Olympic Peninsula Steelhead At ‘Moderate Risk Of Extinction’ – Status Review Team

UPDATED 7:45 A.M., NOVEMBER 20, 2024 WITH NEW SENTENCE AT THE END OF THE FOURTH PARAGRAPH.

It’s not the final word on whether to list Olympic Peninsula steelhead under the Endangered Species Act, but a deep dive into the population has concluded that the fish are at “moderate risk of extinction,” a development that will be worrying for anglers and state and tribal managers, and one that comes with recovering numbers in recent years.

Late last week, the National Marine Fisheries Service released a federal status review team’s “pre-decisional working draft” that weighed a range of factors affecting winter- and summer-runs returning to rivers from the Copalis near Ocean Shores north and east to the Lyre near Port Angeles.

In making their conclusion, they pointed to declining abundance from the early 1990s to recent years, especially in the “big four” largest basins – the Hoh, Queets, Quinault and Quillayute; very low numbers of summer-run steelhead throughout the distinct population segment and winter-runs in Strait of Juan de Fuca tribs; as well as past harvest rates, use of outside stocks for hatchery programs, assumptions around spawn timing of hatchery and wild stocks; and the impacts and expected affects from climate change over the next half century.

The status review followed on NMFS’s February 2023 determination that an ESA listing might be warranted after the Wild Fish Conservancy of Duvall and The Conservation Angler of Edmonds filed a listing petition in summer 2022. It was also released about a week after WFC and TCA threatened to sue the feds for not issuing a 12-month finding earlier.

The review team, which was comprised of scientists from the Northwest and Southwest Fisheries Science Centers in Seattle and La Jolla, California, Olympic National Park and NMFS’s West Coast Regional Office in Portland, also found that legacy logging impacts continue to affect the fish and their habitat but not to the degree of risk of the other threats, while North Pacific pink salmon abundance, sea surface temps and currents – factors put forward by a joint state-tribal steelhead working group – are affecting the long-term viability of the population because of their correlation to lower smolt and kelt survival.

Six of the eight reviewers put the population at moderate risk of extinction, one at low risk and the other was split between low and moderate risk.

By definition, a stock is deemed at moderate risk of extinction:

• “…if it exhibits a trajectory indicating that it is more likely than not to reach a high level of extinction risk in the foreseeable future. A species/DPS may be at moderate risk of extinction due to projected threats and/or declining trends in abundance, productivity, spatial structure or diversity. The appropriate time horizon for evaluating whether a species or DPS is more likely than not to become at high risk in the future depends on the various case- and species-specific factors. For example, the time horizon may reflect certain life-history characteristics (e.g., long generation time or late age-at-maturity) and may also reflect the timeframe or rate over which identified threats are likely to impact the biological status of the species or DPS (e.g., the rate of disease spread). The appropriate time horizon is not limited to the period that status can be quantitatively modeled or predicted within predetermined limits of statistical confidence.

A 1996 review concluded the population was not at risk of extinction then or in the foreseeable future.

The news comes as WDFW prepares to make a final announcement on the shape of the 2024-25 Washington Coast winter steelhead season later this month. This afternoon, Fish Program Director Kelly Cunningham said the agency was still reviewing the status review and didn’t have a comment on it.

During a town hall earlier this fall, Cunningham said NMFS’s final listing determination would come after this coming steelhead season was set and thus the fishery wouldn’t be subject to ESA restrictions, but this afternoon he noted that “the report has us thinking hard about the regulations for this year.” Last week during a virtual meeting, he pointedly expressed concerns about protecting kelts – spawned out steelhead heading back to sea – during the April timeframe. The status review notes kelt survival went from 20 percent in 1996 down to 12 percent in the big four basins.

Olympic Peninsula steelhead are said to be Washington’s “crown jewel” fishery and the fish are harvested by several coastal tribes, making them particularly important to cultures, communities and economies. Sport fisheries were converted to catch-and-release only by the mid-2010s.

Next up in the ESA process is for NMFS to evaluate ongoing and proposed steelhead conservation efforts to figure out if they may reduce threats to the population and the degree of certainty around their implementation.

“Following that evaluation, the agency will publish a finding on the petition in the Federal Register. A finding that ESA listing is not warranted, will result in no further action. A finding that listing may be warranted, will include a proposal to list the species and solicit comment before a final decision is made,” NMFS states.

Coastwide, Washington wild winter steelhead numbers have bounced back from 2020-21’s nadir of 25,723, with 36,756 forecast back to rivers from Forks down to Naselle in the coming months. Last winter’s runs to the Hoh, Quillayute and Chehalis also all exceeded predictions and either easily met escapement goals or came close for the first time in several years. All of that lent to an optimism that a corner may have been turned.

But the release of the status review team’s findings on OlyPen steelies is like cold water down the back of an already heavily patched set of waders for steelheaders.