Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board: some coho and chum improving; Chinook still lagging
The Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board told Clark County symposium attendees that regional salmon and steelhead runs remain well below historical returns, though some coho and chum populations show measurable improvement; the board emphasized habitat, hatchery, harvest and hydropower interactions and long timelines for recovery.
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Denise Mee of the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board summarized the region—s long-term declines — "in the mid 1800s, over 17,000,000 salmon and steelhead returned to the Columbia Basin; today, we see fewer than 2,000,000, and two-thirds of those are hatchery origin." She noted that by 1998 multiple stocks were listed under the Endangered Species Act and that local, bottom-up recovery planning (codified by the Washington Salmon Recovery Act, RCW 77.85) produced a plan with hundreds of actions.
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