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DRAFT 



2.2.2. Agriculture 



The potential impacts of agricultural practices on salmonid production are attributed to 

 irrigation, nonpoint pollution, erosion and grazing practices. In general, the report 

 presents an accurate description of the potential impacts that these land management 

 activities can have on salmonids. However, many of the "general" problems that are 

 attributed to agricultural practices are equally pertinent to other land management 

 activities. The following problems with the report were noted: 



(1) the use of Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) nonpoint 

 source (NPS) pollution data (ODEQ 1988) to imply that agriculture is the 

 primary contributor to these problems is not scientifically based. The report 

 appears to conclude that agriculture is the most important land management 

 factor to NPS pollution because "agricultural land use predominates monitored 

 problem areas. " Assigning the relative importance of land management 

 practices based upon the location of monitoring areas is invalid. The report 

 does not acknowledge that upstream activities affect water quality in 

 downstream (monitored) reaches. This discussion should have been placed in 

 the "general" land management discussion as it is applicable to all land 

 management practices. 



(2) the agricultural discussion is largely focused on conditions in the Columbia 

 Basin. The information should have been regionalized to assess the relative 

 importance of the various practices to anadromous salmonid declines in different 

 locations of the state. 



(3) the report concludes that "agricultural practices are currently the dominant 

 land use practices. . .of concern for wild anadromous salmonid fish in Oregon. " 

 While agricultural practices are a concern in certain regions of the state, no 

 empirical information is provided to support this statement for the entire state. 



2.2.3. Forestry 



This section provides an incomplete review of the available scientific literature 

 concerning the relationship between forest management and salmonid habitat 

 productivity. The report fails to adequately present existing information for several 

 important topics (large woody debris and temperature), attributes forestry-related 

 studies and impacts to "other" land management discussions (roads and riparian 

 vegetation removal), and ignores several important long-term studies of the affects of 

 forest management on salmonid habitat and production. The report concludes that 

 forestry is of limited importance to the decline of salmonids because current activities 

 are being regulated by the Oregon Forest Practices Act. This conclusion does not 

 recognize that past as well as current practices should affect the relative importance of 

 these activities to the historical decline and lack of recovery of Oregon's anadromous 

 salmonids. The following specific problems were identifial during the review: 



(1) the report does not incorporate several very important long-term studies of 

 salmonids and forest management. Specifically, results from studies such as the 

 Alsea Watershed Study and the Carnation Creek Study should be presented. 



