Subject: Watershed Management #6
From: [email-masked] (Paul Cass)
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 17:16:35 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.bio.ecology

The following article is part of a watershed seminar held at Oregon State
University.  The summary was written by Penny Cass and approved by the
speaker.  This article is part of a publication that can be ordered from the
Oregon Water Resources Research Institute, OSU, Strand Ag Hall 210,
Corvallis, OR 97331-2208 (503) 737-4023.  The article may be reprinted
without permission for educational purposes.  If used, Please send 2 copies
of your publication to OWRRI.

WATERSHEDS AND ENDANGERED SALMON
Stanley Gregory, OSU, Fisheries and Wildlife

     The listing of the Northern Spotted Owl as an threatened
species triggered such turbulent conflict in the Pacific Northwest
that the President of the United States felt compelled to personally
attempt to break the paralysis.  Gregory warns, "The complexity of
the spotted owl issue must be multiplied 214 times to approach the
complexity of endangered salmonids because of the number of
threatened stocks, their distribution and range, and the variety of
land ownerships."
     The 214 salmonid stocks identified in 1991 by the American
Fisheries Association (AFS) as "at risk of extinction" are only the tip
of the iceberg, Gregory says.  Information on anadromous species ~
those fish which migrate to the ocean and return to fresh water to
spawn ~ is sparse and difficult to accumulate.  The AFS used the
most reliable data in their projections, rejecting anecdotal evidence
but because of the huge investment in staff and time required to
make fish counts, many declining populations may have gone
unreported.  Every fish and aquatic management agency in the
Pacific Northwest has calculated that all salmonid stocks are
declining.

Habitat Quality
     Salmonids require riparian habitats with clean, cool water,
stable stream channels, woody debris, and continuous corridors to
the ocean.  The quality of most salmonid habitats is currently listed
as fair to poor.  Many historical practices started the trend of
habitat degradation and current activities have furthered the
decline.  The condition of public lands in the Cascades, unharvested
before World War II, demonstrate now rapidly landscape changes
have occurred.  Loss of forest cover during the last 40 years is so
dramatic that when flying over the forest,  Gregory says, "It looks
like someone took a shotgun and blasted the central Cascades."
     During early logging in Oregon, before the introduction of
roads and railways, the rivers were used for timber transport, with
splash dams to augment the low summer flows.  Juvenile salmon
survival was endangered by the abrupt change in river level, from
trickle to flood, and by the turbulence of the scouring logs, when as
much as 2.5 million board feet of timber was swept down the river
in a single log drive. "You cannot find a coastal stream or river that
hasn't been splash dammed," Gregory says, "and quite often we're
talking about tens to hundreds of these dams."  To get rid of bends
and obstructions that jammed log drives, most rivers were blasted
and cleared, simplified.
     Livestock grazing occurred in the riparian zones of all the
major western river systems.  Sheep attacked the stream slopes too
steep for cattle or horses.  Low elevation rivers have been dammed
for power and water supply, often without fish passage.  Industrial
wastes, such as wool dyes, were dumped in the rivers.  "The river
on any given day would run a different color ~ red, yellow, blue,
green," Gregory says, "and the dyes going in were over 100x F. 
Another major effect on salmonids in the Pacific Northwest has
been harvesting.  Terminal hatcheries, which captured returning
adults, were placed on upper elevation streams.
     In more recent times, clearcuts within watersheds have had
devastating effects on salmonids.  Only 25 percent of clearcuts on
private and state lands were harvested under the Oregon Forest
Practices Act, which requires stream buffers, providing some
riparian protection.  The roads used to harvest timber contribute
substantial sediment to rivers, destroying spawning beds.  Typically,
two miles of road exist for each square mile of forest, but many of
Oregon's forests have four to five miles of road per square mile. 
Landslides and debris flows increase in frequency far beyond
natural occurrence in areas where the vegetation has been
removed.  Where stream bed woody debris no longer traps and
slows landslides, the devastation is much greater.
     Streams in some grazing areas are now "sewers for the
livestock holding facility," Gregory says.  The adverse effects of
cattle grazing in riparian areas are well-documented with the only
debate centering on alternatives.  Livestock grazing is not solely an
Eastern Oregon issue, and even constitutes a problem on the Soap
and Oak Creeks of the OSU campus.
     Roads along rivers reduce the floodplains ~ "the shock
absorbers of the system."  Rivers are still dredged and effluent is
still discharged.  Urban areas discipline channels and remove woody
debris to get water off the land more rapidly.  For this reason, OSU
helps keep Oak Creek free of snags.

Complexity of the Salmonid Issue
     "There's enough blame to go around," Gregory says.  "We're
all consuming water; we're all consuming and using land, and we
consume the fisheries resources."  To become part of the solution
requires an understanding of the complexity of the salmonid issue. 
The appropriate temporal and spatial scale for restoration of
salmonids is larger than a particular watershed, or a particular
state, or even a portion of the continent.  Salmonid recovery
involves the entire North Pacific region.  
     The North Pacific landscape and the range of the
anadromous salmon of the Pacific Northwest, extends from
Sacramento, California, up the coast, around British Columbia and
Alaska, and down the Asian coast to Japan.  The complexity of this
large habitat includes the difference between stream stocks and
estuary stocks, and the different current systems between the
Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, and the Arctic Ocean.
     Until the mid 1970s, scientists assumed that salmonid
recovery required emphasis on fresh water habitats.  The ocean
habitat was presumed to always have sufficient food and exhibit
stable conditions.  In actuality, the Arctic current system is complex
and varies according to global climate patterns.  
     The currents out of the Arctic carry nutrient-rich, cold
waters.  Warm conditions in the Pacific Ocean, as have occurred
during the last decade, push the cold waters north, leaving poor
nutrient conditions along the Pacific Northwest and lower Asian
coasts.  Any scenario of global climate change from increased
atmospheric CO2 has dire implications for southern range
salmonids.
     The maximum daily temperatures of these two streams show
parallel peaks and valleys that coincide in periodicity.  Lobster
Creek temperature is documented as reaching 25xC.  Lethal stream
temperature for salmonids is 22x to 23xC.  Lobster Creek is in the
Coastal range; Lake Creek is east of the Cascades.  The
temperature peaks in the rivers are thus coinciding across Oregon,
indicating that even stream temperature problems reflect larger
climatic issues.
     Complexity exists in management.  The sockeye salmon in
the upper Columbia River have to pass through 17 independent,
uncoordinated management jurisdictions.  In order to coordinate
the various agencies that cross state and national boundaries,
Gregory suggests all parties agree on common principles, such as
those in the Endangered Species Act.
     Protection of salmonids has forced scientists to look beyond
single populations to the quality of the habitat.  Watershed
management addresses a host of human activities that can
hat
happens to salmonid stocks will not be determined solely by
management of local habitats but by ocean current and climate
conditions in the larger North Pacific region.