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coordination among these entities occurs. Meaningful participation in the coordination of 

 restoration efforts in other areas (i.e., production policies, habitat activities and water resources 

 projects) has proven to be more difficult for the tribes. Thus, an overall coordinated strategy 

 for restoration is lacking due to unresolved policy issues. The states, through the Northwest 

 Power Planning Council, have a strategy. The federal agencies do not yet have a unified 

 strategy; instead each federal agency continues to push its own program while paying lip service 

 to the Council's program. The tribes' strategy was outlined to the Committee's staff over a year 

 ago and is briefly described below for each of the recovery areas. 



HARVEST - In the harvest arena, the tribes are active in all management fora. In the ocean, 

 the tribes participate on the US/Canada Pacific Salmon Commission and the various panels 

 established under the Treaty. The tribes actively participate in the deliberations of the Pacific 

 Fisheries Management Council. The tribes are active participants in the harvest management 

 processes established under the UJ5L L Oregon Columbia River Fish Management Plan. All 

 of these fora provide for significant coordination between the tribes and the state and federal 

 agencies. The tribes also work with the individual states on establishment of fisheries in their 

 ceded areas. The tribes establish regulations for their respective reservations and fishing areas; 

 these regulations are shared with the state agencies. 



The overall strategy in the harvest arena is to continue to manage harvest in an open forum with 

 continual input from all concerns. The process is open and flexible enough to respond to the 

 vagaries of the resource. The difficulty we are now encountering is the continual attack on 

 harvest by those groups trying to protect their own interests (i.e. hydro, grazing, timber harvest, 

 irrigation). While the tribes closed fisheries, and forced our people to sit on the banks -with 

 hopes of better times to come, we have seen unbridled development by those who are destroying 

 the resource. For example, the tribes closed their summer chinook fishery in 1964 and their 

 spring chinook fishery in 1977. During that same period of time we witnessed the construction 

 of the four federal dams on the lower Snake River, the John Day Dam on the Columbia River, 

 and several private dams on the Columbia and Snake. Despite the fact that for every salmon 

 an Indian catches, the dams kill between one and two hundred salmon, our small tribal harvests 

 are blamed for the decrease in salmon. The truth is, the dams are by far the biggest net in the 

 river. 



PRODUCTION - The tribes have been attempting for many years to reform production on the 

 Columbia River. Our efforts have been directed mainly at modifying production to ensure that 

 artificial production is used to restore the numbers and kinds of natural stocks throughout their 

 habitat. This effort has been continually blocked by the fishery agencies as they protect their 

 existing programs. With the exception of the tribes' erforts, there is no overall strategy for 

 production. The fishery agencies continue to resist change in order to protect their programs 

 and the fisheries they provide for their constituents. It also appears that the need to protect their 

 funding plays an important part in denying the tribes a meaningful role in production. Our 

 supplementation programs cannot succeed unless we are given a chance to make them work. 

 For fifty years, the state and federal fishery agencies have been making all the production 

 decisions. All we ask for is to finally have a meaningful voice in the production decision- 

 making processes and an opportunity to implement our own programs. 



