20 



Certainly harvest rates on some wild stocks may be incompatible 

 with healthy levels of sustainable production. Hatchery programs, 

 as has been pointed out, have generated much public debate, rang- 

 ing from the view that fish culture represents the future of the 

 salmon in the region to beliefs that hatcheries are the primary 

 reason why wild stocks have become depleted. 



Our views are somewhere in the middle, which is a safe place to 

 be, but two things about that are very clear. First, harvest manage- 

 ment and hatchery production are technical fields that fish manag- 

 ers know quite a bit about. If you tell them what to do, they will do 

 it. If we establish a clear public policy, it will be followed. 



Secondly, it is clear that improved and better coordinated man- 

 agement of habitat protection, harvest management and hatchery 

 production together will be the key to designing comprehensive 

 strategies to maintain and restore wild stocks in the region's im- 

 portant economies and public values that they support. 



This challenging landscape for managers represents an impetus 

 for the Department of Fisheries, together with the Indian tribes in 

 Washington and the Department of Wildlife to jointly develop and 

 implement the wild stock restoration initiative in Washington for 

 our State salmon and steelhead resources. 



The initiative has two major components. First, the hands-on re- 

 covery of the depressed populations and, second, the development 

 of a comprehensive salmon management policy with which all 

 future actions must be consistent. The first phase of the restoration 

 initiative is a straight-up inventory of our salmon and steelhead 

 populations. It is called the salmon-steelhead stock inventory. 



You have a copy of the summary attached to my testimony. This 

 is the summary report, and I have brought a copy of the technical 

 appendix for the Columbia River, just to give you a sense of the 

 depth of that information. It signifies the concurrence of more than 

 100 biologists that worked for both State and tribal management 

 agencies. 



I am well familiar with all the lawyer jokes and all the econo- 

 mist jokes, but if you can get 100 biologists to agree to the status of 

 stocks, it is a significant achievement. We are moving forward with 

 that initiative and we stand ready to work with all of the other 

 management entities in the State to push it forward, and clearly 

 working with the Federal agencies on that effort is a critical, criti- 

 cal step. 



To be brief, I urge this committee to support an ecosystem re- 

 sponse to all of these issues, particularly in the context of the 

 follow-up to the Forest Conference, and particularly components of 

 an ecosystem approach that would allow an optional participation 

 by State and private landowners in an ecosystem management be- 

 cause the watersheds that affect these fish resources are not just 

 on Federal lands, and if we are going to provide a total ecosystem 

 approach for a broad range of species to include fish, we must have 

 an ability to have private and State landowners enter into that 

 management process. 



My time is concluded, but I would like to emphasize that the 

 State and the tribes in Washington are moving forward and look 

 forward to an opportunity to coordinate these efforts in recovery 

 with those of the Federal agencies. 



