Basinwide Salmon Recovery Strategy
Harvest

The Basinwide Salmon Recovery Strategy limits harvest to no more than current levels, seeks opportunities to reduce harvest impacts on listed fish where necessary and effective, and seeks additional fishing opportunities in fisheries that do not affect wild fish, with particular emphasis on selective fisheries.

Cutting harvest immediately increases spawning escapement and can reduce near-term risks of extinction. However, reductions in harvest rates on natural stocks have been the first response to declining production and ESA listing, and now harvest rates are so low for most stocks that further reductions will not yield major benefits. Most of the harvest impacts remaining on listed fish occur in treaty-protected fisheries, which have been especially hard-hit in recent years.

Although further reductions in the already-reduced harvest might provide small additional benefits for listed fish, the Strategy does not generally recommend that action because of the importance of the treaty fishing right and the federal trust obligation.

Federal agencies will, however, seek to reduce impacts from harvest on the listed fish where such additional cutbacks are necessary and effective at aiding recovery. They will enable more selective fishing opportunities by marking most unlisted hatchery fish and developing and promoting the use of selective fishing techniques and locations to open up opportunities for increased tribal and non-tribal fishing while still protecting the listed stocks. They will also provide funds to buy back state-issued commercial fishing licenses when doing so would be effective at reducing fishing effort.

Strategies for Harvest:

• Fishery Management: To manage fisheries in a manner that prevents overharvest and does not thwart recovery efforts.
• Sustainable Fisheries: To provide sustainable fisheries for the meaningful exercise of tribal fishing rights and non-tribal fishing opportunities consistent with the recovery effort.

Performance Standards for Harvest:

• Estimated Benefits:
• Maintain at least minimum escapement rates
• Provide time for other recovery efforts to take effect
• Adult Fish Improvement Criteria:
• Maintenance or reductions in harvest rates of listed species
• Resultant stabilization and/or increases in escapement

Rationale for Harvest Performance Standards:

Measurement of harvest rates and escapement are straightforward, and are well developed by the parties involved in harvest management in the river and in the ocean. However, a mechanism must also be provided for attributing survival benefits to specific elements of voluntary or funded harvest reductions.provided through greater selectivity of fisheries. That mechanism should explicitly recognize that greater selectivity in a given fishery can be used for either or both of two objectives: Reduce take on listed stocks while (1) sustaining current harvest, or (2) increasing harvest. The agencies propose to measure these improvements based on reductions of harvest impacts on listed fish and resulting increases in escapement of fish to spawn.

Next: Strategies for Hatcheries