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1994 Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program |
| Council document 94-55 | |
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7.6 Habitat Goal, Policies and Objectives[1]
Wild and naturally spawning populations of salmon and steelhead are generally at low levels throughout the Columbia River Basin as a result of impaired mainstem passage, blocked habitat, habitat degradation, fishing, predation and other sources of mortality. Accordingly, habitat is seeded at low levels. Even so, improvements in habitat quality are needed to increase the productivity of many stocks. Reduced habitat quality results in lower survival during critical spawning, incubation, rearing and migration periods, even when population densities are low.
Improved habitat quality would allow greater juvenile and adult survival at each freshwater life stage and can result in more offspring surviving to begin migration to the ocean. The Council is cognizant of the importance of the freshwater period in the life cycle of salmon and steelhead species. These fish spend from one to three years of their life cycle in freshwater as juveniles and several months as adults. It is during these freshwater stages that human activities have the greatest impact on the survival of these populations.
An example of habitat change caused by human activities has been documented by the U.S. Forest Service for spring chinook salmon. In an ongoing project that is comparing 1936-1942 stream survey records to current conditions, the Forest Service has found that large pool habitat in representative subbasins throughout the Columbia system has decreased 50 percent to 75 percent over the past 50 years. Much of this habitat was already degraded to some extent when the surveys were initially completed. Significantly, the sole exception to pool loss has been in wilderness areas, where quantity of pool habitat has remained constant or increased. It is critical for all parties to reduce or eliminate activities known to degrade anadromous fish streams.
Maintaining and improving the productivity of salmon and steelhead habitat is an extremely complex task. It requires coordination of virtually all activities that occur in a subbasin. The Council maintains that the best approach to watershed restoration is for activities to be cooperatively undertaken by federal, state, private and tribal parties. Furthermore, if watershed restoration is to be successful, instream restoration should be accompanied by riparian and upslope restoration. A comprehensive watershed approach can help fisheries resources recover from their depressed state and minimize impacts to local economies. It is not the intent of the Council to exclude customary land- and water-use activities. Through comprehensive watershed management, innovative approaches that allow fisheries resources and economic activities to co-exist can be developed cooperatively. This approach, which includes both local and regional participation, has an additional benefit of ensuring better results and, therefore, more effective investments by ratepayers and others interested in the subbasin.
Positive actions taken to rehabilitate watersheds in the interest of rescuing and restoring salmon and steelhead stocks will result in long-term benefits to other basin resources dependent on watershed health. However, maintenance and recovery of anadromous fish resources will not be possible unless dramatic steps are taken to protect existing high quality habitat, improve the quality of degraded habitat, and increase the quantity of presently blocked habitat that could be made accessible. Coordinated, cooperative efforts to protect and improve salmon and steelhead habitat in the basin are needed. Habitat has decreased by more than a third, and much of the remaining habitat has been degraded as a result of diverse human activities.
According to the Northwest Power Act, ratepayer funds may be used, in appropriate circumstances, as a means of achieving off-site protection and mitigation for the impacts of the hydropower system. These impacts include salmon and steelhead losses caused in the mainstem and tributaries of the Columbia Basin. Losses and degradation of habitat have been caused by the construction of hydroelectric dams and numerous other human activities.
Funds to maintain and improve habitat have come from the region's ratepayers to provide off-site mitigation for losses caused by the dams, and from federal, state, local and private sources. In this section, the Council has identified additional actions that need to be implemented by Bonneville and others. The Council expects that a significant portion of the funds to accomplish these important tasks will come from sources other than ratepayers.
Bonneville funding for the ratepayer share of fish mitigation should proceed expeditiously, pursuant to short-term agreements. There is no reason for ratepayer fish mitigation in the short term to wait for a determination of the financial responsibility of other project purposes. Other entities with responsibilities for funding non-ratepayer shares of mitigation should also proceed expeditiously. For the longer term, if there is no agreement on funding allocations, federal and state agencies, and tribes should work with the Council and the Congressional delegation to arrive at a solution.
The Council recognizes the loss of stocks of salmon and steelhead has occurred, in part, because of continual degradation of the quality and reduction of the quantity of habitat in the Columbia River Basin. Anadromous fish are among the most sensitive of the native fish inhabiting streams of the region. Management practices known to pose minimal risk to anadromous fish habitat, and habitat objectives considered by fishery professionals to meet the biological requirements are needed. Therefore, the Council advocates implementation of the habitat objectives listed in Section 7.6C.5. The structure and provisions of the Council's habitat section recognize this relationship and also the urgency of implementing projects addressing the habitat needs of these stocks.
7.6A Habitat Goal
Protect and improve habitat conditions to ensure compatibility with the biological needs of salmon, steelhead and other fish and wildlife species. Pursue the following aggressively.
All Relevant Parties
7.6A.1 Ensure human activities affecting production of salmon and steelhead in each subbasin are coordinated on a comprehensive watershed management basis.
7.6A.2 At a minimum, maintain the present quantity and productivity of salmon and steelhead habitat. Then, improve the productivity of salmon and steelhead habitat critical to recovery of weak stocks. Next, enhance the productivity of habitat for other stocks of salmon and steelhead. Last, provide access to inaccessible habitat that has been blocked by human development activities.
7.6B Habitat Policies
Federal, State and Local Land and Water Managers, Users and Owners; Fishery Managers; and Others
7.6B.1 Improve and maintain coordination of land and water activities to protect and improve the productivity of salmon and steelhead stocks. The Council encourages local cooperation and coordination to address habitat protection and improvement and to resolve problems created by competing missions. The Council encourages private parties to be proactive and to work cooperatively with resource managers to maintain and improve habitat.
7.6B.2 Develop and implement procedures to ensure compatibility and compliance with the Council's habitat goal, policies and objectives. Implement and require compliance with state, federal, local and tribal laws, regulations and policies relating to Columbia River Basin salmon and steelhead habitat regulation and management.
7.6B.3 Give highest priority to habitat protection and improvement in areas of the Columbia Basin where low or medium habitat productivity or low pre-spawning survival for identified weak populations are limiting factors. Give priority to habitat projects that have been integrated into broader watershed improvement efforts and that promote cooperative agreements with private landowners.
7.6B.4 For actions that increase habitat productivity or quantity, give priority toactions that maximize the desired result per dollar spent. Also, give higher priority to actions that have a high probability of succeeding at a reasonable cost over those that have great cost and highly uncertain success.
7.6B.5 Provide elevated or new funding necessary for the successful and timely implementation of the items listed in this section. Funding sources for implementing provisions of the habitat section should include, but not be limited to, the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Soil Conservation Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Corps of Engineers, Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Bonneville Power Administration, other relevant federal agencies, all relevant state agencies, local governments, private landowners, resource users and tribes. Cost and effort sharing is encouraged.
7.6B.6 Encourage the involvement of volunteers and educational institutions in cooperative habitat enhancement projects. Promote public outreach and encourage education in watershed and resource management and protection throughout the basin.
7.6C Coordinated Habitat Planning
Federal land management agencies, states and others with ownership and/or management responsibilities for lands and waters that contain or materially affect salmonid habitat must accelerate efforts to restore the health of that habitat. Such restoration activities, to be successful, must be coordinated across many jurisdictional and ownership boundaries. Management entities must be accountable for their own actions, but these actions must be integrated on a ridgetop-to-ridgetop watershed basis. Failure to so integrate will put each action at risk of being undermined by uncoordinated actions downstream, upstream or upslope.
Therefore, the Council adopts the habitat objectives addressing watershed health and land management set forth below. The Council recognizes that habitat conditions differ naturally to some degree around the region, due to differences in soils, topography, vegetation and climate. Consequently, habitat objectives that acknowledge and incorporate these local differences might be appropriate in some instances. Variances in habitat objectives should only recognize natural habitat limitations that occur because of differences in geographic conditions, while fully meeting the biological needs of fisheries resources.
The Council addresses these objectives principally to publicly owned and managed lands. Nonetheless all parties should recognize that limiting restoration actions to public lands would be biologically futile and wasteful of public funds. Private and public landowners should act in concert. Where listed species are, or could be present, private landowners face considerable uncertainty in any event. On the other hand, private lands managed to achieve and maintain high quality habitat may be eligible for habitat conservation plan status under the Endangered Species Act. This could protect them from further required actions.
Therefore, the Council urges all parties in a watershed to undertake, collectively and voluntarily, the habitat assessment and restoration actions needed to achieve watershed conditions that meet the habitat objectives set forth below, or locally-adopted, subbasin-specific objectives that are functionally equivalent in terms of biological consequences, with these regional objectives.
In setting forth objectives below, the Council wishes to make clear certain expectations as to how progress toward meeting them should be achieved. These expectations derive in part from the experience gained in the Grande Ronde, Upper Salmon and Lemhi Model Watersheds established pursuant to this Program.
Watershed Assessment: There is no substitute for current, validated data, and there is no shortcut to acquiring it. Local watershed committees and public land managers should cooperate to assess watershed health on a stream-reach-by-stream-reach basis. Assessment methodologies and results should be peer-reviewed to ensure appropriateness and quality of data. Only with such assessments can recovery plans be designed for the needs of each stream .
Watershed Management: People are easily polarized over this concept, some advocate aggressive intervention and others a strict hands-off strategy. The Council anticipates that there will be intervention; otherwise, restoration actions such as removing man-made stream barriers and controlling road erosion would be precluded. But the Council also cautions moderation in devising intervention measures where complex and still poorly understood natural systems are at work. Our history is replete with well-intentioned, but ill-informed actions compounding problems they were intended to solve: forest fire suppression is one example. Habitat interventions should seek to restore and employ natural healing mechanisms wherever possible, reserving civil and bio-engineering approaches for problems that will not respond otherwise, and where the science is well understood.
Collaboration: Another issue that is often polarizing is the false choice between ?top down? and ?bottom-up? management of watershed restoration. Either approach by itself is doomed to fail. Local residents have a special interest at stake in their watershed and a unique knowledge of it that no other party brings. It is their home and often their livelihood as well.
Parties outside the watershed also have legitimate interests in its health, and they often have the resources and authorities essential to watershed recovery (e.g., federal land managers; state water quality authorities). In such circumstances, the only sound strategy is the kind of collaboration that is evolving in the model watersheds and a few other places. Joint or coordinated assessments, plans and restoration actions will be both more effective and more efficient with the region's limited resources. They will succeed only when they are based on working relationships that are neither ?top-down? nor ?bottom-up,? but truly collaborative, respecting the different perspectives and assets each party brings, grounded in science, concerned with problem-solving and focused on results.
Locally adopted Watershed Plans: While the Council is promulgating regional habitat objectives and believes these offer a useful reference base for any watershed, the Council expects and encourages development and refinement of local watershed restoration plans adopted to stream-specific conditions within that watershed. Examples of such local efforts include the Wallowa County/Nez Perce Salmon Recovery Plan and the Grande Ronde Model Watershed Action Plan. Such local plans should be products of the collaborative approach described above, and they should also reflect the history and values of those communities -- both tribal and non-tribal. They should be grounded in thorough, peer-reviewed watershed assessments and restoration plans that will result in watershed health of no lesser quality than what would be achieved by meeting the regional objectives described below. The Council believes such collaborative plans offer the greatest opportunity for accelerated watershed recovery if they incorporate both science-based direction and the commitments by all essential parties to the actions and objectives contained therein.
Local Watershed Managers
7.6C.1 The Council expects that the relevant parties will report to the Council the biological rationale for departures from the approach and objectives provided below. If local watershed managers believe that habitat objectives in this program are not appropriate for local conditions, they may develop alternative objectives and submit them to the Council for review. The Council will approve locally adopted, subbasin-specific objectives upon determining that they are functionally equivalent to the biological benefit intended by the habitat objectives in this program.
Federal Land and Water Management Agencies, States, Tribes or the Lead Watershed Review Entity
7.6C.2 Institute a comprehensive program to monitor progress in achieving compliance with the Council's habitat objectives. Such a program will involve coordination of data collection, analysis and reporting, and also adaptive management. As part of the program, by December 31, 1995, and annually thereafter, each entity having watershed management and/or regulatory responsibilities will be asked to provide the Council with a report describing compliance with each habitat objective. Begin wherever appropriate with the subbasin plans already developed pursuant to this program. The report should explain the reason for departures from the Council's objectives and corrective measures being taken, including schedules for achieving compliance.
Council
7.6C.3 Review habitat monitoring reports as submitted, for consistency, appropriateness and regional coordination. Report to the President, the Congress and the Governors on success or failure of managers and responsible agencies to restore and maintain the health of salmon and steelhead habitat encompassed in this rule.
National Marine Fisheries Service
7.6C.4 Address program and Council-reviewed subbasin specific habitat objectives, and progress in complying with such objectives, as well as other appropriate program measures, in developing biological opinions, performing consultations and adopting habitat conservation plans as required under the Endangered Species Act. Accelerate efforts to review locally developed watershed plans and award Section 10 Habitat Conservation Plan status, where merited, or provide guidance to local watershed committees and participating agencies on criteria for awarding such status. Provide assistance to local initiatives in complying with these criteria.
Federal Land and Water Management Agencies, States, Tribes and Private Landowners
7.6C.5 Because the region places a very high priority on protecting existing habitat, manage activities to restore and maintain the quality and quantity of existing habitat. In so doing, take all steps necessary to comply with the following regionally adopted habitat objectives, or with locally adopted objectives that are consistent, in terms of biological consequences, with these regional objectives in perennial and intermittent streams supporting salmon and steelhead. Provide sufficient funding to support needed watershed restoration activities and schedules. In addition, where possible, manage riparian and floodplain areas to promote the protection and re-establishment of natural ecological functions and, thereby, protect and improve salmon and steelhead habitat.
7.6D Habitat Objectives[2]
These objectives should apply to all watersheds until, for any given subbasin, site-specific, peer-reviewed assessment, objectives and watershed plan based on the geomorphic and climatic characteristics of the watershed are developed collaboratively among local, tribal, state and federal parties of interest, adopted locally, and acknowledged by the Council, or by the National Marine Fisheries Service in a Section 10 Habitat Conservation Plan process. However, the Council does not intend for recovery actions under such plans to be delayed or deferred until such acknowledgment is secured.
Sediment
- Take action as needed to limit the percentage of fine sediments (less than 6.4 millimeters) in salmon and steelhead redds to no more than 20 percent. Limit cobble embeddedness to less than 30 percent or documented historic condition.
- In subbasins currently limited by sediment problems, ensure as a first priority no increase in sediment input from human activities.
Bank Stability
- Maintain greater than 90 percent of streambanks in stable condition.
Water Quality
- Water Temperature: Attempt to maintain temperatures in historically usable spawning and rearing habitat at less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Under all circumstances, do not exceed 68 degrees Fahrenheit throughout each watershed.
- Water quantity and timing: Determine instream flow needs for salmon and steelhead and establish flows if not yet established, to meet these needs. Flow needs should be based on instream flow evaluation that considers channel morphology, sediment routing, floodplain function, water temperature and salmon and steelhead passage, rearing and spawning.
- Where the instream flow needs of salmon and steelhead identified above are not being met, the Council recommends actions such as protecting and restoring wetlands and degraded meadow systems, restricting additional surface water or ground water withdrawals that do not consider the effects of stream flow on anadromous fish needs, and acquiring instream flows as needed for fish production.
- Other water quality objectives: Fully comply with the existing federal and state standards. Ensure that species biological requirements will be met if there is not an applicable state or federal water quality standard.
Large Woody Debris
- Retain large woody debris in stream channels (including waters where salmon are not produced) to protect the sediment and nutrient storage and processing function of stream ecosystems supporting salmon and steelhead.
- The Council recommends actions such as addition of large woody debris only after the causes of large woody debris loss and pool loss have been completely addressed.
Large Pools
- Attain the following minimum pool frequency objectives (pools per mile) or documented historic pool frequency if different from these objectives.
|
Wetted Width: |
5 |
10 |
15 |
20 |
25 |
50 |
75 |
100 |
125 |
150 |
175 |
200 |
|
Pools per Mile |
184 |
96 |
70 |
56 |
47 |
26 |
23 |
18 |
14 |
12 |
10 |
0 |
- The Council recommends actions such as actively restoring riparian vegetation if there is a declining trend in pool volume as well as monitoring trends in pool frequency and volume.
Riparian Vegetation
- Retain vegetation in riparian areas to stabilize banks, prevent warming of water, provide fish cover and food, and supply woody debris in the stream.
Stream Morphology
- Improve stream morphology (the structure and quality) to benefit salmon and steelhead.
Land Management Generally
- The Council recommends that prior to initiating management activities, land managers complete a watershed analysis to document existing habitat conditions, determine actions needed to meet habitat objectives provided herein and establish a schedule for implementation.
Riparian Areas
- Managers should take special care to minimize vegetation removal or soil disturbance in the following areas:
Fish-Bearing Streams: The area on each side of the stream equal to a distance equal to the height of two site-potential trees, or 300 feet slope distance from the edge of the 100-year floodplain, whichever is greater.
Permanently Flowing Streams That Don't Produce Fish: The area on each side of the stream to a distance equal to the height of one site-potential tree, or 150 feet slope distance from the edge of the 100-year floodplain, whichever is greater.
Seasonally Flowing Or Intermittent Streams: The area on each side of the stream to a distance equal to the height of one site-potential tree or 100 feet slope distance from the edge of the 100-year floodplain, whichever is greater.
Constructed Ponds And Reservoirs And Wetlands Greater Than One Acre: The area from the edge of the wetland or the maximum pool elevation to a distance equal to the height of one site-potential tree, or 150 feet slope distance, whichever is greater.
Lakes And Natural Ponds: The body of water and the area to the outer edges of riparian vegetation, or to a distance equal to the height of two site-potential trees, or 300 feet slope distance, whichever is greater.
Wetlands Less Than One Acre And Unstable And Potentially Unstable Areas: The extent of unstable and potentially unstable areas, and wetlands less than one acre to the outer edges of the riparian vegetation.
Roads
- New roads should only be constructed consistent with the sediment objective. Provide and maintain fish passage at all road crossings of existing and potential fish-bearing streams.
Grazing
- Implement grazing systems that are designed to either recover fish habitat within five years or maintain acceptable habitat conditions.
Irrigated Agriculture
- All activities should be conducted consistent with these objectives. In particular, return flows should meet state water quality criteria or these habitat objectives.
Timber Harvest
- All harvest should be conducted consistent with these habitat objectives.
Mining
- All mining should be conducted consistent with these habitat objectives.
Recreation Management
- The Council recommends that recreational facilities within riparian zone areas be operated in a manner that contributes to the attainment of these habitat objectives.
7.6E Expedited Process for Funding Projects
Many high priority habitat improvement projects involve transactions with private landowners and water rights holders. In working with the private sector, timely access to funding will be essential once negotiations have concluded and parties are ready to proceed.
This ability to move quickly is not current practice, but it is essential to capitalize on agreements to undertake cooperative habitat improvement and protection.
Bonneville
7.6E.1 In consultation with the fishery managers, the Council and other relevant parties, explore alternative procedures for funding high priority habitat projects expeditiously. Report to the Council on a proposed procedure by March 31, 1995.
[1] For this section of the program, habitat is defined generally as freshwater tributary areas where salmon and steelhead rear and/or spawn, and tributary migration corridors. It should be noted that salmon and steelhead habitat extends beyond these areas into the mainstem Columbia and Snake rivers, the Columbia River estuary and the ocean. Other sections of the program address these other habitat areas.
[2]Appendix A contains a list of actions recommended by the fish managers that might be taken to achieve these habitat objectives.