Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board: some coho and chum improving; Chinook still lagging
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Summary
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.
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.
Mee presented stock-level updates: some Lower Columbia coho populations "bumped up 1 category" toward recovery and Columbia River chum moved from "not keeping pace" to "making progress." By contrast, Lower Columbia Chinook "are still not keeping pace." She stressed that recovery requires addressing multiple, interacting drivers — habitat loss, harvest, hatcheries, hydropower and ocean conditions — and that recovery is multi-generational.
The board manages grant programs (Salmon Recovery Funding Board, habitat lead-entity functions) and maintains a salmon resources portal where restoration projects and priorities are tracked. Mee said local projects range from riparian plantings and buffer creation to hatchery integration steps and that temperature, nutrients, bacteria and sediment are key nonpoint factors affecting juvenile rearing habitat.
Next steps: continued prioritization of habitat-restoration projects and grant rounds to fund on-the-ground work.
