Plan lists priorities for saving salmon

Saving Maine’s Atlantic salmon would cost more than $30 million over the next three years, and that would be just the beginning of an effort that would take at least three fish generations – 12 to 15 years – to work, according to a new draft federal plan for recovering populations of endangered fish in eight rivers.

“We’re trying to reverse the decline of a species that’s been [struggling] for 150 years,” said Mark Minton of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We don’t have the smoking gun, but hopefully we’re on the right track.”

Atlantic salmon in the Sheepscot, Dennys, Machias, East Machias, Narraguagus, Ducktrap and Pleasant rivers and the Cove Brook tributary of the Penobscot River were added to the federal endangered species list in 2000, despite opposition by Maine’s then-Gov. Angus King.

Salmon runs once thrived in 35 Maine rivers, with tens of thousands of fish making the state world-famous among anglers. But Atlantic salmon populations throughout New England, Canada and Europe, as well as numbers of Pacific Ocean salmon species, have been declining for decades.

Despite years of research and not insignificant funding for salmon issues, recovering the fish has proved particularly challenging. At different times of their lives, salmon rely on three very distinct habitats: freshwater rivers, estuaries where salt and fresh water meet, and the open ocean.

Here in Maine, fewer than 100 adult salmon returned to spawn in all the protected rivers combined last fall, according to Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission data. Even the state’s largest remaining salmon run in the Penobscot River (where the fish are not federally protected) produced just over 1,000 returning fish last year, the ASC reported. Biologists estimate that amount is less than one-tenth of historic populations.

Many fisheries scientists, who have waited four years for the plan, said this week that they’ve found few surprises. Many of the efforts recommended in the 239-page plan are already under way, and a substantial chunk of the funding already has been allocated, despite the fact that it could be a full year before the recovery plan is completed.

“A lot of that money is already on the table,” said Pat Keliher of the ASC.

The plan incorporates all of the ideas that Maine has been pursuing in recent years – adding lime to rivers to neutralize the harmful effects of acid rain Down East; boosting efforts to stock protected rivers with native fish grown in federal hatcheries in Ellsworth and Orland; and developing water management plans to balance the needs of salmon and blueberry farms.

The plan divides 120 tasks that NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consider worth pursuing into three priority levels. The highest-priority threats to salmon – all of which were given equal weight – were identified as follows: aquaculture practices, acidified water, poaching of adult salmon, accidental capture of fish, predation and water withdrawal.

Phase 1 projects alone -which include such items as stocking and population research projects now under way, as well as new research on salmon diseases and genetics – would cost about $5 million over the next three years, according to the plan. The sole construction project cited as a top priority is construction of new weirs on the Machias and East Machias rivers, to make annual counts of returning salmon more accurate.

Phase 2 projects include work related to acidity in rivers, stream flow studies, the roles of predators such as seals, cormorants and human poachers, and water pollution research – particularly with regard to the Eastern Surplus Superfund site near the Dennys River in Washington County. Phase 3 projects are primarily longer-term efforts, such as studies of the relationships among different factors and several potential fish passage improvements.

Only the largest global factors, such as commercial overfishing and climate change, aren’t addressed by the plan; in part because they’re so difficult to address, and in part because recent research suggests that the influence of global problems may have been overestimated, Minton said.

Fishing bans in the North Atlantic have reduced the Atlantic salmon harvest to the point where only a handful of Maine salmon are believed to be taken each year. And scientists believe that salmon’s time in estuaries is increasingly the key to their ocean survival, since most of the mortality occurs at the beginning of the migration, he said.

In the long term, the recovery plan aims to increase salmon populations to the point where they are self-sustaining – no longer in need of hatchery stocking – and to boost reproduction and survival to the point where each adult salmon raises an offspring to adulthood and keeps the population steady.

Having a salmon recovery plan in place can only help secure federal funding by sending a clear message to lawmakers that the salmon are in dire straits and these are the measures that can make a difference, Minton said.

The full price tag of salmon restoration over many years isn’t quantifiable, Minton said, explaining that needs will change over time, depending upon how successful these first efforts turn out to be. But regardless of the total, tight budgets in Washington make finding the millions necessary to bring back Atlantic salmon difficult.

“With what’s going on in the Middle East, finding any additional dollars isn’t going to be easy,” Keliher said.

Meanwhile, underfunded Pacific salmon restoration efforts and a $50 million project to remove dams and restore passage on the Penobscot River (which fisheries biologists have said is crucial to Atlantic salmon restoration in Maine, regardless of what happens in the eight federally protected rivers) are also competing for limited conservation dollars.

Still, Minton remains optimistic. “We are going to stop the decline. We are going to turn the species around and we are going save it,” he said.

Public hearings on the salmon recovery plan are scheduled for Wednesday, July 14, at the science building lecture hall on the University of Maine at Machias campus, and Thursday, July 15, in the Kennebec-Penobscot Room of the Civic Center in Augusta. Both hearings will begin at 6 p.m.

Written comments will be accepted until Sept. 16 and should be sent to SalmonRecovery@noaa.gov or by mail to Atlantic Salmon Recovery Plan Coordinator, National Marine Fisheries Service, One Blackburn Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930.