BUDGET CUTS THREATEN PACIFIC SALMON

 

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about cuts to National Marine Fisheries Service staff in recent weeks, for no better reason than because those cuts probably pose the biggest threat to science-based fisheries management that we have faced since the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens FisheryConservation and Management Act.

So far, I’ve talked about how such cuts might impact Mid-Atlantic species such as bluefish, summer flounder, scup, and black sea bass, how they are impacting groundfish off New England and in the North Pacific, how they’ve impacted scallops in the northeast and might even affect non-federally-managed species such as striped bass.  Although I haven’t written about it yet, at last week’s Highly Migratory Species Advisory Panel meeting, I learned how they’re hindering efforts to improve shark science, and their general impacts on the regulatory process.

But a good argument might be made that, of all the fish out there, none will be as adversely affected as Pacific salmon.

Even before the staff cuts were announced, Pacific salmon were stuck behind the eight ball.  Although some runs, like the heralded runs in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, are healthy and not immediately threatened, far more are in such bad shape that they’ve been listed under the Endangered Species Act, with most of those showing no real signs of recovery.  

Much of the commercial and recreational salmon fisheries are already supported largely by hatchery-propagated fish, since wild salmon have become to scarce to support either fishery's needs.

Thus the question must be asked:  How will Pacific salmon, and the people who depend on them, fare over the next few years?

The answer may be, “Not very well.”

When I make that statement, I’m not just talking about the wild runs of fish which, with some exceptions, are seriously distressed, but also of the millions of salmon manufactured in hatcheries each year, which support not only significant commercial, tribal, and recreational fisheries, but also marine mammals that can no longer depend on naturally-spawned fish for their food.

Last month, the New York Times ran an article discussing the fate of hatchery salmon in the age of DOGE budget cuts, and the news was not good.  The article reported that, just in Washington State,

“almost a dozen hatcheries in the Puget Sound region are in limbo because a single employee from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was terminated in February, a casualty of cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

“That employee was Krista Finlay and her job at NOAA was to ensure hatcheries complied with the Endangered Species Act before fish were released into Puget Sound…

“’If I don’t release millions and millions of salmon, there’s less this year and years going forward,’ Ms. Finlay said.  ‘If we don’t have salmon returning in 2027 and 2028, we don’t have offspring to release the following year, so it will take many, many years to repair this, if it’s even possible.’”

I’m no fan of hatcheries, and if the only problem was that commercial and recreational fishermen wouldn’t be able to catch, and in the commercial fishermen’s case, profit from fish artificially propagated at the taxpayer’s expense, I’d have no problem seeing the hatchery system shut down, no matter how or why the shutdown occurred.  However, things are rearely that simple, and Pacific salmon provide no exception to the general rule.

Salmon are part of a complex ecosystem that sees young salmon travel to the sea, feed on the sea’s bounty for a few years, and then return to spawn and die in their natal rivers.  In their death, the salmon deliver the nutrients from their bodies, accumulated in those years of feeding at sea, to the headwaters of local rivers, where they feed everything from eagles to foxes to the great bears, are carried ashore by predators and scavengers that unintentionally fertilize streamside vegetation and, to the extent that they remain in the water, provide food for many aquatic creatures, including the insects on which the next generation of juvenile salmon will require in order to survive until they, in their turn, exit the river to feed in the sea.

Given the current dearth of salmon in most Pacific rivers, shutting down the hatcheries, as desirable as that might be from some perspectives, could well harm the remaining wild fish.  Without the hordes of hatchery-produced fish in the rivers and nearshore ocean, the wild fish, while spared the competition for food and spawning space that hatchery salmon currently pose, would be they would also be far more exposed to orcas, sea lions, eagles, bears, and other predators.  It’s not hard to imagine the harm that a pod of sea lions, hunting near the mouth of a river, could do to an endangered salmon run. 

In fact, we don’t have to imagine it—we can see the damage done to the threatened run of steelhead (sea run rainbow trout) at Oregon’s Willamette Falls, where up to 25% of the returning fish are lost to sea lions each year.

And, of course, the damage would be mutual, as the loss of the hatchery salmon would be a serious blow to threatened and endangered populations of predatory marine mammals, which would lose an important source of food.

But salmon hatcheries would not be the only casualties of the current staffing and budget cuts.  According to the conservation magazine Mongabay,

“The [White House budget] plan…eliminates the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, which Daniel Schindler, an ecologist at the University of Washington, told Mongabay would be ‘catastrophic to efforts to restore degraded habitat’ and build back the region’s iconic salmon populations.”

Radio station KUOW provided additional details on its website, stating that

“In 2023, the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund distributed $107 million to states and tribes, with Washington state receiving $26 million, more than any other recipient.  Coastwide, the fund restored 3,624 acres of salmon habitat in 2023 and removed obstacles enabling salmon to reach an additional 202 miles of spawning streams.”

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has summed up the situation by noting that, just within her state,

“The Puget Sound, the Columbia River, they all rely on NOAA.  In Washington state, salmon are not just a pillar of our economy—and of the seafood industry that is so prominent in our state—it is also a way of life for our communities, for our tribes, and its part of our state’s identity, so NOAA’s work could not be more important when it comes to that.”

And Senator Murray isn’t the only person who should be concerned about how cuts to NMFS programs and personnel are going to impact Pacific salmon.

On April 17, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.” A portion of that Executive Order read

“It is the policy of the United States to promote the productive harvest of our seafood resources…

“The Secretary of Commerce shall request that each Regional Fishery Management Council…provide the Secretary of Commerce with updates to their recommendations…to reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production…

“The Secretary of Commerce shall pursue additional direct public engagement to ensure executive departments and agencies are focusing core fisheries management and science functions to directly support priority needs that strengthen our Nation’s seafood supply chain.”

Pacific salmon support one of the most important commercial fisheries in the United States.  Cuts to NMFS staff and programs that seek to protect and rebuild wild salmon runs, or help ensure that millions of hatchery-produced salmon will run to the ocean each year, to support healthy commercial and recreational fisheries when they return in years hence, do not support any of those stated goals.

If President Trump truly wants to see the United States increase its seafood production, cutting funds to NMFS projects that support Pacific salmon is exactly the wrong way to get the job done.