56 



Mr. Vento. And finally on this panel, we invite Gary Edwards, 

 the Assistant Director for Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

 Welcome, Mr. Edwards. 



STATEMENT OF GARY EDWARDS 



Mr. Edwards. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and 

 members of the subcommittee. I am Gary Edwards, the Assistant 

 Director-Fisheries. I appreciate the opportunity to appear on be- 

 half of the Service before the committee this morning. 



I will begin my testimony with two important points. First, a tre- 

 mendous variety of fish and wildlife species are dependent on Pa- 

 cific Northwest watersheds. My comments today, however, will 

 focus on how watershed degradation affects salmon and steelhead 

 populations. 



Second, as has already been said, land management is but one 

 of several factors that have caused the decline of salmon and 

 steelhead populations in the Pacific Northwest. Irrigation, hydro- 

 electric dams, and overharvesting have also contributed syner- 

 gistically with land management practices to reduce the carrying 

 capacity for salmon. 



Sometimes even the Service's efforts to restore salmon popu- 

 lations have had unintended negative impacts. No one can say with 

 certainty the direct level of contribution to salmon decline of any 

 of these impacts. 



Pacific salmon and steelhead trout are well-suited to thrive in 

 most river basins of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, 

 Oregon, and northern California. Each ecosystem component with- 

 in a watershed, from ridge top to sea, plays an integral role in the 

 production of these stocks of fish. Unfortunately, watersheds have 

 not been managed as ecosystems. 



Cumulative impacts to watersheds have gone unmeasured and 

 unchecked as many of the multiple jurisdictions overseeing public 

 and private land management have taken parochial approaches to 

 managing pieces of the whole. We must begin to view watersheds 

 as interdependent units, and focus on problem solving using inte- 

 grated resource management. 



Steelhead trout and all five species of salmon use streams flow- 

 ing through forested areas for spawning, rearing, and adult holding 

 purposes. Thus, the maintenance of healthy forests is an integral 

 element in the proper management of salmon and steelhead. 



Logging activities such as the construction of roads, and not the 

 actual cutting of timber, are most responsible for increasing the 

 sediment load into receiving streams. 



In some areas, timber harvest has necessitated the building of 

 thousands of miles of unpaved roads. High levels of sediment load- 

 ing into watershed streams have resulted from improperly con- 

 structed cuts, fills, and cross drainage structures related to road 

 building and maintenance. 



The sciences of hydrology, hydraulics, and fishery biology have 

 recently been applied together to produce fresh insights that flow 

 maintenance is something much more than just providing a base 

 minimum flow in a stream. In the Trinity River in northern Cali- 

 fornia, the Service is conducting investigations and evaluations of 

 year-round flow patterns that mimic the natural hydrology. 



