OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — A voluntary recovery plan could lead eventually to the endangered sockeye salmon in Lake Ozette being taken off the federal endangered species list, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service said.
The sockeye salmon of Lake Ozette, a 7,550-acre lake south of the Makah reservation within the park, were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1999.
The recovery plan, released May 29, calls for making improvements to habitat by eradicating non-native plants next to streams and replacing them with native species, as well as placing large woody debris along stream banks that will provide shade for young fish and stabilize the floodplain.
The plan also calls for continuing existing restrictions on sockeye harvests.
The Makah welcome the release of the plan as a signal that they will get help to stabilize the lake’s salmon population so it can be harvested, said Debbie Preston, coastal information officer for the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
The Makah have been working since the 1970s to return Lake Ozette sockeye to numbers that will allow it to again be part of the tribal diet, she said.
“When I was a child, I learned about Lake Ozette through my great-grandfather, grandmother and uncles and aunts,” Russ Svec, Makah tribal fisheries program manager, told Preston.
“It was common for my generation to know about the traditional resources available to us at Lake Ozette.”
Historically, the Ozette watershed had thriving populations of several salmon species, including sockeye, NOAA said, adding that the Lake Ozette sockeye were important for both tribes and early settlers in the watershed.
The salmon numbers declined over the last 150 years because of increasing human population and resource development, as well as natural disturbances and climate cycles, NOAA said.
The tribe has not commercially fished for Ozette sockeye since the 1970s, and minor subsistence fishing was halted shortly after that, Preston said.
Tribal actions
In the decades since, the tribe has taken several actions to help restore the fish population, Preston said.
It hasmapped the in-stream habitat of the Ozette watershed. Lake Ozette is the source of the Ozette River, which drains into the Pacific Ocean.
Of the approximately 450 miles of tributaries to Lake Ozette, an estimated 150 miles contain fish habitat, most of it east of the lake and largely contained on industrial timberlands.
The tribe also improved spawning habitat through the addition of wood that traps important spawning gravel, monitored water quality at all the major tributaries to the lake, conducted annual sockeye spawning surveys and enhanced the population through the Makah tribe’s Hoko Hatchery, Preston said.
“With the recovery plan finished, we are more optimistic about the resources that will be available to assist us with our work to restore this fish and an area, altered by extensive land use practices, that is critical to the viability of Lake Ozette sockeye,” Svec told Preston.
The plan’s biological recovery goals were developed by NOAA Fisheries Service technical recovery team with active participation of the Lake Ozette Steering Committee, which comprises tribal biologists and representatives, local citizens, forest managers and biologists and representatives from several county, state and federal entities and the Washington Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office.
Implementation of the plan is voluntary.
“We understand that the recovery plan is not legally binding,” Svec said.
“But it does provide us with a road map to how we can recover Lake Ozette sockeye.
“We can only hope that others share the same passion that we do about such a unique species of fish.”
View the plan and related documents at www.nwr.noaa.gov/Salmon-Recovery-Planning/Recovery-Domains/Puget-Sound/Lake-Ozette-Plan.cfm.
