Road to Recovery Video
Text Transcript

Narrator
The Pacific Northwest is known for its beautiful natural resources--its mountains, rivers, trees and, most importantly, its wild salmon--a majestic and ancient species that has graced our waterways for centuries. But now the salmon's very survival is threatened by loss of habitat, harvesting and competiton from hatchery fish.

Narrator
(Image: driving down the road to recovery with road sign saying "endangered species act salmon listing 1999").
In 1999, the federal government listed the Puget Sound chinook salmon and bull trout as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

It was a profound moment in our region's history. Could a species that so symbolizes the great Northwest actually be in danger of extinction?

Throughout the region, local government, tribal, business and citizen leaders came together.

(Image: Tricounty coalition map)

In Pierce, King and Snohomish Counties, they formed the Tricounty Coalition, a voluntary group that has been working together for five years to prevent further declines of these endangered populations. Since then, millions of dollars and much time and effort has been invested to make sure that these majestic fish can someday recover.

So where are we on the Road to Recovery? The political time frame is short but the salmon life cycle is long and the time needed to recover will be even longer still.

But there have been many improvements and the listing has prompted a whole new way of thinking.

Ron Sims, former King County Executive
We have a long way to go, but we have come so far. We have inculcated, quite frankly, salmon in our psyche. We don't do anything anymore without saying

"what will be the consequence to salmon and habitat?"

Sims, Continued
(Image: culvert)

So our Roads Division went through the process of replacing culverts and we opened up 30 miles of brand new habitat.

Narrator
In South Sound, a lot of work has been done on the Puyallup River.

John Ladenburg, Pierce Co. Executive
It [the Puyallup River] was channelized and straightened, and really destroyed the fish runs in the Puyallup. And in order to undo all of that has taken a lot of work. But we've had some real successes. Where levees have broken down over the years, we've built setback levees away from the river so that the river can wander in and out of its original habitat. In one area we recovered 121 acres of habitat with setback levees. We're also working with the Puyallup Tribe and federal government to create what we call "oxbows"--the river would oxbow back and forth across the plain. And those oxbows are still there. We're breaking down some of the barriers and recreating those oxbows.

Narrator
Further south, a salmon recovery plan has been in place on the Nisqually River since 1999. The focus: to acquire land and restore habitat.

David Troutt, Natural Resource Director, Nisqually Tribe
We've been working with all of our partners in the watershed. In the last seven years, we've moved into the position where we are now, where we have 70% of the mainstem Nisqually in permanently protected status. So the vision that you see today on this Nisqually, of a wild scenic river this close to a metropolitan area, is one that we are going to preserve for future generations in time.

Narrator
These restoration projects are already having an impact.

Ron Sims, former King County Executive
The one thing we didn't expect was immediate returns. And to realize that the stream, because it was cold and entering into a larger body of water (the Sammamish River), that the salmon were ready--you could walk across them..there was a thick, red, carpet of salmon ready to go back upstream.

Narrator
These are some of the successes along the road, but the road to real recovery will be much longer. Simply seeing a larger number of returning salmon is not enough. The science, like the endeavor, is complicated.

(Image: "Puget Sound Population Targets Diagram)

• Population ranges
• Shared strategy targets
• Abundance, productivity, diversity, spatial distribution"

By 2003, NOAA Fisheries had identified numerical targets for the different components of viable salmon populations.

Mary Ruckelshaus, NOAA Fisheries-ESA, Technical Review Team
Viable salmon populations, or VSP, are characterized by more than just their abdundance. Three other population characteristics--productivity, which is the number of returning adults per spawning adults; diversity, such as run timing or size; and spatial structure of the fish relative to their habitats are equally important characteristics. So each of these should be estimated and achieved within a certain range in order for the fish to be listed in Puget Sound to be able to recover.

Starting in 1999, NOAA Fisheries has been working with scientists at the the state, tribes and local governments to identify VSP characteristics for each of the 22 independent populations of chinook that are listed in the Puget Sound region.

Kit Rawson, Senior Biologist, Tulalip Tribes
What we on the recovery team did was to work with analyses from the co-managers' scientists as well as our own assessments to determine what is needed for each of the four measures of a viable salmon population. We identified viability ranges for each one of the 22 distinct populations within the Puget Sound Evolutionarily Significant Unit, or what we call "ESU" for short.

Mary Ruckelshaus, NOAA Fisheries-ESA, Technical Review Team
In some parts of the Tricounty region--Lake Washington, Cedar, Green and White Rivers; the co-managers have not yet identified population targets.

Narrator
Clearly, recovering salmon is complicated. Just knowing what population parameters and targets are is tough. Regardless, in tricounty, important stakeholders have been working since the listing to plan for recovery.

(Image: Tricounty Map entitled "Tricounty WRIA Conservation Final Plans Completed 2005")

If you look at a map of our region, we see that every single watershed is on schedule to complete a technically based plan by 2005.

But it will take more than new science and governmental agencies for recovery. It will take new regulations, changes in our business practices, capital investments to restore damaged habitat and even changes in our everyday lives.

Narrator
This is upper Bear Creek, a productive tributary in the Lake Washington, Cedar River Watershed. The conservation area is a place that Terry Lavender knows well. Terry is with Water Tenders, a community group that takes care of the area. Bear Creek is a success story of citizen involvement and, for Terry, personal responsibility.

Terry Lavender, Water Tenders
The fish that starts here has to swim that way and up the hill past my house, and eat some of the insects that I didn't kill that thrive on some tree that someone let fall in the creek. It lives in water that is affected by what chemicals I do or don't use--how I maintain my septic system or not. It spawns in gravels brought in when the creek cut its bank in the last storm. And the size of the floods are affected by how many trees that I have left to catch and hold rainwater, and so on out to the ocean. So every piece of property matters.

Al Barrie, Mid Sound Fisheries
We had to net them and take them in buckets by hand back to the stream.

Narrator
Al Berry is also an advocate for citizen action. He's with the Mid-Sound Action Fisheries Enhancement Group—nonprofit volunteers that fill a niche on the road to recovery.

Al Barrie, Mid Sound Fisheries
We are local people using local volunteers to build bridges between the private landowners and the public agencies that are tasked with developing salmon recovery plans.

Narrator
This citizen involvement is critical, but what about the building community and regulations? As our region continues to grow and the need for housing expands, what are builders doing to help protect salmon?

Sam Anderson, Master Builders Association
Both King County and Snohomish County had in place regulatory schemes that were already protecting the salmon. But what the salmon process required all builders to do--and I think whether you were doing residential construction or commerical construction--it required you to take a look at your best practices and to do an even better job. And so we have found ourselves where our builders have become even better educated, doing a better job, complying better with the law, following the regulatory schemes that were designed to protect the fish.

Narrator
Another powerful force is forcing builders to pay attention to the habitat--the consumer market.

Sam Anderson, Master Builders Association
The reality is that the consumers in the Pacific Northwest want good salmon runs. They want restored, clean, healthy, salmon habitat. And the overall positive of that is that it creates for home buyers an amenity they like, which frankly adds value.

Narrator
Of course there are other partners deeply invested in salmon recovery. For many native American tribes, it is about restoring a way of life.

Terry Williams, Commissioner of Fisheries & Natural Resources, Tulalip Tribes
For the tribe, what we're looking for is not only recovery of the salmon, but recovery of the culture. The watershed of the Snohomish River, translated from the Indian language, "Snohomish" means river of the people. And the people have been dependent upon this watershed for up to 10,000 years. Today though, about 75% of the watershed has been altered from the original environmental functions, and that means that a good deal of the portion of the lifestyle of the people has been lost, and we're looking at recovery now.

Narrator
The tribes are working with State Fisheries now sharing analysis.

Terry Williams, Commissioner of Fisheries & Natural Resources, Tulalip Tribes
We know that we have to make major changes in the way we do our fisheries harvests, and we're doing that. We're making major changes in our hatchery production, and we're accomplishing that through some scientific studies as well as looking at the management itself.

Narrator
The Nisqually Tribe manages two major hatcheries on the Nisqually River. They too are focused on bringing back wild fish.

David Troutt, Natural Resource Director, Nisqually Tribe
We're changing the way we fish and we're changing where we fish to be more consistent with that vision as well. So when all this comes together between the harvest and the hatcheries and the habitat along with economic sustainability of the watershed; we think that we have a really good roadmap for the future for the Nisqually that lays out a vision that is broad and inclusive of all the interests, will be a long-term home for our salmon, and all of the people in the watershed.

Narrator
But citizen groups, hatchery management, and strict land and stormwater regulations are only part of the solution. Restoring degraded and protecting good habitat through capital investment is critical. More than $100 million federal, state and local dollars have been invested throughout our three counties since 1999. But it's not enough. Restoring salmon will take a lot more time and money. Based on what we know now, this kind of investment will be needed every five years for the next 50 years or more.

Aaron Reardon, Snohomish County Executive
Well it's all about partnerships. What we realized back then in 1999 at the start of this process was that salmonids (fish) don't know county boundaries. They don't rely on any single jurisdiction. So we all have to work together to make sure that our plans are strategic and they're focused on the future.

Ron Sims, former King County Executive
All you've got to do though is to see a single culvert removed and see fish where they haven't been in 30 years.

David Troutt, Natural Resource Director, Nisqually Tribe
It's all about leaving a legacy--and we're leaving a better future for the people of Washington and the tribal members here in the Nisqually and for my family and your family to come out here and see this.

John Ladenburg, Pierce Co. Executive
As Churchill said, we're not at the "beginning of the end", we're at the end of the beginning. We're just starting this process. It's going to take many decades for all of these things to take effect. I know it's going to take many many years to get to a situation where we can say we've declared victory.

Ron Sims, former King County Executive
For whatever reasons, salmon are magical still. I don't know why, but they affect us in a very special way. So we'll continue to bring them back and we will succeed.

Narrator
(Image: Driving down the road to recovery with road sign entitled" Chinook Salmon Recovery 2050".)

It's a long road to recovery but the first part of the journey is over--certainly in regulations, involvement of citizens and the first phase of capital investments. But we still have a long way to go. We need to continue to pool our resources and continue protecting and restoring these watersheds. So that when our grandchildren are taking their grandchildren fishing, the fish will be there, just as they have been for generations past.