Sockeye on the Brink-Can Good Fisheries Management Maintain and Restore Sockeye Stocks in the Pacific Northwest?

Pacific Northwest sockeye salmon have been greatly impacted by human development of the region.  In the Columbia Basin, they have been extirpated from over a dozen lakes, the Snake River stock is listed as endangered, and all existing stocks must pass seven to nine hydroelectric dams between the ocean and spawning grounds.  In the Puget Sound, Lake Washington sockeye persist despite rearing in the midst of the Seattle metropolitan area while Baker Lake sockeye are transported both upstream and downstream past a 95m high dam.  On the Olympic Peninsula, Ozette sockeye are listed as endangered.  Almost all the region’s stocks are threatened by the impacts of an expanding human population.  In addition these stocks, being at the southern end of sockeye salmon range, are most vulnerable to climate change impacts.  

Despite these challenges, some stocks have recently staged dramatic recoveries. The 2010 Okanagan and Snake River runs were the largest in over 50 years.  These increases can, at least in part, be attributed to recent management actions such as an Okanagan Basin water management tool and hatchery production.  Sockeye salmon restoration efforts are under way in the Okanagan, Yakima and Deschutes basins of the Columbia Basin and proposed for Wallowa Lake and upstream of Grand Coulee Dam as well as above Elwha Dam on the Olympic Peninsula. 

This symposium will focus on past, present, and possible future management actions to mitigate human impacts.  The question to be explored by this symposium is to what extent Pacific Northwest sockeye have benefited from past and present management actions and whether these actions will be sufficient for sockeye to thrive, or even persist, in the future.