Now is the time for creative new ideas that redirect how we spend the more than $200 million annually on recovery efforts. Redden's focus on habitat improvement compels us to revisit the upper basins and watersheds, where we're already seeing a whole infrastructure of community-based watershed councils, forest and range collaboratives, and land and water trusts that can all play a more vital role in long-term solutions if motivated through incentives instead of directives.
Recent experience in places such as the Klamath Basin shows that those most affected by the problems are the best architects of the solutions. Blending scientific knowledge, local understanding and love of the place can solve problems better and faster. Indeed, that's already happening in places such as Salmon, Idaho; Wallowa County, Ore.; and Walla Walla, Wash.
At this stage we should be smart enough to figure out how many salmon each sub-basin should be able to produce and then foster those conditions. Managing for outcomes rather than managing to avoid regulation is a much surer way to reach the desired future conditions. People, businesses and communities will figure it out if they are empowered to be part of the solution and if they are given the right incentives.
So, let me propose one paradigm-shifting idea: What if we, the Columbia Basin, created the conditions for watershed communities to be the main economic beneficiaries from salmon recovery? Each sub-basin and the political jurisdictions that make it up could be shareholders in watershed trusts. These trusts would grow (or not) depending on the number and quality of salmon and salmon-enhancing habitat improvements they produced and maintained over time.
Trusts would be seeded with a core allocation that each sub-basin would use to kick-start its collaborative planning, goal-setting and initial habitat-improvement efforts. They would then sign on to measurable improvements over specific time periods. If they reach those milestones, their trusts would be replenished. At some point the most successful communities could use the trust funds to advance others' environmental, social and economic goals that are in line with continued salmon-enhancing measures.
Like any complex environmental challenge, this scheme would require a lot of thought and a good deal of negotiation among scientists, federal and state managers, and local communities and other stakeholders. To begin with, we'd have to figure out how to establish and measure the outcomes sought, how much each trust fund would be allocated, and how to deal with downriver issues that also affect salmon survival and success. But my guess is that once we shift from punitive and regulatory approaches to incentive-driven methods, locals will craft ways to meet and exceed expectations.
I think we would create a whole new culture of salmon advocates that would work in concert with downriver communities and users to continue to do their part. And, I envision alliances emerging where upriver and downriver groups work closely together to share knowledge and best practices, advocating for main-stem river management improvements and even working with ocean fishers to figure out what harvest levels makes sense in any given cycle to ensure returns that consistently replenish runs and stocks for the benefit of all.
Currently, we are stuck with an increasingly perplexed and frustrated judge, too many salmon agencies with contravening interests, too many folks on the ground doing the minimum possible to meet unclear and elusive mandates with no real sense of local profit. Let's unleash the power of people working together for the benefit of themselves, their communities and the Basin. But to do this we must think and act differently. More of the same will not get us there.
Promise --Judge Redden knows that better than anyone. So should we.
Martin Goebel is president of Sustainable Northwest, a regional solutions organization that works to enable prosperous and resilient ecosystems and economies.
