413 



the Lower Columbia River — not to spawning in the mainstem Snake River. 

 In addition, the United States should negotiate fairly and forthrightly with 

 Canada in current Pacific Salmon Treaty talks. 



A ban on commercial and /or Tribal harvest of these Snake River 

 stocks would only lead to larger salmon losses at the dams, and serve to 

 devastate an already depressed industry, its dependent communities, and its 

 workers. One of the best reasons to recover wild Snake River salmon stocks 

 is to rebuild the income and jobs in the very valuable fishing industry. 



Ocean and / or Climatic Conditions: Based upon observations of salmon 

 declines in some coastal watersheds which contain no dams, the argument 

 has been raised that dams have little or nothing to do with potential 

 extinctions in the Snake River Basin or elsewhere. This argument assumes 

 falsely that salmon are declining, and more or less at the same rate, in all 

 Pacific Northwest watersheds. But the 1992 Washington State Sabnon and 

 Steelhead Stock Inventory found that 43 percent of 435 wild stocks 

 reviewed in the study enjoy a "relatively healthy" status. This line of 

 reasoning further assumes, that these declines have just one common cause 

 such as "ocean and/or climatic conditions," when these fish die due to a 

 wide range of reasons — manmade and natural. 



Moreover, this argument simply has not been demonstrated in sound 

 scientific inquiry. For example, contrary to the widespread publicity, the 

 1993 Inter-Basin Comparison Study — Phase I Analysis relies upon an invalid 

 statistical analysis which fails to "prove" any simultaneous decline in salmon 

 production throughout Northwest streams. In violation of standard 

 procedures for statistical analysis, the Inter-Basin Comparison Study 

 correllated salmon productivity trends in only a small handful of coastal 

 watersheds to just one dammed basin (the Snake), did not account for 

 sometimes huge differences in numerical magnitudes between data sets, and 

 failed to seek or acknowledge any anomalous data such as healthy 

 productivity trends in undammed coastal streams or in dammed inland 

 watersheds. 



Even if researchers do someday verify a common thread or two in the 

 fabric of salmon declines on the West Coast, this would not disprove or 

 invalidate the mass of biological research which has amply demonstrated the 

 predominant role of mainstem dams in the march of wild Snake River 

 salmon toward extinction. 



Drawdowns Oflfer Greatest Promise — Page 9 



75-542 - 94 - 14 



