Columbia Cascades

Stocks of Pacific Northwest salmon have experienced dramatic declines in recent decades. Of the approximately 400 stocks that existed along the west coast, 100 are already extinct and 200 are considered at risk. Several stocks have already been listed as threatened or endangered, and many additional listings are imminent.

As the foundation for a coordinated approach to salmon conservation and recovery in the Pacific Northwest and California, a Memorandum of Agreement on Pacific Salmon Conservation was signed by the Director of the White House Office of Environmental Policy, five Cabinet Secretaries, and the Administrator of EPA in October 1994.

The cause of the declines in salmon stocks involves a complex interplay of factors that vary among watersheds. Chief among these factors are loss of habitat through land-use activities (such as logging, grazing, agriculture, urbanization, channelization, and road-building, which introduce pollutants and silt, alter stream hydrology, and otherwise impact upland and aquatic habitat conditions); hatchery supplementation programs; fish harvest; hydropower; and water allocations.

Salmon represent a tremendous influx of nutrients into an ecosystem, with profound and wide-ranging effects on diverse species and ecosystem processes, aquatic as well as terrestrial. Conservation and restoration of salmon is critical to the integrity of many national park ecosystems. To the extent that the NPS is able to conserve upland, riparian, and aquatic ecosystems in the parks -- with their flora, fauna, and dynamic processes -- opportunities to learn about salmon and their complex interrelationships with the ecosystems in which they occur are also conserved.

At the same time, the relatively pristine habitats that occur in national parks have the potential to play a vital role in conservation and recovery of salmon stocks. As a land management agency, the National Park Service can assist salmon recovery efforts in a variety of ways. The national parks serve as refuges with high-quality spawning habitat. Monitoring of fish populations by the NPS provides an important measure of the effects of hatcheries, harvest management, and land use practices outside of parks. The National Park Service manages non-Indian harvest on park lands, investigates causes of stock declines, and undertakes the restoration and maintenance of natural ecosystems, including upland, riparian, and aquatic habitats.

Following are some of the major activities in the conservation and restoration of salmon stocks in which the National Park Service is involved.

Prior to impoundment, the Columbia River supported large numbers of anadromous fish species such as chinook salmon, blueback salmon, and steelhead trout. The National Park Service has worked with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Colville and Spokane tribes to develop and initiate mitigation measures for the loss of these anadromous fish. A kokanee salmon (land-locked sockeye) hatchery and rearing facility are now in operation to support the resident fishery in Lake Roosevelt; these facilities produce thousands of kokanee for release annually. The National Park Service also monitors the effects of reservoir drawdowns on the resident fishery, and participates in local and systemwide fisheries recovery efforts as part of the Natural Resources Committee of the Lake Roosevelt Forum and other interagency/public task groups.

For more information on the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area, visit their home page.

Through a cost-sharing program, the National Park Service has worked with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of salmon spawning channels along the Skagit River to mitigate for habitat losses resulting from hydropower development in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area. These spawning channels utilize groundwater and existing swales in the river's floodplain to restore spawning and rearing habitat.

Park staff participate in several interagency committees concerned with salmon restoration in the Skagit River watershed, including:

• Baker River Committee: Restoration of sockeye and other salmonid species in the Baker River drainage.
• Skagit River Chinook Work Group: Develop and implement strategies to reverse the decline of chinook in the Skagit River watershed.
• Skagit River Watershed Committee: Determine priorities for habitat restoration within the Skagit River watershed.
• Additional activities include consultation concerning FERC relicensing of hydropower facilities that affect park salmon populations and monitoring of park salmonid populations and habitat.

For more information on the North Cascades National Park Complex, visit their home page.

Restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem and native anadromous fisheries through the proposed removal of two hydroelectric dams (pursuant to the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act, P.L. 102-495) has already benefitted other streams in the area. The National Park Service is assisting in the recovery of Dungeness River pink salmon for outplanting in the Elwha. Similarly, Olympic National Park inventories of summer steelhead on the Washington coast are providing much-needed information on stock status for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as Treaty Tribes, and will help identify a stock for use in the Elwha River. Once restoration occurs, natural straying by salmon from the Elwha River, which was once the most productive watershed in the Strait of Juan de Fuca region, will help support the recovery of many of the smaller Strait streams. Further, the Elwha will provide an unmatched opportunity to experiment and study the effectiveness of various restoration strategies and will provide much-needed opportunities to document the role of healthy ecosystems in the recovery of Pacific salmon.

Other activities underway at Olympic National Park include:

• Research on Lake Ozette sockeye salmon, a stock of concern which is depressed from historic levels: The study is directed at assessing water quality and other ecosystem concerns impacting sockeye salmon and other salmonids in Ozette drainage.


• Assessment of Soleduck summer coho: A park facility appears to be impacting spawning and rearing of this unique stock of coho. The study is directed toward documenting impacts and identifying potential mitigation options. Park staff are also working with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Quileute Tribe to develop an escapement goal for this stock of salmon. In the past, management emphasis was directed toward hatchery escapement requirements, with natural spawning only a secondary consideration. Due to the recent concerns for maintaining discrete stocks of fish, the three agencies agreed on the need to begin developing information necessary to compute an escapement goal for the wild stock. Information is being gathered on life history patterns, spawn timing and distribution within the watershed, numbers of spawners, and available rearing habitat at summer low flow.


• Fishery monitoring: The National Park Service is conducting an inventory and assessment of the status of salmonid populations, monitoring recreational fisheries, and evaluating park regulation of these fisheries, including an experimental catch-and-release regulation.


• Database development: The National Park Service is initiating a project to develop a database regarding available information for salmon and steelhead stocks in Olympic National Park. The database will include historic and current information pertaining to spawning escapements, catch, hatchery plants in adjoining waters, and juvenile production estimates. This information will be entered into a database and analyzed to assess trends in survival of park stocks, identify potential factors in current escapement and production levels, determine the current level and adequacy of federal/state/tribal monitoring efforts, and identify stocks which are not being monitored.

For more information on Olympic National Park, visit their home page.

A large-scale watershed rehabilitation program which removes abandoned and failing logging roads and stream crossings, revegetates them, and erosion-proofs existing roads is reducing sediment input from previously logged lands that is deleterious to salmonids in Redwood Creek and its tributaries. These actions, in conjunction with the placement of large wood in-stream structures, removal or modification of unnatural fish barriers, and modification of existing flood control levees, are significantly improving fish habitat. Annual summer steelhead and winter spawning surveys are providing information on the status of salmon and steelhead. More than a decade of summer/fall monitoring of juvenile salmonids in the Redwood Creek estuary has established the prominent role of estuaries in the life cycle of chinook salmon and steelhead trout and the importance of small coastal estuaries in degraded watersheds. Other programs underway -- estuary restoration, road removal prioritization based on failure risk, suspended sediment monitoring, and timber harvest reviews -- are additional examples of natural resource management activities aimed at ecosystem restoration.

For more information on Redwood National Park, visit their home page.

All national parks in the Columbia Basin and coastal watersheds strive to conserve and restore healthy aquatic, riparian, and associated upland ecosystems. Parks within the range of the northern spotted owl participate as members of Provincial Advisory Committees and Provincial Interagency Executive Committees.

On-going ecosystem restoration efforts provide some of the best opportunities for salmon recovery, and we plan for them to continue. Consistent with the Memorandum of Agreement, the National Park Service will participate at all levels in coordination and implementation of salmon recovery efforts, to the extent permitted by staff and funding limitations. These activities include participation in the Pacific Salmon Coordinating Committee, reviewing escapement goals and harvest regulation for stocks that return to park lands, and providing input concerning proposals for construction or operation of hatcheries, hydropower systems, and land uses that affect stocks originating in or passing through park lands.

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