Well Thanks for calling it an allocation issue partner now were on level ground and I would sleep with one eye open and your back to wall when you deal with anyone from Houston on these matters.

Local revenues increase by switching to a live capture seine net fishery where the commercial fishermen have access to harvest more total fish.

And appearently seine net boats employ more folks than gill net boats do if you listen to the netters.

Where has this been proven? If you are talking about trout.....then maybe. For salmon (or steelhead) on the Columbia River everything is paid for by power generation. Is this turning into the twilight zone...

Not true. There are 208 hatchery programs in the Columbia River Basin. BPA provides financial support to only 83 of them (40%) and that's only partial support (not full) for those programs. The majority of the funding (even in the Columbia River) comes from sport fishermen and women. The select ares are the exception, of the $2.6M spent on select area production annually, ~$800K comes from sports.

If Kitzhaber's plan happens, it sounds like they are looking to double production. Without additional BPA funding (or some other source), sports would very likely end up paying about 2/3rds ($3.2M) of the total $4.8M program cost.

"Our legal victory in the Bonneville Dam sea lions case highlights the ironies of state and federal salmon management practices. Each year, managers permit the harvest of up to 40% of federally protected wild Columbia River salmon, yet insist that it's essential to salmon recovery to kill federally protected sea lions that consume a mere 1/2 to 4 percent of these same salmon. Modest reductions in harvest levels and employment of selective fishing methods can easily accomplish far greater savings and do so in a much more ecologically sensible way."




Sealion study I worked on showed bags are taking 15%+ of the spring run, more than Tribal and NonTribal combined and that is a totally nonselective fishery.

That would bring up the question on how much access are rec fishermen going to have in the safe areas?

http://www.co.clatsop.or.us/page/619?deptid=10014


Sorry UG but this seems to be the the target of Measure 81, and then it's right back to the LNG Terminal at the bottom end of Youngs Bay. Seems kinda of chickenchit for a industry that was given 62 billion in tax breaks last year.

If no new regulations are forth coming, then sport anglers have full opportunity to harvest in the Safe Areas, as long as the mainstem is open.

Here's some info about LCR Safe Areas, Safe Area location map is found on page 2 of your reader.

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/fish/OSCRP/CRM/reports/06_reports/safe_final.pdf

In 2010 the initial forecast was 470,000 springers. Final forecast ended up at 315,000.

Just as an example, let’s take away the sport fishing, nontribal and tribal gillnets and say only live capture by seines was used that year in the LCR. With current live capture mortality with more tests to come all hatchery springers technically but not practically could have been caught with a 400 fish mortality way below the 2.2 impact rate for the LCR that year and that also doesn’t deduct for the mark rate. The majority mortality rate is really determined and split between the 3 groups that didn’t fish--- that would be status quo. Replace the gillnets with live capture isn’t status quo.

Now with the commercials changing from gill nets to live capture, that would translate that handle to each of the other individual fisheries in the CR and there would be tens of thousands of bycatch savings with the usage of live capture.

Instead the commercial gillnet stooges----- the Gov. of OR and his merry lunatics think status quo is the answer.

Washington counterparts need to add some sanity to this fallacy. Idaho should chip in also since it is that bycatch that translates into their quality of fisheries in their state also.

Really? It's a few LCR gillnetters that are all that is standing between us and a Columbia River LNG terminal? A couple hundred part-time gill netters holding the line versus a multi-billion dollar industry?

But maybe you're right, because i'm told it's only the gill netters are all that is keeping us from being overrun with thousands of Indian gillnets from Bonneville to Astoria. And I'm told that it's only the gill netters that keep the electric power industry from just wiping out all the Columbia River salmon so they don't have to spill and spend all those mitigation dollars. Oh, and who could forget the gill netters are the only reason we even have fish ladders on Bonneville Dam!

Go gill netters! Go gill netters! Go gill netters!

CEDC is just more than a few gillnetters, it's also Bouy 10 and a major economic driver for the lower river and at this point you need to convice ODFW of the merits of CCA's plan I'm sure the Govenor consulted with them before he decided this measure wasn't in the best interest of Oregonians.

Interesting that BPA supplies 40%...how much of the rest is covered by Mitchell Act $, Grant County PUD $, John Day Mitigation $, Chief Joe Mitigation $, Tacoma PUD $? I believe everything below John Day is mostly Mitchell Act alone, which is how many programs? Just wondering if you've parsed these pots out, as yours is the first claim that I have seen that license sales/DingleJohnson money is the major source of $ for producing salmon in the CR. Heck it might be accurate, but I'm a little skeptical.

A major economic driver? Not hardly. According to the latest ODFW/WDFW/BPA economic analysis select area fisheries account for only 0.3% of net earnings in Clatsop County, and net earnings only account for 58% of personal income in the county. At current production/harvest levels, closing down the select area fisheries would have significantly less economic impact to Clatsop County than closing down the Astoria McDonalds.

BPA partially supports 40% of the programs, BPA doesn't supply 40% of the overall hatchery funding. The Mitchell Act is only ~$17M in funding, and only ~$10M is directed towards hatcheries. The rest is habitat and fish screens, its a relativly small piece of the overall funding, something like 8%. I have a complete breakdown of Columbia hatchery programs and funding somewhere (it's like 50 pages long). I will see if i can upload a PDF of it somewhere and provide a link.

That would be great. Because I found your reference to BPA ~ %40 here: BPA FUNDING

But Mitchell Act funding supports about 47% of the ENTIRE smolt production in the columbia basin links here: ECONOMIC EFFECTS FROM MITCHELL ACT HATCHERIES & IEAB 2005 STUDY ON COLUMBIA RIVER TOTAL SALMON PRODUCTION

So I am beginning to doubt your handle on some of these 'facts'. No offense, but when you try to spin the Mitchell Act as a small portion of the overall hatchery funding for Columbia River salmon production, I know something is off. If you want to PM me that's fine, as I see I'm probably getting too far off topic here and don't want to hijack this thread.

Dig a little deeper, even the analysis you provided shows that the Mitchell Act only provides ~$10M in funding for for fish producion, (which is distributed by NOAA to 68 seperate programs) while the 17 or 18 'Mitchell Act' Hatcheries alone have fish production costs of over $30M, and probably more now as that number is 5 years old. Just like with BPA, the program funding is only partial. So be careful when the headlines use words like 'supports' because it is typically spin. If you donated $1 to each of the 208 hatchery programs that feed into the Columbia River, I guess you could say you 'support' 100% of the smolt production on the Columbia River.

And even when you get to overall hatchery funding, you have to break down further to get to funding for fish production... the $$$ actually spent on producing smolts. 'Hatchery funding' can mean anything and typically does include lots of things that have nothing to do with producing smolts. For example, super expensive genetic research and pedegree studies on hatchery fish in general are considered 'hatchery funding' by BPA, even though they have nothing to do with producing smolts in any particular year.

And even then, if you want to get deeper into the weeds about who pays for the fish we catch out on the river, you have to look at the purpose of the various hatchery programs and sort out the conservation programs from the supplemental programs. For example, would you include the Redfish Lake captive broodstock hatchery program? It contributes statistically zero to Columbia River sport or commercial harvest, but that program alone has, at times, been almost 9% of what BPA spends on hatcheries.

I looked at a lot of this data several years ago as part of a consulting contract in related to the Columbia Basin Fish Accords. The cost of producing salmon and steelhead for supplementation programs that provide fish for harvest can largely be traced back to funding that originated through state agencies from sport fishing in the form of direct sales of licenses and tags, and from federal money given to the state agencies that orignated from excise taxes from sport fishing.

Where exactly are you getting your numbers from, fish tickets vs cost of raising them?

Arguing that hatchery production doesn't pencil out is a red herring argument.
No hatchery production pencils out, they return at such a low rate, they all are money deficits.

In my post at the beginning of this discussion I stated that the lower Columbia River harvest is essentially 100% funded by electric rate payers. After reading a great amount of this thread I should amend that to above the confluence of the Snake and Columbia essentially 100% of the anadromous fish harvest is paid for by electric rate payers and federal dollars. In the lower river I would guess that it is closer to 85%. In any case I still believe that harvest allocation, particularly in the lower river is a political question to be determined by all the voters of the three fish producing states.

It would be a good graduate student thesis to determine exactly where all of the funding for Columbia Basin anadromous fish hatcheries comes from. A quick look at state agency web sites is a good indicator. In Idaho no sports license fee money is used to fund anadromous fish hatcheries. Idaho Power and other sources provide all funding. ODFW reports spending 22.9 million dollars on hatchery operations with 16.2 million being from federal sources. That is for all of their state hatcheries, not just Columbia Basin anadromous fish hatcheries. Washington operates 87 hatchery facilities on a budget of about 32 million per year. Less than 80% produce anadromous fish and without a bit of work it is hard to say how many of those are in the Columbia Basin. There are also 51 Tribal and 12 federal hatcheries in Washington, again not all are in the Columbia Basin but they receive no money from state sports license fees. It is not straight forward to determine WDFW funding sources but they list 31% is federal and 46% is from the state general fund and wildlife account. Finally for someone with an inclination to be an auditor look at cbfish.org, the BPA fish web site. Their budget for FY2012 is $285.9 million with $24.7 million for supplementation and $48.1 million for anadromous artificial propagation. Without including Mitchell Act money, USFWS, USACE, and USCGS funding the total non license fee Columbia Basin hatchery funding is near $100 million annually. The cost of work to produce quality smolts, research and monitoring, and conservation hatcheries all contribute to future harvest and are legitimate operation costs for all hatchery programs. The metric that best evaluates a hatchery program is adult returns. In the Columbia Basin the total biomass of smolts released from hatcheries often exceed that of the returning adults. No for profit operation could justify continuing operation with such results. Without the ESA and required mitigation for the Columbia River dams hatcheries and all harvest would probably not exist.

Give that man a GOLD star!

But one question... is your term "returning adults" measured at the rivermouth or is it pre-harvest adult recruitment?

Remember that a lot of folks are reaping the benefits of hatchery production long before the fish ever cross the Buoy 10 line.