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Artificial Production Review Committee Meeting
Monday, November 8, 1999
NWPPC Conference Room, Portland, Oregon
The Production Review Committee (PRC) discussed how to proceed with
implementing the recommendations of the Artificial Production Review
(APR). The committee considered a staff proposal to create two follow-on
forums, one for anadromous and one for resident fish, that would meet
quarterly to provide input to the hatchery reform efforts. There was also
considerable discussion of how to dovetail the work on artificial
production with the activities that are getting under way for the
Northwest Power Planning Council’s fish and wildlife program. The last
meeting of the PRC will be December 13. A list of PRC attendees is
attached to this report.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Council Adopts the APR Report
Implementation of Hatchery Reforms
Reshaping the HGMP To Avoid Reinventing the Wheel
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Council Adopts the APR Report
Staffer Mark Fritsch reported that the Council approved the APR final
report in October. The Council had some comments, particularly with regard
to the recommendations and who would be carrying them out, he said. We
incorporated those comments, recirculated the report, and it is now
undergoing final formatting and production, Fritsch said. He also
indicated that the Council wanted the final report to be published as a
single volume, rather than as two. The final report is 240 pages, Fritsch
added.
We hope to begin printing this afternoon or tomorrow, Fritsch
continued. After the initial distribution of copies to Congress and other
"VIPs," PRC members can let us know what they need, and we’ll
get more copies made, he stated. Has this been presented to Congress?
Brian Allee of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority (CBFWA)
asked. Yes, the Congressional staffs were briefed on October 15, Fritsch
responded.
Last week at its November meeting, the Council approved a request to
have the Independent Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) review the APR
performance standards (Attachment 1), he said. That review is to be
completed by December 17, according to Fritsch. How does that review fit
with what has been sent to Congress? asked Bill Bakke of the Native Fish
Society. The report states that the ISAB review of the standards is yet to
come, Fritsch said.
Implementation of Hatchery Reforms
The PRC turned its attention to a staff handout (Attachment 2)
outlining proposals for forming the ad hoc oversight team described in the
APR final report, as well as other forums that would follow on the heels
of the PRC and provide information and input to the implementation
process. Staff also handed out a list of the APR recommendations on
policies and practices (Attachment 3) that was excerpted from the report.
We need to discuss where we want to go from here and to devise a
transition, Fritsch said. We are proposing to have the last PRC meeting on
December 13, he stated. In setting up the follow-on activities, we need to
ensure that we have included those who want and need to be involved,
Fritsch continued.
The staff’s proposal is to create two forums, one for anadromous fish
and one for resident fish, he said. The two fisheries have unique needs
and circumstances, and they will be treated differently from one another
in implementing the APR and in reviews that the Independent Sciencific
Review Panel (ISRP) will be conducting in the Columbia River Basin’s
ecological provinces, Fritsch explained. The anadromous fish forum would
include many of the people who have been participating in the PRC, and the
resident fish forum would be set up so that it is conducive to
participation by those in the upriver areas, he said. We have proposed
that these forums meet quarterly, and that the Council and CBFWA
coordinate the activities, Fritsch concluded.
I understand what you are saying in tailoring the forums to resident
and anadromous fish, but we are going to have integrated province and
subbasin planning in the Council’s fish and wildlife (F&W) program,
Allee commented. The idea with implementation of the APR is that the
hatcheries would be incorporated into the context of the integrated
planning that will go on in the basin, he said. Does the strategy you’ve
outlined run at cross-purposes with the ecosystem approach in the basin?
Allee asked. Would it be possible to have a single forum that includes
resident fish input? he inquired. "I second that," Bakke stated.
We were trying to address the interests of the upriver folks, responded
consultant John Marsh. This might not be the best way, but in reality it
might be the only way, he said, adding that there has not been adequate
coordination with the resident fish interests thus far in the APR. There’s
probably value in the split from the standpoint of logistics alone,
observed Stephen Smith of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). If
we set up separate forums, the first meeting should be combined in order
to lay out the "ground rules," Tom Rogers of the Idaho
Department of Fish and Game suggested.
How are we going to integrate the subbasin work that is being done in
the F&W program with the APR implementation? asked Tim Stearns of Save
Our Wild Salmon. Allee said that the Council staff and the ISRP have
envisioned following up the Multi-Species Framework process with reviews
of ecological provinces in the Columbia River Basin. The reviews will
provide background for subbasin planning, he explained. The essence of the
approach is to have "bottom-up planning" and to get people in
local areas to articulate the goals and objectives for their subbasin,
Allee stated. The hatchery, as a management tool, would be fit into the
subbasin plans, as opposed to talking about the role of hatcheries in the
basin generally, he said. Not all subbasins would have the same
strategies, Allee added. The idea of having an anadromous and a resident
fish forum is not bad, but it might be short-lived because the aim overall
is to have integrated planning, he observed.
I agree, but we aren’t organized that way institutionally, Bakke said
of the integrated planning. The government agencies and fish managers are
set up in departments that make a distinction between anadromous and
resident fish, he pointed out, and they derive their funding and power
from these institutional structures. "People will resist the idea of
merging" because they will feel threatened in terms of funding and
power, Bakke stated.
"I’m worried about anadromous versus anadromous fish," Tom
Scribner of the Yakama Indian Nation said. Within the subbasins, there are
major policy controversies over anadromous fish measures, and the
disparate interests will have to come to agreement on how they use the
hatchery tool, he said. One reason there has not been an agreement in U.S.
v. Oregon is that we don’t agree on how to use hatcheries, Scribner
said.
I see a lot of reforms we could make to hatcheries based on the APR
report, Smith stated. We know that we eventually need to get to integrated
planning, but we need to go there in steps, he suggested. The hatchery
operators can be putting reforms in place, knowing that eventually there
will be integrated planning, Smith said. If we wait for the subbasin
process before we begin the hatchery reforms, we will be too late, he
observed.
If we don’t have an integrated approach from the start, "we
could potentially have a disconnect" later on, according to
facilitation team member Dan Evans. The integrated approach is key, Rogers
agreed. At some point we will be looking at major funding requirements to
carry out the reforms, he pointed out. If, for example, a hatchery project
isn’t part of an integrated plan, we could end up having invested time
and effort in something that ultimately is not useful, Rogers said.
The Council has laid out a process in which it plans to address two of
the ecological provinces next year, Allee said. Their process is moving
faster than ours, he noted. The idea is that the subbasin plans will deal
with hatcheries, Allee said, adding that if a hatchery is not part of the
plan, there could be problems in getting funds. We’ve done the easy
part, and what we have to do now is get the hatchery reviews started and
get them integrated into the subbasin plans, he stated.
The APR should be integrated into the province reviews, Fritsch agreed.
The hatchery group needs to develop something that fits with the other
processes in the basin, he said. Maybe one follow-on group would be
sufficient, Fritsch suggested. The ISRP is ready to go off and start the
province reviews, and I am worried about a lack of continuity, Allee said.
We need to sequence what we are doing, he added. I’d recommend an
implementation oversight group that will work with the ecological province
approach and the subbasin planning, Allee stated. The group should look at
the schedule of deliverables and coordinate with it, he suggested.
"We want to be on this train that is leaving the station" –
meeting it next time around is not adequate, Allee said.
Do we have an outline of what the province reviews will entail?
Scribner asked. No, we don’t have a template yet, but we’re working on
it, Allee replied. We need to think about the tasks that need to be done
before we set up this follow-on structure, Smith commented. I think that
within the APR report there are tasks that can be done, such as those
related to the performance indicators, he said. There are also things that
will come out of the province reviews, Smith added. I think there is a lot
of work that needs to be done at the hatchery level, things that are
incorporated in the APR report and should be done over the next three to
five years, he said. We need to get the tasks written down and then talk
about how to proceed, Smith suggested.
Marsh indicated that the staff’s proposal includes putting together a
work plan. He walked through the discussion points on the staff handout
and noted that number five is an artificial production reform work plan
for 2000. Marsh said the work plan would need to include: finalizing the
performance standards, identifying the purposes of artificial production,
finalizing the Hatchery and Genetic Management Plan (HGMP) template, and
addressing the recommendations in the APR report as part of the subbasin
planning process. Our proposal is for the staff to draft a work plan and
have the PRC review it, he said, adding that it would be helpful for CBFWA
to work with staff on the plan.
An additional activity that needs to take place once the PRC disbands
is to coordinate and disseminate information about regional APR reforms,
Marsh continued. We propose to use the Council’s web site more
effectively, updating it regularly so people can see the status of the
reform effort, he said.
What I have heard is that the forums may or may not be a good idea, but
more importantly, we need to think through how they fit into the subbasin
planning effort, Marsh summarized. The intent is that they will fit in, he
added. There are certain things we want to move forward on regardless of
the subbasin planning schedule, but we want to avoid discrepancies, Marsh
concluded.
Ensuring That the Reforms Take Place
The oversight group has an obligation to see that the APR reforms are
implemented, Bakke stated. It’s important to be consistent with the
subbasin planning, but this is a separate project, he said. I see it as
related, but distinct, Bakke reiterated.
Neil Ward of CBFWA said he did not see that much overlap between the
anadromous and resident fish activities in the ecological provinces and
that there should be a separate group for each. Some provinces are
entirely resident fish, he added. I could see meeting once or twice a year
to coordinate, but we need to be functioning separately, Ward stated.
Steve had a good idea – we need to outline the tasks, Allee said. I’m
concerned that we’ll terminate this group, have quarterly meetings, and
meanwhile, who is going to do the work? he asked. There is a lot to do,
and we need to be concerned about getting this implemented now, Allee
added. I was hoping that in terms of sequencing, we could get the
hatcheries done that are going to be part of the ISRP review next year, he
stated.
We need a chart of all of the schedules to see where they overlap,
Smith recommended. On December 13, this group should end, and an oversight
group should begin, he said. We also need to do the workflow planning,
Smith added. We have commitments in our report to Congress to get going on
this, and we could make a lot of hatchery improvements now, he said. We
all have enough experience to anticipate how a hatchery is going to be
used in the context of a subbasin plan, Smith pointed out. Changes may
occur later on after we’re under way with the reforms, but that’s
okay, he stated.
Allee suggested that to implement physical reforms at the hatcheries,
managers could refer to the IHOT work. "Just grab those audits and
implement them," he said. "If you want to bring a hatchery up to
snuff, it’s clear what to do," Allee stated. But there are also big
expenses involved, and it would be hard to make a case for large
expenditures in the absence of a subbasin plan, he added.
Once the reform activities align with the subbasin plans, "that’s
the green light" for the investments, Smith observed. People don’t
want to see large investments without the subbasin plans in place –
"we’ll take it a step at a time," he stated. Steve has a good
point about not investing really big bucks until we have a subbasin plan,
Evans agreed. We don’t want to put money into things that we might
reverse later, he stated. Senator Gorton and others in Congress will be
interested to see that we are implementing real reform and "not just
spending money on process," Evans added.
The ad hoc oversight group could identify which things from IHOT, the
Endangered Species Act process, and the Council’s F&W program need
to be done, Smith suggested. We have several places where the money needs
can be identified, and we can then take those projects to BPA for funding,
he said. We have to lay out a plan for Congressional Appropriations, Allee
suggested. And we will gain some leverage by integrating the APR with the
Council’s subbasin process, he added. Congress is eager to see
integrated, comprehensive "one-stop shopping" for funding, Evans
agreed.
Council staff and CBFWA will put something together for December 13 in
terms of the sequencing of activities and a work plan, Allee concluded. We’ll
try to e-mail something out ahead of time, Fritsch said. We should get our
"game plan" together, dissolve this group, and get invitations
out to those who might be interested in joining the follow-on efforts, he
said. We don’t want to lose momentum, Fritsch stated. He noted that the
ISAB will meet November 18 in Seattle and that Council staff will provide
a briefing on the APR recommendations as a prelude to the board’s review
of performance standards. Fritsch asked Allee and Smith to join him for
the ISAB briefing.
Allee said he hoped the ISAB comments on performance standards would be
meshed with the PRC’s original work. We need to tie this up into a new
set of performance standards, he observed. If there is dispute, which I
hope there is not, we’ll need to deal with it, Allee said. Typically,
with the independent science reviews, we get some things we can use and
some we can’t, Marsh said. Fritsch said staff planned to integrate the
ISAB comments into the performance standards and would ask a member of the
ISAB to be present during the process to discuss any areas of
disagreement.
Reshaping the HGMP to Avoid Reinventing the Wheel
The Council staff expects to use NMFS’ draft HGMP questionnaire to
develop a template for the APR hatchery evaluations, and Fritsch handed
out copies of comment letters on the topic sent by the Columbia River
Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and the Kalispel Tribe (Attachments 4 and 5).
Our intent is not to replicate NMFS’ process, but rather to capture
data, he explained. We anticipate that the APR’s ad hoc oversight group
will provide whatever revisions are needed to the HGMP to meet our
purposes, but we don’t want to alter it so much that we "reinvent
the wheel," Fritsch said. I’m looking at the use of the HGMP as a
way to develop a template for our work, he added.
Smith said a lot of managers are in the process of filling out the HGMP
data for existing and proposed hatchery programs as part of NMFS’
Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultation process. At the same time, we
are getting comments on the HGMP that could lead to revisions in it, he
noted. We have to complete a lot of Section 7 consultations on the HGMP
questionnaires, and after these are complete, we will be revising the
template, Smith explained. We’re trying to streamline this process for
purposes of the ESA and to adapt it so it fulfills some other purposes, he
continued. The bottom line is that the HGMPs are being worked on right
now, the template is likely to change, and by spring 2000, many will be
completed, Smith concluded.
Is there any thought of incorporating the APR into the HGMP for
consistency? Fritsch asked. It would be helpful, he said. Fritsch and
Smith agreed that such a discussion should be part of the follow-on to the
APR. The ESA does not change the purpose of a hatchery, but we have to
make sure that a hatchery’s operation is in line with the ESA, Smith
explained. The subbasin planning could change a hatchery’s purpose, he
pointed out.
I don’t know who is taking ownership of the HGMP, Rogers stated.
First I heard it was NMFS, but then I heard it was not, he said. The ESA
staffer in my office just kept saying "I’ve already done this, I’ve
already done this," as he was going through the questionnaire, Rogers
said. We have other ESA requirements that are the same as the HGMP,
Scribner pointed out. "If this is really going to be it, then fine,
but don’t process us to death," he stated. Let’s come up with a
consensus document that we only have to fill out once, Scribner
recommended.
That is the goal, to have "one-stop shopping," Smith replied.
People can do the HGMP rather than having to do a Biological Assessment,
he said. If the HGMP is done right, it could fill all of the needs, Smith
added. You can get "an ESA checkoff" with a good HGMP, and that’s
it, he stated.
We talked about having a performance review of all hatcheries, Allee
said. We have performance standards, but beyond that, how do we review the
overall effectiveness of the hatchery program? he asked. I don’t think
we’ve answered that, Allee said. I’m not sure we have articulated the
10 key things we need to know, he added. The upcoming ISAB review will
start a whole new round of refinements to our performance standards, Smith
pointed out.
We’ll be putting together a work plan for the follow-on to this
group, Fritsch said. Does anyone have "any heartburn" over the
name for it? he asked. No, just don’t name it the PRC, someone
responded.
Adjourn
Production Review Committee
November 8, 1999 Meeting Attendees
Brian Allee, Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority
Bill Bakke, Native Fish Society
Dan Evans, Gordon Thomas Honeywell (by telephone)
Bob Foster, Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (by telephone)
Mark Fritsch, Northwest Power Planning Council Staff
Jeff Gislason, Bonneville Power Administration
Joe Maroney, Kalispel Tribe (by telephone)
John Marsh, Parametrix/Consultant to Northwest Power Planning
Council
Tom Rogers, Idaho Dept. of Fish and Game
Tom Scribner, Yakama Indian Nation
Stephen Smith, National Marine Fisheries Service
Tim Stearns, Save Our Wild Salmon (by telephone)
Neil Ward, Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority
David Wills, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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