212 



to minimum operating pool -- a measure approved by the Northwest Power 

 Planning Council in its Strategy for Salmon ■- on the basis that the vast 

 majority of Snake River salmon smolts are collected above, and transported 

 past, the John Day pool. However, due to a prohibition against juvenile fish 

 transportation by an administrative law judge and the Federal Energy 

 Regulatory Commission, the vast majority of salmonid smolts from the 

 middle reach of the Columbia River are not collected and barged 

 downstream. So regardless of the strategy for moving Snake River smolts 

 past the dams and reservoirs, operation of John Day reservoir at minimum 

 operating pool would clearly provide major benefit to mid-Columbia 

 salmonid stocks which have been petitioned for ESA protection. 



In a similar shortcoming, the Team now recognizes that the dams are 

 the predominant cause of human-inflicted mortalities to these fish. 

 Nonetheless the recommendations call for more research before taking 

 action to relieve the blockage to juvenile salmon migration at the dams and 

 through the reservoirs. It is not clear or certain from the Recovery Team or 

 other biologists that tests can be designed and conducted in the near term 

 to completely resolve the scientific questions raised in the Bevan document. 

 In any case, the ESA requires that the recovery plan direct immediate action 

 to save listed species based upon the best available scientific information -- 

 not some wishful future study. 



Above all, the NMFS Recovery Team and its work are utterly advisory, 

 and not a requirement of the ESA. NMFS and only the agency can write the 

 official recovery plan for the threatened and endangered Snake River 

 salmon. In other words, the Team and its recommendations are not an 

 integral part of the salmon recovery planning process. 



So contrary to the concerns raised by some parties, whether or how 

 the administration, the agency, and /or the Congress may or may not deal 

 with the Team's recommendations does not threaten, much less impact, the 

 integrity of the recovery planning process. An advisory panel with no status 

 or force of law behind it has rendered its judgment or best guess on salmon 

 biology -- period, full stop. Under the law, NMFS retains the options to 

 adopt the Team's recommendations, modify them, or shelve them entirely - 

 because the responsibility to write the recovery plan under the law lies with 

 NMFS. not the Recovery Team. 



• The Recovery Team recommendations are not science. 



Laudably NMFS and the Recovery Team submitted the draft 

 recommendations to scientific peer review. However, the peer review 

 strongly criticized and rejected major portions of the Team's report, 

 particularly those chapters dealing with downstream passage and harvest. 

 Commentators frequently noted that the recommendations were not 

 internally consistent, not based upon sound scientific reasoning or computer 



Sierra Club — Page 3 



