35 



derstand that history because the goal initially wasn't really clear- 

 ly to restore naturally spawning populations. 



In terms of who should be accountable, I have wondered why 

 when the Northwest Power Planning Act was passed that created 

 the Northwest Power Planning Council, that council was given the 

 responsibility of trying to foster interagency coordination, but it 

 doesn't have very much authority over that. And I don't know 

 what the pluses and minuses of giving them the authority would 

 be, but that is at least one thing that Congress should maybe con- 

 sider if you already have one organization in place that has been 

 dealing for a long time with trying to get the different groups to 

 communicate. 



And, by the way, they have recently come out with a strategy for 

 salmon which took a tremendous amount of work and dialog and 

 communication among the different groups, and I think it has a lot 

 of very useful and innovative elements for it. And it clearly calls 

 for a holistic approach. It echoes almost everything you have heard 

 from the two panels today and, for example, calls for the use of 

 hatcheries in a way that is very well integrated with habitat resto- 

 ration. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. I commend you, Dr. Kapuscinski, for being so fa- 

 miliar with our problems in the Northwest. Does anyone else want 

 to — yes, go ahead. 



Mr. KoENiNGS. I will make a comment in a more serious vein. 

 There is a need to align policies and procedures in doing business 

 with culturing fish. There is no question about that, and some of 

 the practices in terms of hatchery operation at the Federal level 

 have been abysmal in terms of my reviewing them, if you will, 

 when we got into the hatchery business in the State of Alaska. 



On the other hand, you need the idea of having a coordinating 

 group that represents the Pacific Northwest. I believe the Federal 

 Government is the agency to lead that particular charge. I think 

 on the other hand — I want to add though that there are a lot of 

 local concerns that the individual states might have. It is not 

 simply the idea of aligning Federal agencies. I think you need to 

 get into the idea of aligning those agencies or that coordinating 

 body with the states' interest as well. That coordinated kind of 

 alignment will go forth and do the business of restoring these popu- 

 lation of fish. Don't leave out the states and their management au- 

 thorities. 



Mrs. Unsoeld. Both panels, it seems to me, point out that we 

 have been forced to turn to the Endangered Species Act to try to 

 change some of the practices that have failed to take into consider- 

 ation a prevention program. The ESA should not be called upon 

 except how did somebody in the other panel put it? — that it is 

 really an emergency measure and should not have to be the pri- 

 mary tool. But as we think about the Columbia River hatchery 

 system, is the system fulfilling existing Federal obligations and 

 meeting the goals and intent of various fish production and re- 

 source management plans? It may have been created originally to 

 just increase the number of smolts, but how do we give it a new 

 alignment or direction to not only handle our current emergency 

 but to put us on a preventive program? 



