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In this issue

• Wild Salmon Center Helps Strengthen Pacific Salmon Treaty
• North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership Hosted by WSC
• Russian Salmon Fund Officially Launches
• Habitat Restoration in the John Day Basin
• Notes from the Field: Sakhalin
• WSC Releases Hoh Tributary Report

Wild Salmon Center Helps Strengthen Pacific Salmon Treaty

Over the last two years, the Wild Salmon Center has worked with international conservation partners to strengthen protection for wild salmon under the 23-year old Pacific Salmon Treaty, recently renegotiated and signed by the U.S. and Canada. Due to the work of the Wild Salmon Center and our partners Trout Unlimited, the David Suzuki Foundation and the International Environmental Law Project, the treaty--which governs the harvest of salmon stocks shared between the two countries--contains some important improvements for wild salmon conservation.

Under the treaty, the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC), consisting of representatives from both countries, is committed to develop and implement measures to protect and conserve the biological diversity of wild salmon. PSC scientists will develop a framework for those measures within the next five years.

The parties also agreed to make a 15% cut in the U.S. catch of Chinook salmon in Southeast Alaska, and a 30% cut in the Canadian catch of Chinook off of the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The cuts in the Alaska Chinook fishery will benefit Oregon Coastal Chinook stocks, including the fish that return to the Trask, Wilson, Kilchis and Nehalem Rivers, as well as mid-Columbia and Snake River fall Chinook. The reduction in West Coast Vancouver Island fisheries will benefit Puget Sound Chinook, lower Columbia River fall Chinook and upper Columbia River summer Chinook.

The Wild Salmon Center and conservation partners testified before the Pacific Salmon Commission during treaty negotiations. This marked the first time that conservation interests formally participated in a PSC meeting during treaty negotiations. A special thanks goes to Jeff Curtis of Trout Unlimited, who organized the efforts of the conservation coalition.

North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership Hosted by WSC

On June 18th-19th, 2008, approximately 80 partners representing state and federal agencies, tribes, local government, watershed councils, private foundations, and nonprofit conservation groups from Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, and Alaska gathered in Portland, Oregon for the North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership's summer meeting.

Secretary of State Bill Bradbury delivered opening remarks and applauded the efforts of the Partnership to date. He also emphasized the importance of the Stronghold concept as an effort to protect and restore Pacific Salmon across North America. Local stakeholder groups presented an ecological overview of their watersheds, described goals, reported on current and future projects, and identified opportunities and challenges facing their communities.

Over the past months, the Partnership Steering Committee has reviewed requests from local basin liaisons and endorsed nine Stronghold basins: John Day (OR), Sandy (OR), Siletz (OR), Elk (OR), Rogue-Illinois (OR), Smith (CA), Wenatchee (WA), Queets/Quinault (WA), and Lemhi (ID). This initial set of endorsed Stronghold basins provides a diverse array of opportunities to accelerate conservation across the West.

Russian Salmon Fund Officially Launches

More than 100 people were in attendance at the opening ceremony for the Russian Salmon Fund (RSF) held in Moscow on June 8. The Russian Salmon Fund was originally conceived by a small group of fishing enthusiasts with a desire to protect the environment. That idea was then supported by numerous groups in Russia. The Wild Salmon Center has provided critical startup support for the Fund and staff members Dave Martin, Andrei Klimenko, and Board member Academician Dmitry Pavlov were there to celebrate the official launch. Attendees came from as far away as Sakhalin, Murmansk, Khabarovsk, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Europe and the United States.

The event was a combination of official ceremony and festive celebration, where attendees were able to discuss the bright future of the Russian Salmon Fund. Among the speakers were Gennady Inozemtsev, Head of the Managing Board, and several important figures in the Russian salmon conservation movement. The Head of Science Department of the Russian Fisheries Agency, Dr. Vladimir Belyaev, attended and highlighted the important role of the RSF in the conservation of wild salmon populations. Olga Krever, the Deputy Head of State Ecological Policy at the Department of Ministry of the Environmental Resources and Ecology, also attended, as did a team from the Russian branch of the World Wildlife Fund. There were numerous nonprofits represented and members of the press to document the event.

Habitat Restoration in the John Day Basin

Wild Salmon Center is helping to fund fish habitat restoration in the John Day basin, one of the remaining steelhead and salmon strongholds in the Columbia River basin. The Wheeler Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) is replacing problematic culverts to improve fish passage and access to upstream spawning habitat. The forthcoming Mid-Columbia Steelhead Recovery Plan has identified fish passage barriers as one of the top factors limiting steelhead productivity in the lower basin. The Wheeler SWCD, with WSC support, is working diligently with local landowners and governments to remove these barriers. This summer two culverts in Butte Creek will be replaced. The new culverts will promote natural stream processes and allow steelhead to move freely upstream to spawn.

Notes from the Field: Sakhalin

In June, Wild Salmon Center's Pete Rand, Devona Ensmenger and Nicole Portley traveled to Sakhalin Island, Russia, to conduct salmon monitoring on the Taranai, Langri and Bolshaya Rivers. A key part of the Sakhalin Salmon Initiative (SSI) is building capacity for salmon monitoring to support broader conservation efforts in the Russian Far East with our partners.

Langri and Bolshaya Rivers. This was the first of three expeditions that will be conducted during 2008 in order to achieve three goals: 1) provide fish population and habitat data that will fill gaps needed to complete the proposal for a Salmon Protected Area; 2) determine the spawning and rearing distribution and species composition of taimen; and, 3) conduct field surveys on the basis of the Salmon Ecosystem Assessment and Monitoring (SEAM) protocol, currently in development by the Wild Salmon Center. The expedition team consisted of Nicole Portley and Devona Ensmenger of the Wild Salmon Center, Anatoly Semenchenko (fisheries biologist at the Sakhalin Salmon Initiative Center), a team from Sakhalin State University led by professor of hydrobiology Vladimir Tabunkov, and staff from the local branch of the Federal Fisheries Agency.

During a week-long float down the Langri river, the team sampled specimens through netting, rod-and-line and snorkel surveys and were favorably impressed with the high salmonid diversity, including Siberian taimen. Their endangered status makes their presence in this region all the more significant from a conservation value standpoint, and has motivated the increased interest in the region among WSC's Russian partners. The trip concluded with a week-long float down the Bolshaya River where the group saw good salmon spawning habitat on the river but was dismayed by the frequent evidence of poachers' camps.

Taranai River. Pete Rand, WSC's senior conservation biologist, worked closely with a number of SSI partners on honing field protocols in Sakhalin. The goal is to design and implement an island-wide monitoring effort with a focus on non-commercial species of salmonids. Based on a progressive approach developed as part of the USDA Forest Service's Northwest Forest Plan, the SSI monitoring plan characterizes the status of individual salmon populations using monitoring activities carried out continuously at fixed "index" sites and periodically at sites selected randomly, resulting in a "rotating panel" approach to collecting data.

WSC Releases Hoh Tributary Report

In July, the Wild Salmon Center released one of the most intensive habitat studies ever conducted on Pacific salmon. The report focuses on the Hoh River Basin, one of the most productive wild salmon rivers in northwest Washington. Findings will be used to inform the prioritization of Hoh River tributaries for conservation actions and bolster the case for funding watershed health projects identified by the North Pacific Coast Lead Entity. The report will help agencies and community groups prioritize habitat restoration, land conservation easements, and willing-seller land acquisitions. See the full report.

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