The Northwest Region's approach to salmon recovery planning under the Endangered Species Act is to support local collaborative efforts with strong participation and leadership from many entities within a geographical region. This includes federal, tribal, state and local government agencies, and other stakeholders. Final recovery plans, as mandated by the ESA, will include a number of components. The development of those components requires the rigorous effort of many entities, and is taking place within a comprehensive planning strategy.
In the Pacific Northwest, NOAA Fisheries Service has identified three recovery domains: Puget Sound, Willamette/Lower Columbia, and Interior Columbia, which has three sub-domains of Middle Columbia, Snake and Upper Columbia. These are geographically-based areas for preparing multi-species recovery plans for anadromous salmonids in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. There is also a restoration area for the Oregon Coast, where there are currently no listed salmon.
A recovery plan for each domain will address all evolutionarily significant units (ESUs) within the geographic area and will involve local stakeholder input and technical expertise. The Northwest and Southwest regions of NOAA Fisheries Service have appointed a recovery science review panel (RSRP) made up of nationally and internationally recognized scientists. The RSRP is chartered to ensure that recovery plans use consistent and well-accepted ecological and evolutionary principles, and to oversee peer review of all recovery plans.
NOAA Fisheries Service has further organized recovery planning into technical and policy tracks:
1. For the technical track, NOAA Fisheries Service has appointed technical recovery teams (TRTs) for each domain to identify independent salmon populations within each ESU, recommend viability criteria, and analyze factors that limit species survival. The TRTs provide the technical basis for recovery plans and advise NOAA and other recovery planners.
2. The policy track is structured to refine viability criteria into recovery goals, develop specific actions to achieve recovery goals, and estimate the time and cost for recovery implementation.
The TRTs will consider policy input as they accomplish technical work. The policy effort will rely on the TRTs and others for scientific input and advice.
While NOAA Fisheries Service is responsible for adopting recovery plans, the plans will have a greater likelihood of success if they are developed in partnership with entities that have the responsibility and authority to implement recovery actions. NOAA is using locally developed plans to complete ESA recovery plans. Where local forums are not preparing recovery plans, NOAA Fisheries Service is writing them.
Smaller-scale sub-basin and watershed plans have been drafted for areas throughout Puget Sound and the Columbia Basin. These smaller-scale plans are designed and intended to be building blocks for locally developed recovery plans. NOAA Fisheries Service is very interested in working with state and local agencies and organizations to help such entities take the lead in the development of recovery plans.
Coordination needs to occur across land ownership boundaries and programs. Toward this end, NOAA Fisheries Service will establish recovery domain-specific policy forums. Federal land managers, tribes, and local governments, for example, must all be key players in recovery planning. Each state (Idaho, Oregon, Washington) is taking a different approach to recovery planning. Each state has a variety of ESUs to work on -- seven ESUs spawn and rear in more than one state. Policy forums will coordinate among states to ensure that recovery is achieved where the geographical reach of an ESU crosses state borders.
The Northwest Region is working in collaboration with each state to develop locally supported plans that fit within the states' respective policy frameworks, and to meet the need for full recovery plans that comply with the Endangered Species Act.
