Overview

1
Overview

• Modeling to date
• Distribution of mortality
• Achieving improvements with specific actions
• Building scenarios
• Dealing with uncertainty some ideas

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Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook Life Cycle
4,000-5,000 eggs
2 spawners
120-151 1-year-olds to Lower Granite Dam
1-1.4 Migrants return to spawning grounds
95-119 Migrants Below Bonneville Dam (77
transported, 23 in River)
4-5 Youngsters To 2nd Birthday (Estuary Ocean)
2-3 Adults return to mouth of Columbia
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Rate of population change Accounting for
hatchery fish
1.10
1.00
0.90
Population Growth Rate
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
Snake River
Lower Columbia
Snake River Fall
Lower Columbia
Upper Columbia
Upper Willamette
Middle Columbia
Upper Willamette
Upper Columbia Spr
Hatchery fish reproductive success 1
Snake River Spr/Sum
Columbia River Chum
Chinook
Steelhead
Hatchery fish reproductive success 0
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• How can we give fish what they need to survive
  and recover?

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Hydropower
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Improvements to hydropower system

• Past passage improvements
• Future options
• Passage improvements
• Flow and spill measures
• Dam breaching

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Past vs. current passage survival
Snake River spr/sum chinook
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Option 1 anticipated changes with passage
improvement
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Harvest maximum benefits
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• Are there life stages at which management actions
  might be most fruitfully aimed?

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Sensitivity Test Standard
reductions in mortality
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Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook Life Cycle
4,000-5,000 eggs
2 spawners
120-151 1-year-olds to Lower Granite Dam
1-1.4 Migrants return to spawning grounds
95-119 Migrants Below Bonneville Dam (77
transported, 23 in River)
4-5 Youngsters To 2nd Birthday (Estuary Ocean)
2-3 Adults return to mouth of Columbia
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Survival vs. sedimentation
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Hatchery Genetic concerns

• Inadvertent selection due to hatchery practices
  reduces fitness of hatchery fish. Interbreeding
  of hatchery and wild fish may affect fitness of
  wild fish as well.
• Domestication seen in as little as a single
  generation
• Stock transfers

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Hatchery Ecological concerns
Average Ocean Productivity
Poor Ocean Productivity
r2 0.06
r2 0.73
Percent survival wild chinook (log)
10
20
30
40
50
Number of hatchery spring chinook released
(millions)
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Building scenarios

• Combinations of actions when one isnt enough
• Interactions between actions
• Continuing degradation in habitat/other
  environmental factors

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Major areas of uncertainty

• Hatchery fish masking what is the TRUE
  population status?
• Interactions between life stages does
  survival/growth/experience in one stage affect
  survival/fitness in another?
• Impacts of particular actions

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Snake River Spring/Summer Chinook Life Cycle
4,000-5,000 eggs
2 spawners
120-151 1-year-olds to Lower Granite Dam
1-1.4 Migrants return to spawning grounds
95-119 Migrants Below Bonneville Dam (77
transported, 23 in River)
4-5 Youngsters To 2nd Birthday (Estuary Ocean)
2-3 Adults return to mouth of Columbia
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Some possible approaches

• Different questions
• What actions (or areas) are important REGARDLESS
  of the potential future?
• Are there easy actions that might be useful for
  bet-hedging against an unlikely future?
• Which pieces of information would be most
  important to have (would help us reduce our
  uncertainty)?