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Integrating energy and the environment in the Columbia River Basin

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Fish and Wildlife Planning Salmon and Steelhead Wildlife Energy Planning Energy Efficiency Demand Response
Fish and Wildlife

The Council works to protect and enhance fish and wildlife in the Columbia River Basin. Its Fish & Wildlife Program guides project funding by the Bonneville Power Administration.

Fish and Wildlife Overview

The Fish and Wildlife Program

2025-26 Amendment Process 2014/2020 Program Program Tracker: Resources, Tools, Maps Project Reviews and Recommendations Costs Reports

Independent Review Groups

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Topics

Adaptive Management Anadromous Fish Mitigation Blocked Areas Hatcheries & Artificial Production Invasive and Non-Native Species Lamprey Predation: Sea lions, pike, birds Protected Areas Research Plan Resident Fish Program Tracker: Resources, Tools, Maps Sockeye Sturgeon
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The Council develops a plan, updated every five years, to assure the Pacific Northwest of an adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable power supply.

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See next Council Meeting July 15 - 16, 2025 in Portland › See all meetings ›

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Reports and Documents

Browse reports and documents relevant to the Council's work on fish and wildlife and energy planning, as well as administrative reports.

Browse Reports

REPORTS BY TOPIC

Power Plan Fish and Wildlife Program Subbasin Plans Financial Reports Independent Scientific Advisory Board Independent Scientific Review Panel Independent Economic Analysis Board

COLUMBIA RIVER HISTORY PROJECT

1. Wild fish

1. Wild fish

Published date: 
Dec. 30, 2014
Document state: 
Published

Strategy

Native wild fish and the ecosystems they rely on must be protected, mitigated, enhanced, and recovered, as they constitute an important, genetically diverse, biological resource for the Basin (in the context of the Council’s mitigation responsibility). Wild fish also provide important opportunities to rebuild and reintroduce populations where donor populations may support this. The Council also recognizes that hatcheries are an important tool for mitigating the hydrosystem’s impact on wild fish and to assist in the rebuilding of certain wild fish populations.

Rationale

Because habitat restoration is a key strategy in the program, it is essential to maintain and rebuild healthy, self-sustaining fish and wildlife populations by protecting, mitigating, and restoring ecosystem conditions on which the fish depend through their entire life cycle. This wild fish strategy will help ensure that adequate attention is also given to protecting, mitigating, and enhancing populations of wild fish. The Council’s program encourages collaboration and coordination to implement these measures while respecting the management role of the federal, state, and tribal natural resource agencies.

Principles

  • Where native habitat is largely intact, and the fish population has good potential to rebuild, manage for wild fish except where fish and wildlife managers determine supplementation efforts are appropriate, after applying existing review procedures.
  • All aspects of the life cycles of wild fish populations are important to theirabundance, productivity, diversity, and distribution and all sources of mortality must be addressed in protecting, mitigating and enhancing wild fish.
  • Freshwater survival of wild fish spawning, rearing, and migrating in tributary and mainstem rivers is key to maintaining healthy population conditions.
  • Habitat and hydrosystem actions should be managed to address the conservation needs of wild fish.
  • Ecological and genetic risks to wild fish should be managed by operating hatchery programs to address potential competition between hatchery-reared and wild fish for food resources, space, and exposure to disease, and gene flow between wild and hatchery populations.
  • Impacts to wild populations in fisheries should be managedconsistently with harvest biological opinions and with other conservation-based management agreements.

General measures

  • The Council will consider the needs of wild fish in all facets of its fish and wildlife program including: hydrosystem passage, fish propagation facilities,climate change, predation, strongholds, research, carrying capacity, and habitat actions.
  • Consistent with the Council’s quantitative objectives for adult salmon and steelhead, the Council will collect, organize, and review biological objectives for wild fish.

Link to subbasin plans

See the Council’s subbasin plans for subbasin-level information pertaining to wild populations of focal species.

Links within the program

Objectives, strongholds, fish propagation, habitat, and adaptive management

ISRP 2021-05 LibbyMFWPfollow-up1June.pdf

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