A lawsuit that aims to reduce the number of Puget Sound chinook salmon caught by fishermen could spell the end of what has been a traditional way of life for the Tulalip Tribes for more than 10,000 years, tribal officials say.
A group of environmentalists and sport fishermen is suing the federal government, saying a recovery plan for endangered chinook does not do enough to restrict fishing in the Pacific Northwest.
If fishing restrictions become any more severe, the Tulalip Tribes’ last commercial fishing boats may have to shut down, said Terry Williams, the Tulalip Tribes’ commissioner of fisheries and natural resources.
“We’ve reduced our fishing by 80 to 90 percent,” Williams said. “We can’t scale back any more. There just isn’t anything left.”
In the 1970s, the Tulalips had 130 boats fishing Northwest waters, all exercising their treaty right to continue their traditional way of life.
“Today we maybe have 10 (boats),” he said. “It’s been pretty well hammered.”
There’s a handful of occasional fishermen who go out once in a while, who can be kept afloat by a tribal hatchery, Williams said. But the 10 commercial fisherman, the last tribal members who make a living off fishing, are running out of options, he said.
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Seattle, charges that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and the Wildlife Service sets the bar too low for the number of chinook returning to rivers such as the Snohomish and Stillaguamish.
“We’re not trying to shut down tribal fisheries,” said Svend Brandt-Erichsen, an attorney for the groups that filed the suit. “We’re trying to get more fish back into the rivers. I do know there won’t be any fishermen if there aren’t any fish.”
He said there is a giant gulf between the number of fish the chinook recovery plan says should be returning to rivers draining into Puget Sound and the harvest thresholds set by federal, state and tribal regulatory agencies.
A recovery plan was drafted by tribes, counties, cities and businesses for each major river system in the Puget Sound region. Those plans were then adopted by the federal government. The plan establishes the number of chinook that need to return to spawn in the Snohomish, Stillaguamish and every major river system in the region before the fish can be declared recovered
For example, the recovery plan goal for the Stillaguamish River is to have 33,000 chinook return to spawn each year, Brandt-Erichsen said. Reaching the target means the fish have recovered on that river.
Chinook harvest plans put together by the tribes, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the federal government call for less than 1,000 fish per year returning to spawn in the river.
The gap is similar in the Snohomish River system, with the recovery plan calling for having 39,000 chinook returning to the Skykomish River and 25,000 chinook returning to the Snoqualmie River.
In contrast, the harvest threshold for the Skykomish is about 3,600 and about 1,000 for the Snoqualmie.
It’s illegal to directly fish for chinook because the species is listed as threatened on the federal endangered species list. But they are caught and killed when fishermen go after hatchery-raised chinook.
The harvest threshold is a number fish managers use to model how many hatchery fish fishermen can take.
By accounting for how many wild fish are accidentally caught, the model presumably guarantees that that at a minimum number of salmon return to spawn – 1,000 on the Stilly, 3,600 on the Skykomish and 1,000 on the Snoqualmie.
Brandt-Erichsen said the number of chinook returning to spawn has to be much higher if the fish are going to have a chance to recover.
The lawsuit, filed by the Salmon Spawning &Recovery Alliance, the Native Fish Society, Washington Trout and the Clark-Skamania Flyfishers, aims to make federal regulators require that more fish return.
Tribal fishermen say it’s unfair to be singled out, saying that the recovery plan requests for raising the number of fish that should return to spawn each year will go up as spawning habitat in rivers and streams is improved.
Already the number of chinook returning to spawn in rivers such as the Stillaguamish and Snohomish is climbing, but the number of fish being born is staying flat, said Mike Grayum, executive director of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
“What they fail to say or recognize is (that) the recovery plan goals and objectives are based on a state in which the productivity of the habitat is also recovered,” he said. “Our current harvest plan is based on current habitat conditions.”
Since more returning fish aren’t reproducing, tribal fishermen should be allowed to catch those fish, Williams said, explaining that the Treaty of Point Elliott allows them to continue their tradition of catching salmon.
“It’s kind of like the habitat is the cap, and that’s what we’re trying to fix,” he said.
Williams said the recovery plan’s focus on habitat restoration is already paying dividends in Snohomish County.
Over the past six years, a coalition of government and private agencies called the Snohomish Basin Salmon Recovery Forum has put $6 million toward habitat restoration in the Snohomish River basin, money that has been leveraged into $46 million worth of investment, he said.
Williams said the group has identified another $137 million in work that needs to be done over the next 10 years.
“To me, we’ve already seen results,” he said. “I believe that (the focus on habitat) is working.”
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@ heraldnet.com.
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