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Stream silted in by road washout 

 (Photo by Jeff Lockwood) 



Riparian area severely degraded by cattle 

 grazing. (Photo by Jeff Lockwood) 



One of the problems is institutional. The many agencies and 

 Indian Tribal interests involved in salmon management in 

 the Columbia River basin represent different constituent 

 groups and have different perspectives and approaches to 

 salmon conservation. No one is in charge. Institutional, 

 jurisdictional, state, and federal boundaries make overall 

 fisheries management decisions difficult, if not impossible. 

 Such trans-jurisdictional decisions require consensus; that 

 consensus is difficult to achieve. Each agency has its own 

 area of designated authority and responsibility, gets its own 

 funding, sets its own goals, and develops its own special 

 projects and agendas, all of which are dependent upon 

 individual budgets. 



In many of the Snake River salmon watersheds, the 

 problems begin before the salmon emerge from the gravel. 

 Land use activities such as logging, grazing, mining, and 



road building may smother the redds (salmon nests) with silt 

 or sediment. Livestock may step directly on a redd and kill 

 the salmon eggs. Once the young salmon emerge from the 

 redds, hatchery fish may eat the wild salmon, be a source of 

 disease, or compete with them for food and living space. 

 Logging may eliminate streamside trees which would 

 otherwise fall into the water and create good habitat for the 

 salmon. Land use activities, such as removing stream- 

 shading trees, may increase water temperatures to levels that 

 are lethal for the juvenile salmon. Livestock grazing often 

 removes vegetation near streams and thereby reduces stream 

 bank stability. 



Once the salmon are ready to migrate to the ocean, they face 

 the problems associated with the hazardous downstream 

 journey. This journey through the lower Snake and 

 Columbia rivers has become more hazardous since eight 



