Despite more than $9 billion spent over the past 40 years on conservation efforts in the Columbia River Basin, research from Oregon State University shows that populations of wild salmon and trout have not increased. While the number of hatchery-raised salmon has increased, there has been no net increase in the number of wild, naturally spawning fish, a problem compounded by problems caused by hydropower, overfishing and other human activities.
More than $9 billion in inflation-adjusted tax dollars spent on conservation over 40 years has not resulted in significant increases in wild salmon and chinook salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin, according to an Oregon State University study.
The study, led by William Jaeger of Oregon State University's College of Agricultural Sciences, analyzed 50 years of data. Research shows that while the number of hatchery-raised salmon has increased, there is no sign of a net increase in the number of wild, naturally spawning salmon and chinook salmon.
The findings were recently published in the journal PLOSOne.
Jaeger, a professor of applied economics, noted that for a century and a half, populations of steelhead, Chinook, coho and sockeye salmon in the Columbia River Basin have been under severe pressure—first from overfishing and then from hydroelectric power starting in 1938 with the opening of Bonneville Dam, the lowest dam in the Columbia's main waterway.
"Additionally, farming, logging, mining and irrigation are causing landscape changes and habitat degradation, compounding the problems faced by fish," said Jaeger, who co-authored the paper with biologist Mark Scheuerell of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington.
An estimated 16 million salmon and trout once returned from the Pacific to the watershed above Bonneville Dam, but by the 1970s there were fewer than 1 million fish, prompting federal intervention.
The Northwest Power Act of 1980 requires that fish and wildlife goals be considered along with power generation and other goals. This act established the Northwest Power and Conservation Commission to develop conservation programs funded by revenue from the Bonneville Power Administration.
In the 1990s, 12 species of salmon and steelhead trout in the Columbia River were listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and the cost and scale of recovery efforts have increased significantly since then.
The public's conservation spending now exceeds $9 billion in 2020 inflation-adjusted dollars, not including all spending by local governments and nongovernmental agencies, the researchers said.
"The actual impact of all these efforts has been poorly understood," Jaeger said. "Many people have long been concerned about the lack of evidence of salmon and steelhead recovery. One problem is that most studies assessing recovery efforts have been conducted on individual projects for specific species, life stages, or geographic areas, which limits the ability to make broad inferences at the watershed level."
As a result, Jaeger points out, a key question persists, the answer of which is critical to sound policy and legal decisions: Is there any evidence that overall increases in wild fish abundance are associated with restoration efforts as a whole?
Based on half a century of fish return data from Bonneville Dam, the only entrance to the watershed above the dam, the evidence doesn't support a definite answer. No evidence was found in the data that spending on restoration efforts was associated with a net increase in wild fish populations.
The Northwest Power and Conservation Commission has set a goal to increase the total salmon and chinook population in the basin to 5 million by 2025, but annual adult fish returns from Bonneville Dam averaged less than 1.5 million in the 2010s.
Jaeger added that while hatchery production helps boost overall adult fish populations, it also adversely affects wild populations through a range of mechanisms, including genetics, disease, competition for habitat and food, and predation of wild fish by hatchery fish.
"The role of hatcheries in recovery programs is controversial for a number of reasons, but the results do suggest that hatchery production combined with recovery spending is associated with increases in returning adult fish," Jaeger said. "However, we found that costs and hatchery-released adult fish returns combined did not exceed the returns that the hatcheries themselves could generate. We looked at ocean conditions and other environmental variables, hatchery releases, survival rates of hatchery-released fish, and conservation expenditures, and we found no evidence of a positive net impact on wild fish."
Even spending on "lasting" habitat improvements is intended to provide cumulative benefits to naturally spawning wild salmon and chinook salmon over many years.