This domain covers all of the Columbia River basin accessible to anadromous salmon and steelhead above Bonneville Dam. The Interior Columbia has three sub-domains: Upper Columbia, Middle Columbia, and Snake.

Recovery planning in the Interior Columbia is a multi-year process that incorporates all aspects of natural resource management involving:

• subbasin plans developed under guidance of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council as building blocks for NOAA Fisheries’ ESA recovery plans
• the technical expertise of a group of multi-agency scientists, known as the Interior Columbia Technical Recovery Team, and
• state and local stakeholder input.

Because most state and local boundaries are not drawn on the basis of watersheds or ecosystems, the various groups and organizations formed for recovery planning do not necessarily correspond to salmon evolutionarily significant unit (ESU) and steelhead distinct population segment (DPS) areas. So to develop ESU-wide recovery plans that are built from local recovery efforts, NOAA Fisheries Service defined “management units” that roughly follow jurisdictional boundaries but, taken together, encompass the geography of entire ESUs/DPSs.

Two of the Interior Columbia sub-domains, the Middle Columbia and Snake, have multiple management units. For the Middle Columbia, there are four management units: Oregon, Yakima, Columbia Gorge (Klickitat/Rock Creek/White Salmon), and Southeast Washington (Walla Walla and Touchet). The Snake sub-domain has three management units: Idaho, Oregon and Southeast Washington.