92 



Sockeye salmon on the spawning grounds. 

 (Photo by Gregory Ruggerone) 



The 1962-1967 counts of spring and summer Chinook 

 salmon round to a mean of 52.400 (from a range of 26,900 

 to 65,800). Fifty percent of that average would give a 

 tentative delisting target of 26,200 naturally produced adult 

 spring/summer Chinook salmon passing over Ice Harbor 

 Dam yearly (eight year average count). 



Snake River Basin lakes) must not be confused with the 

 recovery goal for Snake River sockeye. That goal is the 

 reestablishment of sockeye populations "in all possible lakes 

 in the Snake River Basin," and the Team expects that the 

 overall recovery program will seek to serve that goal. 



The Team suggests that the Northwest Power Plaiming 

 Council's rebuilding target for fall chinook — 1 .000 

 returning spawners per year — should serve as an interim 

 escapement objective until better information becomes 

 available and decisions are made concerning 

 reestablishment of fall chinook populations in the 

 Clearwater and/or Upper Snake rivers. 



For sockeye, delisting will be recommended when naturally 

 self-sustaining populations of sockeye salmon have become 

 established in at least two Stanley Basin lakes and have 

 produced an average of 1 ,000 spawners over a period of at 

 least two generations (8 years) in one of those lakes. (The 

 population level in the second lake should achieve at least 

 half that number.) The reason two lakes are specified is to 

 guard against cataclysmic loss of the stock. While this 

 requirement will extend the time and increase the cost of 

 achieving dehsting, the Team considers this safety factor 

 essential to ensuring long-term recovery of the sockeye. 



Snake River sockeye populations should trend generally 

 upward, and average spawner abundance should 

 demonstrate spawner-spawner ratios that exceed 1 : 1 during 

 the rebuilding phase (in accordance with the rationale for 

 delisting Snake River chinook discussed earlier). 



The Team emphasizes that this delisting criterion ( 1 ,000 and 

 500 naturally produced sockeye returning to any two of the 



12 



SPAWNING AND REARING 

 HABITAT 



The Salmon Recovery Team beUeves that now is the time to 

 establish a unified position with respect to preventing 

 further habitat degradation: any further exploitation of 

 resources on public lands should be precluded unless it can 

 be shown that no further harm will hiefall criticjil salmon 

 spawning and rearing habitats. The upriver habitats are 

 critical for spawning success, egg survival, and fry 

 emergence and growth. 



Habitat protection (and the immediate benefits thereof) can 

 best be achieved if federal land management agencies (such 

 as the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management) 

 impose an immediate moratorium on all resource 

 exploitation on federal lands where there are risks of 

 measurably degrading hsted salmon spawning and rearing 

 habitats. Risk of degradation and habitat loss should be 

 evaluated in terms of the habitat protection standards 

 developed by Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment 

 Team, PACFISH (an interagency strategy for managing 

 anadromous fish watersheds), and the Eastside Forests 

 Scientific Society Panel, though some adjustments may be 

 necessary when applying the standards east of the Cascade 

 Mountains. These standards include riparian buffer zones of 



