Global Warming Threatens Northwest Salmon

By: Richard Alves
July 1, 2004

"The (European) heatwave of summer 2003, repeated floods, the advance of desertification, the melting of the icesheets and glaciers are an illustration of the first effects of climate upheaval," four ministers from Great Britain and France declared in a joint commentary, June 24, in the French daily le Monde.

Global warming is definitely happening. 1998, 2001, and 2003 were, globally, the hottest years on record and the 1990s was the hottest decade on record!

An article in the October 2003 Scientific American stated, "...the warmest air temperatures in four centuries, a shrinking sea-ice cover, a record amount of melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet, Alaskan glaciers retreating at unprecedented rates. Add to this the increasing discharge from Russian rivers, an Arctic growing season that has lengthened by several days per decade, and permafrost that has started to thaw. Taken together, these observations announce in a way no single measurement could that the Arctic is undergoing a profound transformation."

We have crossed the threshold from scientific theory to an overwhelming amount of data which has prompted governmental science agencies worldwide to accept global warming as fact. A Bush Administration ordered review of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (international research) and the National Academy of Sciences (United States) 2001 report, Climate Change Science: Analysis of Some Key Questions, failed to find anything in the report's conclusions that could be scientifically challenged.

The atmosphere is composed of gasses which make the Earth about 60 degrees warmer than if there was no atmosphere. The greenhouse gasses, mostly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, have increased dramatically since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750. From Antarctic ice cores we know CO2 concentrations were around 270 parts per million (PPM) prior to 1750. Today concentrations are 380 PPM and the Environmental Protection Agency projects them to be nearly 500 PPM by 2100. The increase of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere traps more solar radiation than has been historically reflected into space. This is projected to increase average temperatures by 2.5 degrees in the 2020s and 3.8 degrees in the 2040s.

The dramatic increase in CO2 concentrations primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, deforestation and agricultural practices virtually eliminates the possibility that we are experiencing a weather anomaly such as the little ice age, 1600-1850 A.D. The Intergovernmental Panel concluded that atmospheric CO2 concentrations will not be reversed quickly.

The Climate Impact Group (CIG) from the University of Washington is an interdisciplinary research group studying the impacts of natural climate variability and global warming on the Pacific Northwest (PNW. Their research focuses on four key sectors of the PNW environment: water resources, aquatic ecosystems, forests and coasts.

A CIG study on average annual temperature and snowpack water equivalent over the last fifty years shows temperature increases as high as 3.6 degrees and decreases in snowpack, particularly in the Cascades, of up to 60%! By 2020, the average winter snowline elevation in the Cascades will have climbed 1000 feet.

According to CIG, projected changes in PNW climate have significant implications for the region's water resources. Principal CIG Investigator Nathan Mantua told me, "In most PNW water basins the dominant form of water storage is mountain snowpack. Climatic changes that influence spring snowpack have major impacts on water availability."

CIG projects warmer winter temperatures in the near future will cause:

• Less winter snow accumulation
• Higher winter streamflows
• Earlier spring snowmelt
• Earlier peak spring streamflow
• Lower summer streamflows

Reductions in summer flows will increase competition for water as the needs of anadromous fish (salmon and steelhead), irrigators and hydropower generators collide. Increased winter flooding, decreased summer and fall flows, and elevated stream temperatures will have a devastating effect on salmon stocks already stressed from degraded habitat.

Jim Martin, Director of Conservation for Pure Fishing says, "We manage our salmon stocks by looking at run size and this year's precipitation. If these fish are going to survive, we are going to have to take a strategic approach that looks a hundred years down the road."

"We have to dramatically increase wild stocks to have a large enough genetic pool that will allow natural selection to develop strains capable of handling warmer water temperatures," he added.

This would require a major procedural ground-shift for the Environmental Protection Agency and fundamental changes to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Currently the ESA only tasks the EPA with keeping species from going extinct. The EPA is not charged with restoring any species to genetic health, much less trying to anticipate problems ten years ahead! In the history of the ESA, only one species of fish placed on the endangered species list has recovered enough to be taken off the list. King salmon aren't even on the threatened list yet.

The paragraph long statements about global warming buried in the massive National Research Council Klamath Report and the California Coho Recovery Plan, released last fall, clearly demonstrate a reality check is in order for the fishery management agencies!

"King salmon are a keystone species," Chase Davis, Director of the Spokane office of the Sierra Club told me. "If they become extinct, the effects on other species would be a disaster."

The survival of anadromous species in the Western States will probably require Congress to pass a bill such as a Wild Salmon Protection Act which would expand the scope of the Endangered Species Act to cover a very limited number of species.

Bold measures that need to be taken in the very near future to insure salmon survival include:

1. Identify watersheds with the greatest potential to produce large numbers of wild salmon with the maximum possible genetic diversity. Within those areas:
   1. Restore habitat by improving streambeds and restoring riparian zones.
   2. Provide ample cold water resources based on the needs of a healthy fishery, rather than a survival fishery.
   3. Identify and remove point source pollution, which threatens anadromous fish.
   4. Identify and eliminate man made structures that raise streambed temperatures.
   5. Limit and control human population growth and development along streambeds.
   6. Restore historic wetlands and marshes to provide water reserves and to clean and cool water.
   7. Curtail human activities producing sedimentation of streambeds.
   8. Identify and remove dams with marginal economic value such as the four dams on the Lower Snake River and the seven on the Klamath River.
   9. Mandate a smolt survival rate of 95% at remaining dams. This will require a redesign and possible rebuilding of turbine intakes. Current mortality rates are well over 20% at some dams on the Columbia system.
   10. Require a similar dam passage survival rate for returning adult fish.
   11. Phase out hatchery operations once habitat, predation, and fish passage goals have been successfully accomplished.

2. Control populations of natural predators such as the California sea lion and introduced predators such as the cormorant.
3. Amend all government reports on anadromous salmonids released within the last five years to fully address the effects of global warming on their conclusions and recommendations.

The expected accelerated change in climatic conditions expected over the next forty years is an unprecedented threat to our salmon fisheries. Research should be started now on methods that would currently be considered radical to preserve species. We have the time now. We might not have it in thirty years.

1. Through genetic alteration, such as the program that produced a 100 pound salmon in New Zealand (Frankenfish,) it might be possible to develop strains of fish capable of surviving in warmer water temperatures.
2. Over extremely long periods of time, hundreds of years, small numbers salmon spawn in a river they weren't born in. This has historically provided genetic diversity. It might be possible to introduce small amounts of salmon with genetics from one river into another.

It is possible to sustain healthy salmon fisheries through global warming. It will, however, require unprecedented cooperation between the government, scientific community and the general population. That would be in stark contrast to the politics of alienation demonstrated by the current agriculture/conservationist battles we are experiencing today. Largely this will depend on how important wild ecosystems are to you and the importance you place on the ability of our children and grandchildren to enjoy the outdoors as we do. When fishery issues are as important as the economy, Iraq and gas prices anything is possible!

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All illustrations courtesy of the Climate Impacts Group, University of Washington