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Council's efforts to secure additional water from the upper Snake River and will work with 

 the action agencies to ensure that flow augmentation from the upper Snake River does not 

 jeopardize molluscs and other listed species in the Snake River Basin. However, because of 

 low runoff conditions that prevail in the Snake River Basin, flow augmentation by itself may 

 not be adequate to create the migration conditions necessary for rebuilding salmon stocks. 



The collection and transportation of juvenile salmon and steelhead to below Bonneville Dam 

 by barge or truck is another approach that has been used to attempt to mitigate for the impact 

 of dams and reservoirs, but a recent review identified several areas of uncertainty with 

 regard to the effectiveness of transportation. How transportation affects survival and return 

 of salmon back to their spawning grounds is a major area of uncertainty that is critical to 

 determining the role of transportation in the recovery and rebuilding of salmon stocks. 



We support a thorough evaluation of the effectiveness of transportation to increase survival to 

 adult spawning stage as called for by the Council in their Strategy for Salmon. In the 

 interim we urge the Council and the action agencies to work to improve in-river flows, 

 reservoir drawdowns, and project operation to provide for safe in-river migration conditions. 



Another strategy for overcoming the effects of the four lower Snake River dams and 

 reservoirs is to lower the reservoirs to decrease the cross-sectional area and volume of the 

 reservoirs to increase water velocities. Unless it is found to be structurally, economically, or 

 biologically infeasible or inconsistent with the Northwest Power Act, the Strategy for Salmon 

 calls for drawing down reservoirs behind the four Lower Snake River dams by April 1995 to 

 increase water velocity during the juvenile fish migration period. 



The Fish and Wildlife Service has been participating in the regional efforts to evaluate the 

 drawdown strategy and supports the Council's efforts to aggressively explore this 

 intermediate- term measure, which has high potential for increasing fish survival through the 

 lower Snake River. However, it appears the Council's deadline may not be achieved because 

 of concerns about going forward with a costly temporary gatewell smolt removal system at 



