61 



This is not surprising given that the Council's goal is to go far beyond 

 Endangered Species Act requirements and provide substantially increased and 

 harvestable populations for the Snake River and elsewhere. Regarding fall 

 Chinook, the Council's rebuilding target and the Team's interim escapement goal 

 are the same — 1,000 fish. 



The Council's Strategy emphasizes additional measures that, in our view, 

 will be required to fiarther improve salmon survival. These additioneil measures, 

 which are discussed below, are designed to ensure that the Strategy addresses all 

 stocks in the Columbia River Basin. If successful, future petitions and 

 Endangered Species Act proceedings could be unnecessary. 



The Council's Salmon Strategy also calls for the development of goals and 

 rebuilding schedules for salmon stocks not currentiy listed under the Endangered 

 Species Act. We believe this additional work will help the region identify actions 

 needed to rebuUd all salmon stocks in the basin to levels beyond those that trigger 

 Endangered Species Act petitions and listings. 



Framework 



The Council is well acquainted with the dilemma the Team faced in selecting 

 recovery measures and relating them to a recovery goal. In the Strategy, we asked 

 the state, federal and tribal fish managers to provide us with their goals and 

 objectives for the basin's salmon stocks. Clear goals and objectives are critical to 

 the successful implementation of salmon recovery measures. To date we have not 

 received this information, and we are encouraging the managers to provide it 

 expeditiously. 



While it is possible to describe individual measures, it is very difficult to 

 say whether individually or collectively those measures achieve any given objective 

 because our knowledge of this complex ecosystem is limited. The Team noted 

 these difficulties in its discussion of economic issues. Nevertheless, we have 

 found over the past 12 years that a large collection of recovery measures 

 unaccompanied by an analytical firamework poses real difficulties. Implementing 

 agencies have a difficult time sorting out priorities: policy makers have littie sense 



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