Biden backs tribes, salmon

President Joe Biden signed a memorandum Wednesday calling for a “sustained national effort” to honor commitments to the Nez Perce and other tribes by restoring Snake and Columbia river salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels.

The document declares honoring treaty and trust obligations to the tribes and enforcement of provisions in the Northwest Power Act to adequately protect fish and wildlife harmed by federal dams a priority. It establishes an administration policy to work with Congress, states, tribes and local governments to pursue durable solutions to restore salmon and steelhead to healthy and abundant levels while also supporting a clean energy future and agriculture in the region.

And it directs all federal agencies involved in salmon recovery to review their policies to ensure they are in line with the memo.

It doesn’t call for breaching one or more of the Snake River dams, an action long sought by the Nez Perce Tribe and other salmon advocates. Nor does it halt mediated talks between the federal government and salmon plaintiffs that are occurring under a legal stay scheduled to sunset at the end of October.

Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribe, welcomed the document as a step in the right direction.

“What we need is healthy and abundant (salmon and steelhead) numbers and the administration is responding to that,” he said. “I think it basically stretches out the agencies to do everything they can do within their authorities, and I think that is truly what the administration is asking — what can you do here and whatever you can do, do it to the fullest.”

Wheeler said the tribe continues to push for dam breaching as a necessary measure to restore the fish.

“I think there are many steps to breaching. I think this is another step,” he said. “You have to take the first step to get there, whatever those steps are, whatever they look like, we have to continue to move toward those.”

Kurt Miller, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, said the memo places salmon recovery, clean energy and agriculture on equal footing and because of what it doesn’t say, acknowledges that breaching dams conflicts with meeting the region’s decarbonization goals and with protecting agricultural interests. He thinks supporters of the four lower Snake River dams should be pleased.

“The reason I say that is because a lot of people thought once the Biden administration got involved, it might come out formally in favor of removing the dams. There is nothing in this document that calls for removing the dams.”

Wild runs of sockeye, spring chinook, steelhead and fall chinook that spawn in the Snake River and its tributaries have been protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for three decades. They once returned in the millions but overfishing, habitat degradation and dam construction have dealt them a near-fatal blow.

Since their ESA listing, the government has tried to help the fish by tweaking dam operations, improving spawning and rearing habitat, reforming hatchery and harvest practices and attempting to lessen the toll taken by predators. While those actions have prevented extinction, the measures haven’t led to recovery and many populations, including Snake River sockeye and spring chinook, remain in danger of blinking out.

The Save Our Wild Salmon coalition said the memo is a sign the administration wants the federal government to ramp up its efforts not just to prevent extinction but to recover the fish to abundance.

“I think it’s very significant for the president to sort of plant a stake firmly in the goal of protecting and restoring healthy and abundant salmon populations, as opposed to avoiding jeopardy, those are very different standards,” said Joseph Bogaard, executive director of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

The Nez Perce, along with environmental and fishing groups and the state of Oregon, sued the federal government over its 2020 plan that seeks to balance operation of Snake and Columbia river dams with needs of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead, claiming it is inadequate. Courts have found that several earlier versions of the plan have fallen short of what the ESA requires.

But two years ago, the plaintiffs and the administration agreed to engage in mediated talks aimed at finding a durable salmon recovery solution. The stay in court proceedings that made those talks possible is set to end Oct. 31.

Last week, the Biden administration committed the federal government to work with tribes of the upper Columbia River basin to explore the feasibility of reintroducing salmon above the Chief Joseph and Grand Coulee dams. The construction of Grand Coulee in the 1930s snuffed out salmon and steelhead that once spawned upstream of the dam that is the region’s hydropower workhorse.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.