327 



Rep. FuTse re: Hatchery Reform and Habiuu Protection, Mundy and Rhodes Page 4 



While there is a constant need to improve the information base for habitat management 

 decisions, enough is currently known to better protect fish habitat and water quality. These 

 measures must be implemented immediately because although watersheds and fish habitat can 

 recover naturally from degradation, the impacts are long lasting. Full ecological recovery of 

 degraded habitat requires approximately 25 to 200 years depending on the type of the impact 

 (Gregory and Ashkenas, 1990). However, damaged habitat can never recover imless the causes 

 of the degradation are arrested. Unfortunately, the needed protection and restoration measures are 

 not yet in place within any regulatory firameworic. 



Healthy riparian areas are critical to the maintenance of productive fish habitat. The 

 importance of riparian vegetation to fish production cannot be overemphasized. Riparian 

 vegetation provides stream shading to keep streams cool, filters sediment from upslope sources, 

 stabilizes stream banks, and provides the large woody debris that forms the large pools and 

 complex physical structure needed by anadromous fish throughout their fireshwater life stages. 

 Impacts to riparian vegetation are not consistent with either the maintenance or improvement of 

 fish habitat. If riparian areas are not protected, salmon populations cannot be protected or 

 restored. Unfortunately, riparian vegetation along natal salmon habitat does not currently receive 

 adequate protection under any land ownership in the Columbia basin outside of wilderness and 

 roadless areas. The greatest degradation of fish habitat in the Q)Iumbia basin is generally caused 

 by removal of riparian vegetation by livestock grazing, road construction, mining, logging, and 

 tilled agriculture (Theurer et al., 1985; IDHW, 1989; ODEQ, 1989; Platts et al., 1989; NPPC, 

 1990a; NPPC, 1990b; NPPC, 1990c; CRTTFC, 1991a; CRTTFC, 1991b). This degradation has 

 caused or resulted in chronic sedimentation, elevated summer water temperatures that are lethal 

 to salmon, arid huge losses in large woody debris and pools. Data consistently indicate that in 

 poor habitat salmon mortality is about 10 times higgler than in less degraded habitat, regardless 

 of how few salmon make it into the habitat. 



While riparian protection is critical to the protection and restoration of the salmon habitat, 

 it is not a panacea for avoiding habitat damage caused by upland impacts. Mining, grazing, 

 logging, road construction, and tilled agriculture outside of riparian areas still deliver significant 

 amounts of non-point pollution to fish habitat. Sediment is the dominant pollutant contributed 

 from these sources; however, mines also contribute considerable chemical pollution and, in many 

 cases, render salmon habitat unusable (NPPC, 1990c; Nelson et al., 1991). 



The catastrophic sedimentation of the South Fork of the Salmon River provides a well- 

 documented example of the effect of habitat degradation caused by land disturbance at the 

 watershed scale and its effect on salmon. The sedimentation of the South Fork of the Salmon 

 River was primarily caused by logging-related land disturbance (IDHW, 1991). The sedimentation 

 caused catastrophic declines in salmon and resident trout populations in the Soudi Fork of the 

 Salmon River which had once been the most fecund summer chinook salmon habitat in the entire 

 Columbia basin (Platts et al., 1989). Summer chiiKX)k salmon runs in the South Fork of the 

 Salmon River dwindled from more than 10,000 fish to mere hundreds, after the catastrophic 

 sedimentation event. The summer chinook salmon of the South Fork of the Salmon River are now 

 listed as 'threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. 



