The Status of Wild Steelhead and their Management in Western Washington

Burge, Richard; Mantua, Nathan; Berryman, Jack; Doyle, Larry

Wild steelhead populations are in the midst of a long-term crisis across most of Washington's waters. Except for a handful of stocks on the Olympic Peninsula and in Southwest Washington rivers, wild steelhead in Washington have been in a prolonged period of serious decline. Today, the majority of Washington's wild steelhead stocks are either listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), chronically failing to meet hatibat-related escapement goals, or in a period of declining abundance. In the past century the entire Pacific Northwest has witnessed catastrophic declines in wild salmonid populations and productivity due to a combination of degraded freshwater and estuarine habitat, poor hatchery practices, hydropower dams, natural cycles in riverine and ocean carrying capacity, and harvest policies. ... History shows that Maximum Sustained Harvest (MSH) concepts applied as harvest policies are a prescription for periodic and long term escapement failures and fishery closures. ... The Wild Steelhead Coalition (WSC) believes that the MSH policies that have been the fule on Olympic Peninsula rivers since the Boldt Case places the remaining "healthy" stocks at an undue, unnecessary, and unacceptable rish of over fishing and fishing closures. MSH policies consequently put the wild steelhead populations in the Olympic Peninsula rivers at risk of collapse and place Olympic Peninsula steelhead fisheries at risk of closjure if (and likely when) productivity declines from the high levels experienced in the recent past. With this probable occurrence, all wild stock fisheries in Washington may be closed to fishing.