Wild Chinook Salmon Management: An International Conservation Challenge

Abstract

The complexity of managing wild chinook salmon (Oneorhynchus tshawytscha) stocks arises primarily from marine migrations across politic81 boundaries, the currently seriously overfished condition of stocks along the North Americam Pacific Coast, and detrimental impacts from activities of competing users of the freshwater habitat. Despite the fact that data and analytical cspabilities are adequate, many chinook salmon stocks continue to decline. This is happening bemuse consis- tent management standards are lacking or not applied by decision-making bodies in favor of varions unquantified socio-political alternatives. Yielding to sociopolitical pressures occnrs even at the biologic81 staff level, resulting in compromised biological recommendations that further undermine the fundamental management goal of long-term stock health and viability. We describe three chinook salmon csse histories as paradigms of the problem: (1) the Georgia Strait stock where managers have failed to apply management standards aimed at increasing spawning escspements; (2) the Klamath River stock where managers have applied sltuational management standards which continuously compromise or ignore spawning escspement objectives; and (3) the upper Columbia River "bright" stock where conditional standards are being applied by numerous regulatory entities placing spawning escapement needs at a lower priority than other considerations.

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