Contact: Brian Gorman FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(206) 526-6613 (O) 12/27/94
(206) 441-1250 (H)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed to permanently reclassify as "endangered" two populations of chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest's Snake River, because the fish are at risk of extinction.
The proposal comes on the heels of the decision last August to change, on an emergency basis, the status of the Snake River chinook from "threatened" to the more perilous "endangered." That emergency action will expire April 17, 1995.
Snake River chinook were listed as "threatened" in April 1992. Since then, stocks returning to their home streams in Washington and Oregon continue to decline, with adult fish returning from the ocean in lower numbers than at the time the species was first listed.
Under the Endangered Species Act, a threatened species is likely to become endangered; an endangered species is in danger of becoming extinct.
One of the two populations in today's proposal returns from the ocean beginning every spring and is known as spring/summer chinook salmon. Its returning numbers have ranged from 5,000 to 13,000 in recent years. But estimates provided to scientists with the fisheries service put this year's return at under 2,000 fish.
Because these fish may divide themselves into as many as 38 local "subpopulations" in different rivers throughout the Snake River basin, the number of spawning chinook for some of these subpopulatiions could be as low as 40 to 50 fish.
"Such drastically low numbers for a spawning group can spell disaster for the genetic diversity of these fish," said William Stelle, director of the fisheries service's Northwest regional office. "Worse, population levels this low pose catastrophic risks and threaten the very existence of the species."
The second Snake River chinook population, which returns to spawn beginning in the fall, is also at a very low level. After factoring in mortality rates from the salmon's hazardous upstream journey, the fisheries service estimates that fewer than 300 adults will reach Lower Granite Dam this year. Lower Granite Dam, near Pomeroy, Wash., is the uppermost dam on the Snake River with fish-passage facilities. This fall's returns are expected to be one of the worst on record.
Although the adult chinook that will return to the Snake River system beginning in the spring of 1995 are still maturing in the Pacific Ocean, early indicators of the size of that return look no better than this year's for both the spring/summer population and the fall population.
Salmon populations throughout the Pacific Northwest are at very low -- sometimes record-low -- levels. In addition to the Snake River chinook salmon, the fisheries service has listed Snake River sockeye salmon and Sacramento River winter-run chinook salmon as endangered. The agency recently proposed listing the cutthroat trout from the Umpqua River in southern Oregon as endangered.