Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commissioners Protect Columbia Basin Steelhead

Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission Chair Mary Wahl and Vice-Chair Jill Zarnowitz deserve a round of applause from the conservation community for their recent support of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead.

Late in December, the Fish & Wildlife commissioners from both Oregon and Washington held a joint-state meeting to discuss salmon and steelhead fishery policies in the Columbia River Basin. These regular meetings between the two states seek to cooperatively manage to benefit the basin’s salmon and steelhead. 

During the December meeting, Washington commissioners strongly urged Oregon to increase commercial fishing operators’ share of salmon and steelhead allocation to match Washington’s recent changes. Had Oregon’s commissioners caved, commercial fishers would have been allowed to harvest 50% more salmon and steelhead during years of ‘good’ returns.

Thanks to Chair Wahl and Vice-Chair Zarnowitz, Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead will avoid this fate. Since current allocations were set in 2013, population recovery has not been as successful as estimated. Chair Wahl correctly pointed out that multiple fish species are listed as threatened or endangered, despite those allocation restrictions. 

Washington’s move would have further harmed a struggling recovery effort. Allowing more commercial harvest during years with better adult returns would prevent those species from building up their populations during those good years. The change would have favored short-term economic benefit over population recovery. On top of this, more commercial harvest increases pressure on all fish species. With more harvest, both targeted and non-target fish species are exposed to more fishing nets. While stuck in these nonselective nets, fish are harmed by the nets themselves, are forced into close quarters with other disease-carrying fish, and expend huge amounts of energy trying to escape. And all of this takes place in surface water with lethally high temperatures. 

Salmon and steelhead need less environmental pressure from controllable, human-caused sources if their populations are ever to recover. Again, Chair Wahl and Vice-Chair Zarnowitz were on the side of salmon and steelhead in that fight. Oregon’s commissioners are working to make sure commercial fishers use the best gear available. They are pursuing policy changes that will require more selective nets that will limit nontargeted bycatch. This will reduce pressure on non-targeted species and more efficiently harvest targeted species. 

Efforts like these must continue for populations to rebound and recover. After decades of declining numbers, 2021 saw the lowest steelhead return numbers on record. Maintaining current allocation levels and requiring more-selective gear are just two vital parts of salmon and steelhead recovery. Oregon and Washington commissioners must keep sustained focus on stemming the downward population trend for recovery efforts to succeed – they cannot let one decent year be the rose-colored glasses that they see the population trends through. 

As part of recovery efforts, the DRA is calling on both Oregon and Washington to create a comprehensive plan for managing the Columbia River’s salmon and steelhead fishery. That plan must lay out a path for population recovery that begins improving water quality, provide clear signals for when emergency restrictions will be put in place, equally distribute the burden of those regulations among impacted groups, and adequately aim to conserve endangered and threatened species.