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issues. And what did we have going on in the region at that time? 

 We had an Endangered Species Act review being undertaken by 

 the National Marine Fisheries Service that had commenced in 1978 

 for upriver stocks in the Columbia and the Snake, both the upper 

 river areas. 



We had unprecedented restrictions of fisheries far tighter than 

 we had ever seen before. We had agency and tribal recommenda- 

 tions for flow improvements and fish passage improvements that 

 were on the table and not being implemented. 



And we had the dam operators calling for continued barging of 

 the salmon and more studies because we didn't have enough infor- 

 mation to move forward. That is where we were right before the 

 Northwest Power Act was passed. That was supposed to be our 

 saving grace. 



It was supposed to provide our recovery plan and move us for- 

 ward to break the gridlock and get us on with action and not just 

 debate. But it didn't work out, despite good intentions, the way we 

 had anticipated. 



We didn't implement the agencies' and tribes' recommendations. 

 For the last 15 years we have basically barged and studied. Now 

 we have fish listed under the Endangered Species Act. They are at 

 the lowest population levels ever. 



Fisheries have been closed up and down the coast and we are 

 still debating what to do about it. To me that is a very sad state 

 of affairs for both the fisheries, our fishing communities and the re- 

 gion. 



My second point then fiows from the first one. We need a recov- 

 ery plan that is finally an action plan. It has to be specific. It has 

 to be a cookbook. It has to have specific steps, performance stand- 

 ards and time tables — not be inflexible but move us forward in very 

 specific ways and break the gridlock. 



Now the Recovery Team recommendations are good as far as 

 they go. They are a framework. They have the elements that we 

 need, the table of contents of a recovery plan, if you will. But let 

 me just give you an example of how we have a gap between the 

 goals of the recovery plan and the steps that we need to get there. 



The Recovery Team calls for two spawners for each one in the 

 previous generation, at least for the foreseeable future. That is a 

 two-to-one replacement rate and as you know we are not even at 

 a one-to-one replacement rate now. The Recovery Team also identi- 

 fies the need for about a fourfold increase in survival of these fish 

 through the migration corridor. 



Yet there is no step-by-step approach to get us to these measures 

 showing that within two generations, three generations, four gen- 

 erations, we will get to that point of rebuilding and recovery. That 

 is something that the National Marine Fisheries Service is going 

 to have to address. 



While there is a lot of talk about addressing all aspects of the 

 salmon life cycle, there is an inescapable fact that we have to deal 

 with in this plan: 80 to 90 percent of the human-caused mortality 

 to the fish is caused by the dams. There is no question we must 

 fix the problems at the dams if we are going to recover these salm- 

 on. The Power Council's plan admits this. The Recovery Team has 



