156 



Despite these and other problems with electrophoresis, NMFS not only relies on it, 

 but exacerbates these problems by using electrophoretic results inconsistently: When NMFS 

 scientists used protein analysis to study Snake River spring, summer, and fall chinook, they 

 found a 0.005 genetic difference between fall chinook and spring/summer chinook. Based 

 largely on these results, Snake River fall chinook were found to be an ESU and were listed 

 as threatened. Snake River spring/summer chinook were also listed, but lumped together as 

 one ESU because test results showed a magnitude of difference between spring chinook and 

 summer chinook of less than 0.005. (Apparently, springs and summers are not sufficiently 

 reproductively isolated.) 



When NMFS scientists examined the genetic material from lower Columbia River 

 coho, they again detected a 0.005 genetic difference--this time between coho spawning in 

 streams and those that were spawned in hatcheries. Despite this finding, the federal agency 

 determined that lower river wild or naturally spawning coho possessed no distinct evo- 

 lutionary legacy (NMFS 56. F.R. 29553). Thus, NMFS did not provide Endangered Species 

 Act protection for the few remaining lower Columbia River wild coho. 



The federal fish agency made this decision on coho even though its own scientists 

 acknowledged that coho exhibit lower rates of variability in electrophoretic tests. (In other 

 words, the difference could have been smaller, but still significant in terms of the uniqueness 

 value NMFS was testing for.) These natural runs of lower Columbia River coho could not be 

 evolutionarily significant, according to NMFS (56. F.R. 29553), because "the extent and 

 duration of [hatchery] releases suggest that naturally spawning populations in these streams 

 are mixtures of the native and introduced hatchery stocks. " 



ESU Compromises Genetic Diversity 



Snake River sockeye provide a different kind of example. These sockeye were found 

 to be evolutionarily significant and were listed as endangered. NMFS scientists did not base 

 the decision on electrophoresis because there were too few Snake River sockeye to study. 

 Instead the agency based its decision largely on the presumption that these sockeye were 

 genetically unique because they swim far inland to high altitude lakes. 



"Sockeye," the biological species, are relatively abundant in other portions of their 

 historical range, for example, in the far inland Okanogan and Wenatchee watersheds as well 

 as other places from Washington to Alaska. Yet the recovery effort is focused on breeding 

 the three males and one female Snake River sockeye that returned to Redfish Lake in 1991. 

 Because NMFS identified these four sockeye as an ESU, it concluded that they could not be 

 bred with any other Columbia Basin sockeye. To breed them with other basin sockeye would 

 result, NMFS implied, in hybrid fish that are no longer unique nor evolutionarily significant. 

 Apparently this means that if the Snake River sockeye run cannot be recovered from the few 

 remaining fish, it simply dies out. 



