Feds Weigh In On Puget Sound Impasse, Hope Sides Work Together

Even after the state and tribes yesterday again couldn’t come to an agreement over Puget Sound salmon, federal managers still hold out hope they can and say it’s the best path forward for summer fisheries.

“Nobody has shown me going separate ways solves the catch-sharing problem,” says the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Bob Turner. “But going together solves it.”

The head of NMFS’s Sustainable Fisheries Division in Lacey, Turner says the rub is reducing the level of WDFW’s and the tribes’ proposed fisheries’ on Puyallup River-bound Chinook from 58 percent to 50 percent, an agreed-to management threshold for that particular stock.

Turner — who is also the subject of quite a bit of disgruntlement amongst sportfishermen at the moment — defined the problem as a catch-sharing dispute that falls under U.S. v. Washington, otherwise known as the Boldt Decision, and not, very broadly speaking, so much an Endangered Species Act issue.

While Puget Sound Chinook are listed as threatened, there have been and are enough Puyallup kings to power saltwater fisheries in Marine Areas 9, 10 and 11, and in the river itself. This year’s forecast is for 3,708 hatchery fish and 353 wilds.

Turner says that figuring out how to share the available 50 percent solves the rest of the outstanding problems hanging over Puget Sound salmon seasons.

“If you tie the shoe that is the Puyallup, you tie all the rest,” he says.

But if the state and tribes can’t come to agreement — they couldn’t out of the month-and-a-half-long North of Falcon process, a follow-up meeting last week and Wednesday — how they get separate federal authorizations to fish this season is not exactly clear.

After three decades of coming to agreement over fisheries, “dispute resolution mechanisms” from previous disagreements are “so dusty we’re not sure how it will resolved,” Turner says.

What is clear is that the tribes have the quickest path to fisheries because of federal nexuses, with the state having to take a longer route.

According to a January letter to WDFW and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission that foresaw strife at North of Falcon — but not necessarily over Puyallup Chinook — Turner wrote:

If there is no co-manager agreement on Puget Sound fisheries, any non-Indian fishery in Puget Sound likely would lose its “interrelated and interdependent” relationship with the tribal fishery, may no longer be associated with a “federal action” and if so, would not be eligible for a section 7 consultation. In that case, a proposed non-Indian fishery could only be determined to comply through sections of the ESA that take much longer to put in place — longer than the fishery itself. The section 7 consultation provides a more timely mechanism for the ESA determination on a North of Falcon agreement because it has fewer procedural requirements and can be completed more quickly than alternative ESA review processes.

WDFW’s Ron Warren yesterday told Northwest Sportsman that his agency would be talking with federal attorneys in search of quicker pathways to permitting, while sportfishing interests are alerting the state’s U.S. lawmakers to the issue and to put pressure on NMFS for fast approvals.

But Turner says there’s also uncertainty with Section 7 approval for the tribes. He says that assuming they get approval, it wasn’t clear if it could or would be contested.

As it stands, without an agreement, WDFW warned anglers yesterday that starting May 1, Area 13 and year-round fishing piers would close to salmon fishing until further notice.

And now, even if the parties can reach an agreement, things are starting to get very tight, considering the aforementioned Section 7 consultations.

“For July, we need to get to it,” said Turner.

Just as WDFW and the tribes are sailing uncharted waters for WDFW and the tribes, so to is NMFS. The feds’ hope is that the boats don’t scatter to the winds and tides.

“We’re hopeful of a collaborative solution,” said Turner.