The salmonid fisheries of the Columbia River Basin (CRB) have enormous socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological importance to numerous diverse stakeholders (eg state, federal, tribal, nonprofit), and there are a wide array of opinions and perspectives on how these fisheries should be managed. Although we appreciate Duda et al.\u27s commentary, it offers only one perspective of many in this context. The objective of our paper (Hand et al. 2018) was to provide justification for “the importance of social–ecological perspectives when communicating conservation values and goals, and the role of independent science in guiding management policy and practice for salmonids in the CRB”. However, we did not intend to strictly advocate for a single course of action, and the available space within our paper\u27s Panel 1 limited us from engaging in a thorough ecological debate

Crabtree, Robert L.

Devlin, Shawn P.

Flint, Courtney G.

Frissell, Chris A.

Hand, Brian K.

Kennedy, Brian P.

Luikart, Gordon

McKee, W. Arthur

Muhlfeld, Clint C.

Stanford, Jack A.

English

DigitalCommons@USU

 WRITE BACK  11© The Ecological Society of America Front Ecol Environ doi:10.1002/fee.1990River, Washington, USA: source- to- sink sediment budget and synthesis. Geo mor­phology 246: 729–50.Weinheimer J, Anderson J, Cooper R, et al. 2017. Age structure and hatchery fraction of Elwha River Chinook salmon: 2016 carcass survey report. Olympia, WA: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Report FPA, 17-05.Supporting InformationAdditional, web-only material may be found in the online version of this article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10. 1002/fee.1989/suppinfoEast AE, Pess GR, Bountry JA, et al. 2015. Large- scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: river channel and floodplain geomorphic change. Geo­morphology 228: 765–86.Enquist CAF, Jackson ST, Garfin GM, et al. 2017. Foundations of translational ecol-ogy. Front Ecol Environ 15: 541–50.Foley MM, Warrick JA, Ritchie A, et al. 2017. Coastal habitat and biological community response to dam removal on the Elwha River. Ecol Monogr 87: 552–77.Hand BK, Flint CG, Frissell CA, et al. 2018. A social–ecological perspective for river-scape management in the Columbia River Basin. Front Ecol Environ 16: s23–33.Liermann MF, Pess G, McHenry M, et al. 2017. Relocation and recolonization of coho salmon in two tributaries to the Elwha River: implications for management and monitoring. Trans Am Fish Soc 146: 955–66.Magirl CS, Hilldale RC, Curran CA, et al. 2015. Large- scale dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington, USA: fluvial sed-iment load. Geomorphology 246: 669–86.McHenry M, Pess G, Anderson J, and Hugunin H. 2017. Spatial distribution of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawyts­cha) spawning in the Elwha River, Washington State during dam removal and early stages of recolonization (2012–2016). Unpublished report. Port Angeles, WA: Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe.Moser ML and Paradis RL. 2017. Pacific lam-prey restoration in the Elwha River drain-age following dam removals. Amer Curr 42: 3–8.Peters RJ, Duda JJ, Pess GR, et al. 2014. Guidelines for monitoring and adaptively managing Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and steelhead (O. mykiss) restoration in the Elwha River. Lacey, WA: US Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington Field Office.Quinn TP, Bond MH, Brenkman SJ, et al. 2017. Re- awakening dormant life history variation: stable isotopes indicate ana-dromy in bull trout following dam removal on the Elwha River, Washington. Env Biol Fish 100: 1659–71.Ritchie AC, Warrick JA, East AE, et al. 2018. Morphodynamic evolution following sed-iment release from the world’s largest dam removal. Sci Rep 8: 13279.Warrick JA, Bountry JA, East AE, et al. 2015. Large- scale dam removal on the Elwha Hand et al.’s statement that hatchery construction or operation costs have siphoned funds away from research and monitoring budgets is inaccurate, with the Elwha being among the best- studied dam removals in the world. Funding for dam removal began in 1995 and was pro-vided by multiple congressional appro-priation bills through 2015 to cover costs associated with acquisition, dam removal, and project mitigation. Reconstruction of the tribal fish hatchery to mitigate dam removal effects to the original hatchery’s water supply was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, federal funding made availa-ble for “construction- ready” projects in response to the 2008 financial crisis.Our era’s natural resource issues are inherently complex and fraught with interconnected social, legal, cultural, and ecological entanglements. For any pro-ject, a foundation built on complete infor-mation and proper context must be used within translational scientific approaches (Enquist et al. 2017) and multidiscipli-nary collaborations to bridge the gap between research and practice. Steeped in a complex socio- ecological history, the Elwha River restoration has seen both early successes and setbacks, with the ultimate outcomes and lessons unfolding in the decades to come.Jeffrey J Duda1*, Joseph H Anderson2, Matt Beirne3, Samuel Brenkman4, Patrick Crain4, John Mahan3, Michael McHenry3, George Pess5, Roger Peters6, and Brian Winter41US Geological Survey, Seattle, WA  *(jduda@usgs.gov); 2Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA; 3Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, Port Angeles, WA; 4National Park Service, Port Angeles, WA; 5National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, WA; 6US Fish and Wildlife Service, Lacey, WAAnderson JH, Pess GR, Carmichael RW, et al. 2014. Planning Pacific salmon and steel-head reintroductions aimed at long- term viability and recovery. North Am J Fish Manage 34: 72–93.Challenges in Columbia River fisheries conservation: a response to Duda et al.The salmonid fisheries of the Columbia River Basin (CRB) have enormous socio-economic, cultural, and ecological impor-tance to numerous diverse stakeholders (eg state, federal, tribal, nonprofit), and there are a wide array of opinions and perspectives on how these fisheries should be managed. Although we appreciate Duda et al.’s commentary, it offers only one perspective of many in this context. The objective of our paper (Hand et al. 2018) was to provide justification for “the importance of social–ecological perspec-tives when communicating conservation values and goals, and the role of inde-pendent science in guiding management policy and practice for salmonids in the CRB”. However, we did not intend to strictly advocate for a single course of action, and the available space within our paper’s Panel 1 limited us from engaging in a thorough ecological debate.Although Duda et al. contend that the continued use of hatchery supplementa-tion in response to the release of large amounts of sediment was a necessary step in salmonid recovery in the Elwha River (northwestern Washington State) following the removal of the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams, they also point out  12  WRITE BACKFront Ecol Environ doi:10.1002/fee.1990 © The Ecological Society of AmericaSciences and Geological Sciences,  University of Idaho, Moscow, ID;  6Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, Bozeman, MTBams RA. 1976. Survival and propensity for homing as affected by presence or absence of locally adapted paternal genes in 2 transplanted populations of pink salmon Oncorhynchus gorbuscha. J Fish Res Board Canada 33: 2716–25.Berntson EA, Carmichael RW, Flesher MW, et al. 2011. Diminished reproductive suc-cess of steelhead from a hatchery supple-mentation program (Little Sheep Creek, Imnaha Basin, Oregon). T Am Fish Soc 140: 685–98.Chilcote MW, Goodson KW, and Falcy MR. 2011. Reduced recruitment performance in natural populations of anadromous salmonids associated with hatchery- reared fish. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 68: 511–22.Christie MR, Ford MJ, and Blouin MS. 2014. On the reproductive success of early- generation hatchery fish in the wild. Evol Appl 7: 883–96.Christie MR, Marine ML, Fox SE, et al. 2016. A single generation of domestication her-itably alters the expression of hundreds of genes. Nat Commun 7: 10676.Dittman AH and Quinn TP. 1996. Homing in Pacific salmon: mechanisms and ecologi-cal basis. J Exp Biol 199: 83–91.Ford MJ, Murdoch A, and Hughes M. 2015. Using parentage analysis to estimate rates of straying and homing in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Mol Ecol 24: 1109–21.Hand BK, Flint CG, Frissell CA, et al. 2018. A social–ecological perspective for riv-erscape management in the Columbia River Basin. Front Ecol Environ 16: S23–33.Naish KA, Taylor JE, Levin PS, et al. 2007. An evaluation of the effects of conservation and fishery enhancement hatcheries on wild populations of salmon. Adv Mar Biol 53: 61–194.Sedell JR, Reeves GH, Hauer FR, et al. 1990. Role of refugia in recovery from disturbances: modern fragmented and disconnected river systems. Environ Manage 14: 711–24.Waples RS, Pess GR, and Beechie T. 2008. Evolutionary history of Pacific salmon in dynamic environments. Evol Appl 1: 189–206.Restoration Plan (hereafter “Plan”; Ward et al. 2008). Despite the discrepancy be - tween annual releases stated in the Plan and by Duda et al., hatchery releases still number in the millions of fish per year, exceeding the total number of wild fish existing in the Elwha by orders of magni-tude. There is no question that this con-stitutes substantial hatchery supplementa-tion as we characterize it. This magnitude of supplementation served as the impetus for lawsuits against the federal agencies implementing the Plan, as noted in Hand et al. (2018).We ask readers to keep in mind the principal theme of our original article: complexity in the “social–ecological interactions among stakeholders often complicate[s] natural- resource conser-vation and  management of riverscapes”. Duda et al. underscore that open com-munication among stakeholders, includ-ing those of us in the scientific commu-nity, is essential to long- term recovery of wild salmonid fisheries in the CRB and beyond.AcknowledgementsAny use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government. GL was partially supported by funds from NSF grant DOB- 1639014 and NASA NNX14AB84G.Brian K Hand1*, Courtney G Flint2, Chris A Frissell1,3, Clint C Muhlfeld4,1, Shawn P Devlin1, Brian P Kennedy5, Robert L Crabtree6, W Arthur McKee1, Gordon Luikart1, and Jack A Stanford11Flathead Lake Biological Station, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Polson, MT *(brian.hand@umontana.edu);  2Department of Sociology, Social Work & Anthropology, Utah State University, Logan, UT; 3Frissell and Raven Hydrobiological and Landscape Sciences LLC, Polson, MT; 4US Geological Survey, Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, Glacier National Park, West Glacier, MT; 5Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences, College of Natural Resources, and Departments of Biological that threatened migratory species such as bull trout and Pacific lamprey “that are not and have never been in hatcheries are also recolonizing upstream of the dams”. As lamprey and bull trout are expanding and recolonizing without hatchery sup-port, this is counter to Duda et al.’s impli-cation that hatchery supplementation is necessary for recovery of threatened spe-cies. Further, they ack nowledge that there exists ample science “demonstrat-ing the potential for negative conse-quences of fish hatcheries”. Regard less, the goal of our Panel 1 on the Elwha was  simply to highlight the uncertainty and current social–economic debate over whether hatchery propagation is always a necessity for salmon recovery: an issue that is not uni que to the Elwha and that is pervasive throughout the native range of salmonids occurring in the Northern Hemisphere.Research indicates that wild salmonids possess numerous adaptations for surviv-ing and adapting to major sediment pulse events (sensu Sedell et al. 1990; and see Waples et al. 2008), which are a naturally occurring phenomenon in the geologi-cally active terrain throughout their range in the northern Pacific region. Hatchery intervention has been shown to disrupt the evolution of important life- history traits, such as natal homing, that have both behavioral and genetic components (Bams 1976; Dittman and Quinn 1996; Ford et al. 2015). Use of hatchery supple-mentation in restoration of wild salmonid fisheries may also have other potentially negative ecological and evolutionary con-sequences, as mentioned in our Panel 1 (eg “reduced reproductive success result-ing from interbreeding, ecological com-petition, and increased predation”), but continues to be a primary focus of man-agers and funders in the CRB and  else-where (Naish et al. 2007; Berntson et al. 2011; Chilcote et al. 2011; Christie et al. 2014, 2016). How salmonid recovery plays out and the positive or negative con-tribution of hatchery fish in the Elwha remain to be fully documented.We welcome Duda et al.’s updated hatchery release data in the Elwha Basin. Our original values were based on goals reported in the Elwha River Fish  WRITE BACK  13© The Ecological Society of America Front Ecol Environ doi:10.1002/fee.1991IK has the potential to meet all four strategic recommendations from Soga and Gaston (2018). First, to restore the natural environment, legal frameworks in many countries protect Indigenous rights to hunt, fish, and carry out other traditional activities. As such, Indigenous peoples are on the front lines with respect to ecosys-tem restoration and protection. Second, to monitor and collect data, programs are being enacted to place natural resource management back in the hands of Indig-enous people (Luzar et al. 2011). IK can help reconstruct historical conditions, and many communities have learned lessons from past instances of overharvesting or overexploitation. Emerging programs that seek to reignite environmental steward-ship – such as the Indigenous Rangers in northern Australia (eg Ens et al. 2012) – are well equipped to interface with IK because they are implemented locally. Third, IK is relational knowledge (Houde 2007), thereby satisfying the call to reduce the extinction of experience. Immersive, land- based programs are being designed to enable the transfer of IK from elders to youth and, in doing so, directly connect youth to their environment. While not all youth will embrace this experience, it is essential that this knowledge transfer be maintained for future generations. This leads to the fourth appeal from Soga and Gaston (2018), to educate the public. Wrapped up in national apologies, consti-tutional amendments, and landmark land- is an expression of the degraded state of the local environment (eg reduced fish and wildlife populations, poor water qual-ity), even when, in many cases, science points to favorable conditions relative to those in other areas. My baseline, however, which includes highly developed regions of temperate North America and Australia, is much different than their baseline. What appears pristine to me is a modified envi-ronment in their eyes (Figure  1). This is rooted both in the lived experience of individuals over the course of the 20th century, a time of rapid development upstream and upwind from these loca-tions, as well as in the intergenerational transfer of knowledge accumulated since time immemorial. Subtle changes in eco-system health are often undetectable in the scientific record due to its emphasis on spatial rather than temporal comparisons (Mantyka- Pringle et al. 2017). Yet reading subtle environmental signs and signals was once necessary to ensure individual survival (Berkes 2008), as this depended on an ability to switch prey sources or har-vesting locations as prey became depleted, to detect and discard meat of hunted  animals that may have carried pathogens or parasites, and to avoid drinking water contaminated with toxins. These examples of lived knowledge have been handed down to current generations who are striving to maintain their connection to the land, and much can be learned from these knowledge keepers.Ward L, Crain P, Freymond B, et al. 2008. Elwha River Fish Restoration Plan–Developed pursuant to the Elwha River Ecosystem and  Fisheries Restoration Act, Public Law 102-495. US Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NWFSC-90.Indigenous knowledge as a remedy for shifting baseline syndromeSoga and Gaston (2018) recently  outlined the features of shifting baseline  syndrome (SBS; Pauly 1995), a condition whereby each new generation inherits an envir-onment that has worsened from the  generation before, producing lowered expectations for conservation and resto-ration. They showed some of the self- reinforcing elements of SBS and  provided four recommendations to help counter it: (1) restore the natural environment, (2) monitor and collect data, (3) reduce the extinction of experience, and (4) educate the public. I commend the authors for clearly articulating this syndrome and offering potential paths forward to correct it. Across a spectrum of environmental domains, SBS is pervasive, and many of its most pressing  challenges are concentrated in remote  sections of the Tropics and the Arctic, regions that to outsiders may appear relatively untouched by human activities. Here I argue that Indigenous knowledge (IK) has a strong role to play in limiting the shifting of baselines, espe-cially in countering perceptions of these regions as pristine environments. IK, also referred to as traditional (ecological) knowledge, has been defined as “a cumu-lative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evo lving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cul-tural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment” (Berkes 2008). Notably, IK has the  potential to advance a narrative of past environmental conditions, an appropriate baseline against which to judge current state.A common refrain from my Indigenous community partners in northern Canada Figure 1. Ring Lake, a river- connected lake in the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories, Canada. This lake appeared pristine and had good water quality when tested by the author in 2014, but according to Indigenous knowledge has shallowed over the past 40 years and now produces fewer fish.

Challenges in Columbia River Fisheries Conservation: A Response to Duda et al.

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Challenges in Columbia River Fisheries Conservation: A Response to Duda et al.

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