189 



Mr. DeFazio. Anyone who can stay, come up to the panel. 



I will ask a couple of questions and then we will let you all go. 



Let the record stand corrected on Dr. Ice's place of residence. I 

 am sensitive to just living in Springfield versus Eugene, versus 

 somebody saying that I live in Washington, D.C. They haven't done 

 that to me yet. 



A couple of questions that I will direct, and then — I wanted to 

 follow up on something that Mr. Frissell said, which I didn't quite 

 follow or understand fully, which was talking about the tremen- 

 dous loss of smolts after leaving the spawning area, between the 

 spawning area and the damming, and you didn't expand on that. 



In the Columbia svstem you were talking about. 



Dr. Frissell. Nobody quite understands what is going on. We 

 know that there have been some recent studies where there have 

 been detailed samplings of where the fish are disappearing in the 

 system. Formerly we had data at the dam. Now we are able to 

 close another gap in that life history and that is in the stream, the 

 tributary portion of the base. And I know we are finding that lots 

 and lots of fish are disappearing before they get to the spawning 

 beds. 



We don't know what is happening to them. They are simply dis- 

 appearing, and since they are in freshwater habitat, it may be due 

 to the quality of that habitat which is known to be severely de- 

 graded in those situations. 



Mr. DeFazio. Anything that you can provide on that — I don't 

 know that it is particularly material for this panel, but for the 

 hearings that I am going to conduct on the power administration 

 and the Columbia River System later this year, it would be useful. 

 Because that is the first that I have heard of those statistics. So 

 it would be interesting. 



Yes, sir? 



Dr. Palmisano. My name is John Palmisano, and there is some 

 information that I am aware of that claims that because of poor 

 hatchery management, a lot of the fish coming down, smolters that 

 are not adequately provided for to make the migration down 

 stream. These fish may be released too soon, or something, from 

 too crowded conditions, but there is some indication that some of 

 the fish that aren't making it are hatchery fish and not natural 

 fish. And it could be related to the hatchery conditions. 



Mr. DeFazio. You raise a good point, because I was thinking 

 wild; are we talking about wild or hatchery, or both? 



Dr. Frissell. Primarily of hatchery fish, but these are from the 

 latest new hatcheries that are doing everything right, and these 

 are first generation hatchery releases. It does raise questions about 

 whether the hatcheries are appropriate, even the most state-of-the- 

 art hatcheries. But I would have to look at the data to see how wild 

 fish are sorted out. They may have figured out through evolution 

 ways of getting through the gauntlet. 



Mr. DeFazio. I am puzzled that neither you nor any of the other 

 witnesses mentioned grazing. We focused on grazing. 



Dr. White. I thought I mentioned it. And I thought it was appro- 

 priate to the last issue. When I talk about grasslands, I am talking 

 about grazing areas that need attention as watersheds. But isn't 

 the point that you were making is that a lot of degraded habitat 



