Action Page.
Background: main points on the Why, How, and What’s in the way of breaching the four lower Snake River dams:
The Endangered Species listing language for Southern Resident orcas reads: “[p]erhaps the single greatest change in food availability for resident killer whales since the late 1800s has been the decline of salmon in the Columbia River basin.”
The Snake basin historically produced about half of the entire Columbia salmon, which produced the most salmon of any river basin on this Pacific coast.
Reproductive failure has been the main factor resulting in the decline of the Southern Resident orca population. Pregnant orcas need extra food.
Pregnant and nursing orcas are eating for two for 18 months carrying a developing baby that will be 8’ long and 3-400 lbs., then nursing that young one for a year or so — that takes a lot of calories.
Snake River dams are causing the extinction of spring/summer Chinook, and have decimated fall Chinook and other salmonids.
Breaching the four lower Snake River dams, with adequate spill at the remaining lower Columbia River dams, is the only viable option to restore salmon and steelhead.
In the Snake River basin, all salmon populations are facing likely extinction. The accepted goal to prevent extinction is a mean Smolt to Adult Return (SAR) of 4 percent. Salmon SARs have not exceeded 1 percent for more than two decades in Snake River system – well under the minimum to persist, continuing declines toward extinction in these populations.
The dams deprive So. Resident orcas of their vital sustenance, especially in the spring and early summer.
Decimating those salmon in turn deprives forests of marine nutrients and their ability to sequester carbon.
The dams turned thriving, bubbling, cool water rivers into stagnant pools emitting massive quantities of methane, halting the flow of salmon smolts to the ocean and subjecting them to multiple predators.
Those 4 Snake River dams have reduced the quantity and quality of Chinook salmon available to So. Residents more than any other single factor.
Logistically and economically, removing those dams would be the fastest, easiest, and least expensive, way to significantly increase food availability for So. Residents. All that's needed is to notch the earthen berms beside each dam, and let the river reclaim itself. It's all spelled out and illustrated in the Army Corps' 2002 EIS.
Breaching would open 5,500 miles of spawning habitat in near pristine roadless high altitude wilderness. So. Fork of Nooksack: 19 miles. Elwha: 90 miles. Klamath dams will open 400 miles. The entire Salish Sea would fit within the Snake River watershed that would be revitalized by removing those four dams.
Salmon extinction was predicted by ID, OR and WA state salmon biologists in 1947, before the dams were built. Army Corps rejected their advice. Called it amateur.
By 1997 all Snake River salmon were listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
The Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Authority have the total authority to breach or not breach the dams, with agreement by regional Congressional delegation.
The dams deprive Native American tribes of their primary sustenance and cultural foundations.
Barging, hydropower, irrigation all operate at great expense to BPA and thus to Congress and ratepayers.
Balanced portfolios of clean energy resources, including solar, wind, energy and efficiency already have replaced the power the four LSR dams contribute to the Northwest region.
As run of river dams, they are always kept full to operate the locks among other reasons. The only significant hydropower is generated in spring, when demand is low and already replaced by wind, solar, and efficiency.
The dams do not provide flood control because they need to be kept full at all times.
Columbia Basin Federal Caucus (BPA, ACOE, NOAA, BOR, USFW, US Forest Service, and four other agencies) all argue to keep the dams in legal documents and using lobbying and public relations firms. All repeat the same misrepresentations.
Contrasting the accurate scientific record with the public understanding of the reasons for the dams, most people have accepted those misrepresentations.
BPA website says BPA receives no tax revenues or appropriations. It's done with federal loan guarantees approved by Congress - $17 Billion+ not repaid over 20 years.
Pays many salaries and contracts - builds sprawling bureaucracies and huge political power and power to shape public opinion.
Dams don't produce revenue, but do provide subsidized services to certain clients.
Not villainizing - humans are shaped largely by our institutions, beliefs, values, goals. We tend to play for our teams, and this team needs to keep those dams in place to keep the federal loans coming. They misinform to win arguments.
BPA is not elected or appointed; they are recruited/promoted from within in accord with the culture of the institution that’s been fighting to keep the dams since before they were built.
The agencies have massive influence over more than 140 Public Utility Districts, port authorities, Chambers of Commerce, local gov'ts, farming and shipping organizations, media, politicians, unions, and voters in WA, OR, UT, MT etc. Few politicians dare to advocate breaching.
Rep. Mike Simpson’s bold proposal offers mitigations and innovations that would satisfy the objections to breaching.
The Biden administration, CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory, Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, Rep. Jared Huffman, Rep. Mike Simpson, Senator Ron Wyden, Speaker Pelosi, Gov. Inslee. Sens. Cantwell and Murray all could help, among others.
Past Advocacy
September 3, 2020 - Letter to Gov. Inslee by an informal partnership named BOLD, (Orca Behavior Institute, Orca Network, Salish Sea Ecosystem Advocates and Whale Scout).
April 13, 2020 - Comments on the Columbia River System Operations Draft Environmental Impact Statement (CRSO DEIS) by Orca Network.
April 13, 2020 - Comments on the Columbia River System Operations Draft Environmental Impact Statement (CRSO DEIS) by Howard Garrett.
March 6, 2020 - Official report of Governor Inslee's stakeholder process regarding the removal of four dams from the lower Snake River. This report concludes the public process and presents a diverse range of opinions from dam breaching proponents and opponents.
Feb. 20, 2020 - Southern Resident Killer Whales & Columbia/Snake River Chinook: A Review Of The Available Scientific Evidence "Restoring healthy, abundant salmon to the Snake River is critical if we are going to provide a more adequate prey base for orcas. As recently as 2018, NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center challenged this relationship in a publication that, we believe, was misleading and contrary to the agency's own prior and subsequent findings. We have prepared this paper to summarize the extensive scientific basis for restoration of the lower Snake River by, among other actions, removal of the earthen portion of four federal dams there. This is the most effective and significant step we can take to help both salmon and orcas recover."
Feb. 19, 2020 - interview with Rocky Barker. This audio clip is an interview with Rocky Barker, the main journalist covering the Snake River dams. He said Gov. Brown met with Gov. Inslee Feb 20. Sure would love a transcript of that meeting. He also said that OR Senator Wyden said at a town meeting that he would have his staff look into breaching the dams. Sen. Wyden needs to be kept in the loop on what's going on now. He also downplayed the SR hydropower, saying all of the BPA dams and one nuclear plant only amount to 17% of the region's power. He was emphatic that Congress needs to get involved and make it happen, and he talked about Rep Simpson doing just that. He said that the Snake River Chinook and Steelhead are the strongest population left. He said Gov. Brown is trying to get the farmers and shippers to start planning for breaching. His prediction was that it will take until 2028 or 2030 to get it done even if the decision was made today to do it. I disagree with that assessment because salmon and orcas can't wait that long. But the political ground is shifting now, and it would only take a few more political leaders to light those embers to burst into flames.
Feb. 18, 2020 - Fish Passage Center letter of response to NOAA, stating that NOAA's information is "erroneous, misleading, and does not provide information on the factors that influence survival at various life stages."
Feb. 17, 2020 - Orca Network response to Gov. Brown's letter to Gov. Inslee. "The facts of the matter may seem endless but they are compelling and undeniable once the scope of the problem comes into focus, and yet well-funded and highly organized public denial campaigns have been waged since before the dams were built to justify them and obscure the harm they do."
Feb. 11, 2020 - Oregon Gov. Kate Brown letter to Washington Gov. Jay Inslsee recommending breaching Lower Snake River dams.
January 20, 2019 - Orca Network Comments submitted to Gov. Inslee on the Draft Stakeholder report on breaching Lower Snake River dams.
December 29, 2019 - Draft comments on the Draft Stakeholder report on breaching Lower Snake River dams
October 22, 2019 - Letter from Howard Garrett, Orca Network, in response to OPALCO's Sept. 24, 2019 resolution in support of keeping the four lower Snake River dams.
December 9, 2019 - The Southern Resident orcas and the effects of the Snake River dams are the subjects of a poster presentation at the World Marine Mammal Science Conference in Barcelona, Spain. This poster was designed and written by a studious 12-year old researcher named London Fletcher. This telling of the story goes to the politics and economics behind the salmon deficiencies now mortally harming So. Resident orcas.
October 22, 2019 - ...on behalf of 55 fisheries and natural resource scientists.
"Restoring the lower Snake River by removing its four federal dams will significantly reduce mainstem water temperatures on a long-term basis, and is likely the only action that can do so, substantially lowering the risk of extinction for salmon and steelhead here."
October 15, 2019 - We are writing as scientists and researchers with many decades of collective experience and a deep familiarity with the life history and current status of the Southern Resident Killer Whales.
"Based on the science and the urgency of the current threats confronting the Southern Residents, we urge the Task Force to recommend to Governor Inslee that he take appropriate steps to ... convene a process to recommend steps for lower Snake River dam removal as soon as possible as top priorities for orca protection."
April 23, 2019 - Luncheon Address by Congressman Mike Simpson (R - Idaho) at the 2019 Andrus Center conference: Energy, Salmon, Agriculture and Community: Can We Come Together?
"Their ability to borrow money, 16 billion dollars in debt, I think it's 2023 or something like that, their ability to borrow runs out and Congress has to reauthorize that and I'm telling you, I don't know that Congress will reauthorize that. I have seen over my period of time more and more pressure in Congress to do away with power marketing administrations. Presidents have suggested it, this president suggested doing away with the transmission...selling off BPA transmission."
August 27, 2018 - We are writing as salmon scientists with decades of experience and considerable familiarity with the science concerning the protection and restoration of healthy, selfsustaining wild salmon populations in the Columbia and Snake River Basins.
"..the most effective measure we know of to permanently increase the sustained abundance of Chinook salmon from the Snake and Columbia Rivers: removing the four federal dams on the lower Snake River and restoring the ecological health of that river corridor."
February 10, 2019 - Dear Orca Recovery Task Force and all concerned -H. Garrett, Orca Network
Excerpt:
For most tax payers and rate payers such an unproductive federal expense would be considered another case of pork barrel politics, or a massive boondoggle. But for residents in the region the influx of federal money to agencies and contractors provides the foundations for regional economies, sustaining local development, governments, schools, libraries, etc. We can't minimize the financial issues created by the prospect of curtailing this federal influx, though other Army Corps projects, dams, hatcheries, and restoration projects will provide commensurate employment in many cases.
Our challenge is to examine this wider picture of what happens when dam operations and barging cease. Feared economic challenges, not lack of available science or insurmountable disruptions, are the real reason for opposition to dam breaching in Eastern Washington. Funding concrete measures to assist with inevitable transitions, not more studies, is the solution. The question before us is not really whether to breach the four lower Snake River dams. They are decimating endangered salmon and orcas and return insignificant revenues.
The real question is how to close or realign the operations and facilities of the agencies collectively known as the Columbia Basin Federal Caucus, which include the Corps, Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, NOAA Fisheries and other federal and state agencies whose purpose is to maintain the Snake River dams or mitigate for the harm the dams cause to endangered salmon.
Link to Governor Inslee's Executive Directive:
Southern Resident Killer Whale Recovery and Task Force -H. Garrett, Orca Network
On March 14, 2018 the Governor signed Executive Order 18-02 designating state agencies to take several immediate actions to benefit southern residents, and establishing a Task Force to develop a longer-term action recommendations for orca recovery and future sustainability. The Governor invited members of the Legislature, the Government of Canada, representatives from tribal, federal, local and other state governments, the private sector and the non-profit sector to participate in the Task Force. The Task Force also includes designees from the lead state agencies, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Puget Sound Partnerships, and from multiple other state agencies.
The Task Force is charged with preparing a comprehensive report and recommendations for recovering Southern Residents, with a full draft due by October 1, 2018, and a final report by November 1, 2018. The report should detail actions that will address all of the major threats to Southern Residents, including prey availability, toxic contaminants, and disturbance from noise and vessel traffic. A second report outlining the progress made, lessons learned, and outstanding needs will be completed by October 1, 2019.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - January 6, 2018 22,000+ citizens place a full page ad in Seattle Times informing Gov. Inslee and Sen. Murray that failure to act now to breach the lower Snake River dams will result in extinction of salmon, orcas.
DamSense: Facts about Lower Snake Dam Removal
Click on the link for news, letters of record, archives, reports, documents, videos, presentations, and how to help.
July 12, 2017
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, U. S. House of Representatives (WA-05)
Jaime Herrera Beutler, U. S. House of Representatives (WA-3)
Dan Newhouse, U.S. House of Representatives (WA-4)
Kurt Schrader, U. S. House of Representatives (OR-05)
Greg Walden, U. S. House of Representatives (OR-2)
Greetings:
You recently sponsored a bill in the U. S. House of Representatives designed to protect the operation of the four lower Snake River (LSR) dams from environmental review and stop implementation of a scientifically-proven means (spill) of aiding threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead. Your statements in the press release addressing this bill, posted on McMorris Rodgers’ website, demonstrate either a lack of knowledge about the LSR dams or an attempt to deceive your constituents, colleagues in Congress and all Americans. Here are facts of which you are hopefully aware.
Hydropower: Those who wish to mislead the public frequently combine the power output of the Columbia River with that of the Snake, purposely failing to acknowledge that the LSR dams contribute little to the Northwest’s power supply. These four dams provide less than 4% of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest power grid and only 6.5% of the Northwest’s hydropower. They produce much of their power when demands for electricity and market price are both low.
PNW wind energy capacity is now three times greater than the combined capacity of all 4 LSR dams. The Pacific Northwest enjoys a surplus of energy, at times requiring wind turbines to be shut down and electricity to be exported at a negative price.
Savings in energy costs related to fish mitigation alone justifies breaching the LSR dams.
Navigation: Freight transport on the LSR’s four reservoirs has declined by more than 50% over the past 20 years. Barges no longer carry logs, lumber, paper, pulp, or pulse. Even grain volume, which makes up over 90% of all freight, has declined 45% over the same period.
Every barge of grain that leaves the Port of Lewiston carries a taxpayer subsidy of over $20,000 to pay for channel dredging, navigation operations and maintenance. This figure does not include the many millions of dollars spent every few years on major lock rehabilitation. Commercial navigation on the LSR principally provides government-subsidized transportation of a government-subsidized crop.
Flood Control: The LSR dams are run-of-the-river dams that provide no flood control. Lower Granite dam actually creates flood risk to the principal city on the waterway—Lewiston, Idaho. The arrival at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers of over 2 million cubic yards of sediment each year perpetually adds to that flood risk and creates additional future costs to be borne by federal taxpayers. Flood control as justification for maintaining the LSR dams is a false claim.
Irrigation: Only one reservoir in the LSR dam complex — behind Ice Harbor Dam— provides irrigation for between 13-17 land owners/farms on one-third the acreage the Corps of Engineers projected in claiming benefits for the LSR project. Water would still be available if Ice Harbor were breached, but at a higher (non-subsidized) cost. Irrigation as justification for maintaining the LSR dams is a weak argument that applies to a single dam.
Juvenile Fish Migration: Among the more egregious of the false claims made in the press release addressing the proposed legislation is that of the survival of Snake River juvenile salmon and steelhead through the 8-dam Columbia/Snake River complex. The oft-repeated statement “an average of 97% of young salmon successfully make it past the dams” belies a juvenile fish survival rate through the dams and reservoirs of about 54% for wild Chinook and 45% for wild steelhead. Further losses then occur below Bonneville Dam due to avian predation and delayed mortality caused by the rigors of dam passage. In 2015 the juvenile survival rate Lower Granite to Bonneville for the Snake River’s most endangered fish, Idaho’s sockeye salmon, was 32%. In 2016 this rate declined farther to a mere 12%. The 97% claim is false. Repeating it constitutes political hucksterism.
In 2013, NOAA Fisheries acknowledged that no juvenile fish passage survival improvement had occurred over the previous 13 years—despite the expenditure of over $700 million on just the 4 lower Snake River dams for so-called “fish passage improvements.” Stated NOAA: “Chinook survival through the hydropower system has remained relatively stable since 1999 with the exception of lower estimates in 2001 and 2004.” No significant change has occurred in the past four years. Claiming otherwise is lying.
Adult Salmon Returns: As with hydropower, LSR dam supporters deceive the public by using data for the combined Columbia/Snake system, purposely ignoring the vast differences in fish numbers in these two rivers. As sponsors of the House Bill in question, you likewise employ this deception in claiming the achievement of “record fish returns.”
Historically, the Snake River produced an estimated half or more of all the anadromous fish in the Columbia Basin. However, in 2014 just 14% of the Chinook counted at Bonneville Dam were Snake River fish. For Coho the percentage was 6%, for sockeye it was less than half of one percent. The same pattern held in 2015 at 15%, 3.5%, and 2/10ths of one percent. Claiming that salmon numbers at Bonneville Dam provide meaningful and honest information about fish numbers on the Snake River, let alone about the Snake’s threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, is beyond the pale.
In 2015, 99% of adult Snake River sockeye died before reaching their spawning grounds. The Idaho Fish and Game Department has predicted 2017 and 2018 will see steelhead returns lower than those in the 1980s, with the Clearwater River’s once famous wild B-run steelhead numbers predicted to be a mere 1000 fish in 2017.
The true measure of successful recovery of threatened and endangered fish species is the smolt-to-adult return (SAR) ratio. Mere survival (non-extinction) of wild fish species requires a minimum 1% SAR, while recovery of Snake River salmon and steelhead requires a 2%-6% SAR. From 1993-2013 the SAR for wild Chinook salmon averaged .89%. The return exceeded the minimum 2% SAR needed for recovery during only 2 of those 20 years. Idaho’s Snake River sockeye are on the brink of extinction. No Snake River threatened and endangered salmon or steelhead species is on a path to recovery.
The claim of “record runs of fish” in a bill designed to maintain the status quo on the lower Snake River is deliberate deception.
The High Cost of Failure
Several other statements you have made about the LSR dams fall beyond this communiqué—for example, your twisted claim that science should govern dam operations rather than politics while you undertake to assure that politics continue to defy science. However, one additional topic must be addressed. While I question your claim that “one-third of our electric bills pay for fish passage,” we do know the cost to taxpayers and ratepayers of supporting mostly failing salmon and steelhead recovery in the Snake and Columbia Rivers has topped $15 billion. As noted above, at least $700 million has been spent just on “system improvements” designed to increase the rate of juvenile fish passage on the four LSR dams. However, overall juvenile fish survival rates have not improved over the past 20 years, smolt-to-adult wild fish returns remain below the level needed to avoid species extinction, and no Snake River threatened and endangered species is on a path to recovery. Three federal judges over a twenty-year period have declared plans for the operation of the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers illegal.
Despite all of this information, you 5 Northwest members of the U. S. House of Representatives, who claim to be fiscal conservatives, have sponsored a bill to continue pouring more taxpayer and ratepayer money into an atrociously expensive, flawed and failed experiment that is destroying two of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic species—Pacific salmon and Southern Resident Killer Whales—while inflicting economic hardship on small communities from the Pacific Coast to the interior of Idaho.
A boondoggle is defined as “a wasteful or pointless activity that gives the appearance of having value; “ and “a public project of questionable merit that typically involves political patronage and graft.”
The lower Snake River dams meet both definitions. Your referenced House Bill does as well.
Linwood Laughy
Kooskia, Idaho
lochsalaughy@yahoo.com
Letter links fate of Southern Resident killer whales to recovery of declining salmon populations in Columbia-Snake River basin
November 20, 2007 - SEATTLE, WA - Leading Northwest scientists and orca advocates are urging NOAA Fisheries to consider removal of the four lower Snake River dams in order to protect endangered Puget Sound orca populations that need Columbia-Snake River salmon as a critical food source.
"Restoring Columbia River Chinook salmon is the single most important thing we can do to ensure the future survival of the Southern Resident Community of killer whales," said Dr. Rich Osborne, research associate with The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, WA. "We cannot hope to restore the killer whale population without also restoring the salmon upon which these whales have depended for thousands of years. Their futures are intricately linked."
The comments from the six prominent orca scientists, delivered in a letter to Northwest members of Congress and NOAA regional administrator Robert Lohn, came in response to the Oct. 31 release of a new draft Biological Opinion from NOAA Fisheries for Columbia-Snake River salmon management. Salmon advocates say the new plan, the result of a court-ordered rewrite of an earlier, illegal 2004 federal salmon plan, fails to do enough to recover imperiled salmon in the seven-state Columbia-Snake river basin, and ignores altogether the four dams on the lower Snake River that do the most harm to these fish.
"History will not be very forgiving of the resource managers who failed in their responsibilities to these icons of the Pacific Northwest, Chinook and orca," said Ken Balcomb, senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research.
"The draft plan relies heavily on actions that science and time have proven will not restore these fish to the levels necessary for self-sustaining populations of salmon, or abundant enough to provide a healthy food resource for these killers whales," said Dr. David Bain, a killer whale biologist at Friday Harbor Labs. "Not only are salmon from the Columbia River an important historic food source, recovered abundant salmon in this river are an indispensable requirement for the future recovery of Southern Residents."
"The new Federal salmon plan for the Columbia and Snake rivers is no better than previous plans in providing access to the basin’s best remaining salmon habitat in the upper reaches of the Snake River," said Howard Garrett, co-founder of the Orca Network. "The resulting declining salmon runs have a very real impact on the 88 endangered southern resident orcas that depend on these fish, as they have for centuries. As the salmon disappear, the orcas go hungry."
"The best science tells us," Garrett added, "that to revitalize Snake River salmon, we'll need to bypass the dams that block fish passage, and that dam removal, combined with a variety of economic investments, will bring benefits to upriver communities in eastern Washington as well as to Puget Sound."
The Columbia and Snake River Basin was once the world’s most productive salmon watershed, with tens of millions of fish returning annually. Today, returns hover near 1% of those historic levels. More than 200 large dams on the basin’s rivers are the major cause of this crisis, with 13 populations now listed under the Endangered Species Act, and four directly impacted by the lower Snake River dams. Yet, the Columbia-Snake Basin still holds more acres of pristine salmon habitat than any watershed in the lower 48 states.
It is this opportunity, notes Kathy Fletcher, executive director of People For Puget Sound, that we must take advantage of, if we hope to protect and restore these two iconic Northwest species whose fates are inexorably intertwined.
"Our leaders must look for solutions not only in Puget Sound, but also in the rivers that bring the salmon to the sea throughout the Northwest," Fletcher said. "The great salmon rivers like the Columbia and Snake can once again produce the healthy runs of Chinook, on which our majestic orcas feed, but only if we recover salmon habitat. We must act quickly to restore clean water, abundant, sustainable salmon populations, and a safe home for orcas. The scientists tell us there is no time to waste.”
Full letter (2007): Orca Scientists Call for Lower Snake Dam Removal to Help Puget Sound’s Endangered Orcas.
March 14, 1947: Army Corps Report to Congress on proposed Lower Snake River dams:
"The problem of passing migratory fish over dams on lower Snake River was discussed with representatives of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington Dept. of Fisheries, Fish Commission of Oregon, Oregon State Game Commission, and the Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game. The consensus of opinion of these agencies was that any series of dams on lower Snake River would be hazardous and might entirely eliminate the runs of migratory fish in that stream. In view of the experience at Bonneville Dam, this office does not concure (sic) with this unfounded opinion."
For more information visit:
Dam Sense
Southern Resident Killer Whale Chinook Salmon Initiative
Save Our Wild Salmon.
Media Contacts:
Ken Balcomb, Center for Whale Research, (360) 378-5835
Howard Garrett, Orca Network, (360) 320-7176
