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In 1991. the National Marine Fisheries Service designated Snake River spring/sunimer 

 and fall chinook as threatened species and Snake River sockeye as an endangered species. 

 These declarations triggered a set of actions required under the federal Endangered Species 

 Act of 1973, including development of a recovery plan. 



Under the Endangered Species Act. recovery plans focus only on the petitioned 

 animals. The Northwest Power Act takes a broader view, directing the Northwest Power 

 Planning Council to develop a program to protect, mitigate and enhance all fish and wildlife 

 populations affected by hydroelectric facilities on the Columbia River and its tributaries, 

 including related spawning and rearing habitat. 



Following the petitions to protect Snake River salmon under the Endangered Species 

 Act. the Council and the region accelerated efforts to improve salmon survival. First, the 

 region's Governors and Senator Mark Hatfield convened a Salmon Summit in late 1990. The 

 summit, made up of the user, policy and interest groups connected with the Columbia Basin's 

 waterways, came up with critical short-term measures that were implemented in 1991 to stem 

 further decline. Those measures were intended to buy the region time. From there, the 

 Northwest Governors asked the Council to take up where the Salmon Summit left off by 

 initiating a process to devise a comprehensive salmon pjrogram in the form of amendments to 

 the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program. 



The product of this exercise is the 1992 Strategy for Salmon, a long-range plan to 

 improve salmon survival at every stage of the salmon life cycle. The strategy includes 

 measures to amend river operations, increase salmon productivity, repair salmon habitat and 

 refme salmon harvests. It is designed to balance competing river uses while strengthening 

 and rebuilding salmon and steelhead runs throughout the basin. The Council's aim is to make 

 future Endangered Species Act petitions unnecessary, and ultimately to produce healthy and 

 harvestable populations of fish. 



It is critical to the recovery of the listed Snake River salmon, and to our regional effort 

 to improve the survival of all salmon runs in the Columbia Basin, that the obligations of the 

 Endangered Species Act and the Northwest Power Act be met in a unified manner by the 

 relevant agencies. The Council believes these two federal laws complement each other. 

 They should not be seen as working at cross purposes. 



To that end. one concern I will share with you in more detail later in my testimony is 

 how the salmon strategy will fit with the recovery team's plan for Snake River salmon. 

 We've discussed this issue with the recovery team and with the Fisheries Service. The 

 recovery plan aims just at the listed runs. The Council's salmon strategy aims to improve tiie 

 survival of all weak runs in the basin. We need to work closely with the Fisheries Service to 



